How much power is to much power?

There's something to be said for effortless sound....1800 watts a side. But it is a two edged sword....you can waste a tweeter. I know...years ago I played Copland's "theme for a common man". Cranked er up and the gong toasted a tweeter....learned my lesson.....Kinda like jumping on a Porsche turbo with the HP on the lurk....bad idea.

Read carefully and keep it as your guide:
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0708/index.html

All The Best
Rafael

Great info here everyone. I think I know what direction to take... the good thing about buying used is I can always resell without taking much of a loss. I'll update you.

Joe

What does "more control of bass" mean? If you meant sufficient current to drive the bass woofers without more distortion, then it is equivalent to a higher SPL. If you meant a higher damping factor, then it is independent to the wattage anyway.

I have learned the following things recently.

I bought my current speakers, JMlab Alto Utopia, with the impression that they are easy to drive: 91dB and 8ohm load. But my KT88 monoblocks, 50wpc, couldn't drive them well. Upon more investigation, I found the speaker impedance drops to 3.2ohms. This means that bass will need 2.5X more power than the mid-range.

Then I bought a Counterpoint SA100 and upgraded it to NP100. Note that NP100 has several upgrade levels and they all have the same rating, 100Wpc into 8ohm and 170Wpc into 4ohm, with a damping factor around 40. I have tried the following upgrade levels: Basic, Basic Gold, Premium Gold, and Platinum. They sound *very* different even though they all have the same outout ratings.

So what have I learned?

1. The matching between power amp and speakers is very important.
2. The amp rating can be misleading at times.

As to the magazine article referred to- I beg to differ that the phase angle is all that important - the proper term for what is imporant is the group delay.