250 watts: why so much power?

You misunderstand the reason for power. It has little or nothing to do with volume. There are several reasons why a comsumer might want to go with a higher powered amp.

1) Certain speakers depending on their efficiency require large amounts of power to work as they are designed. A very efficient speaker can run with very low power. Some of the favorite amps right now put out only a couple of WPC. These low powered amps though cannot drive most speakers to the satisfaction of the speaker owner.

2) More powerful amps are more able to reproduce difficult musical passages because of the amount of power the are able to store. For example; if the listener is playing a recording with quiet strings and suddenly a portion comes along with lots of brass or drums played much louder a low powered amp will not have the reserve to 'accurately' reproduce the passage.

I use a 4 ohm speaker, my amp is capable of 400 WPC into a 4 ohm load. I have never turned up the volume of the pre-amp over half way. For sheer volume I have no need for this amount of power. For the enjoyment of the music I want an amp with the kind of power that will reproduce the details of portion I am hearing. So the issue remains, quality rather than quantity is what the average buyer is seeking.

Personally, i would consider an amp rated at 250 wpc @ 8 ohms to be "good sized" and not "big". Like all things in life, points of view will vary based on one's perspective : )

As to why someone might need that much power, I had temporarily hooked up an amp that is rated for 200 wpc @ 8 ohms / 350 wpc @ 4 ohms to my HT mains today. These speakers are a nominal 4 ohm load and are about 85 - 86 db's in terms of sensitivity. As such, they are less than average sensitivity and what most would consider a low impedance load. Into this type of load, the amp should be delivering 350-375 wpc rms and probably at least 4-500 wpc on peaks.

Upon playing a classical piece by Rimsky-Korsakov entitled "Allegro Molto" at what i consider to be "good volume", the amp was noticeably going into compression and lacked bass sustain during the "high impact" parts of the selection. Instruments were getting smeared together due to amplifier saturation. Switching back over to the amp that i usually use to drive these, which is rated at 1200 wpc and clips at 1400+ rms, i had no problems. The bass had much greater impact and sustain and instruments did not get as "bunched up" sounding. This was because the amp was still "coasting" and not being pushed hard. As such, it was easily able to keep up with the demand for power and the result was cleaner operation with less smearing, compression and distortion.

And just in case you were wondering, it was wonderfully dynamic, loud and still crystal clear : ) Sean
>

A few years ago I switched speakers from generally efficient ones to a quite inefficient pair. The amps driving my old speakers did so beautifully with 100 watts of class A power per channel. However,they were totally inadequate to drive the new speakers--it was as if there was a lid on the speakers, which had nothing of the openness they had had at the dealer's showroom. I had to buy a pair of 350 watt per channel amps. Now, those same speakers have been reconfigured by the manufacturer, and are much more efficient. The 350 watt amps just coast, the volume control on the preamp is much lower, and I am sure my old amps would work just fine again.

Mgottlieb, can you expand on what you consider to be efficient and inefficient? Where does the line cross?

How loud do you "high powered" guys listen to music? How big are your rooms?