Final verdict with amplifier

When a solid state amp clips, any human knows it. It doesn't take a post on audiogon to find out.

Hundreds of watts into a Klipsch speaker, eh? Maybe you should wait until your monsoon season is over, then come back to that particular stadium where you are doing that and try again.

I can't see a Klipsch speaker needing any high power like that, at least the ones I've heard or seen the specs. Bridging any amp never worked for my ears. Don't forget, your doubling basically all of the signal path components. That must be why it always sounds like a downgrade for me. And like mentioned above to little power is a high risk, but both of those amps shouldn't run out of power first, especially the Carver. Any little distortion from the speaker or amp is a warning it's is working past its limits, and something might give. Carver amps that have the tube transfer function usually sound polite, as most are tuned to sound like his well known Silver Seven ~$17k tube amps. That might be why they don't sound as loud.

For the record, you can absolutely damage speakers before driving an amp into clipping, although a distorted amp will get 'em first. Most speakers will handle some quick and clean high powered transient peaks, but any high current amp of 100 watts or so driven at anywhere near peak level will fry all but the sturdiest drivers in a hurry...only pro audio speakers or a few extremely sturdy home speakers with gigantic voice coils and heat dissipation capability can handle serious juice, and that's just not necessary for home stuff.

After further thought, on reading the "it didn't harm my speakers" statement, there is a possibility a little harm could have been done, if you drove them past their design limits. When speakers voice coils get to warm, the varnish insulator breaks down. Also this can damage the copper coil wire itself too. This also could cause a short between the wires, but not easily noticeable, because they may still sound fine, if they're not totally shorted. Also, if done more often, that can further damage the voice coil causing an earlier than normal failure, that may never happen if they're not driven as hard. They can fail in the future with less power do to this. IOW, your taking a risk. Hopefully, no damage was done. Being easier on them should give them a longer life, so can can keep enjoying them.

You keep getting not very good amplifiers with tons of power, way more than your easy to drive speakers need and expect a big difference.

I disagree that preamps are more important than amps. I think they're both important. Although to what degree depends on the components and the rest of the system.

With your fairly easy to drive speakers, you should be looking for quality not power. I'd guess that a good but cheap integrated, perhaps even a lowly Trends T-amplifier, perhaps something from Virtue, a Virtue One would slay anything you've tried so far.