Do amps have a sweet spot?

Good point, indeed all watts are not created equally. I've got a small pair of Tannoy Revolutions, the DC4 model. They also have a small driver as well but are designed to handle much less power. I've had them for 2 years, but only when I replaced a cheap Onkyo receiver with the Nad C 326BEE did I get really impressed with the Tannoys.

It sounds like your speakers do indeed excel with more power.

remember that 100wpc will only get you an additional 3 decibels of volume over the 50 wpc

Runnin, just wanted to point out that 100WPC is 3dB more power (& not volume) over 50WPC.
How much more volume/SPL you will get with a 100WPC is really dependent on the 100WPC amp design - really it's power supply design & current handling capacity of its transformer.

IMHO the issue you are facing is the classic amplifier-speaker interface issue. You are having to turn up the volume to overcome the marginal amp-speaker interface by sheer grunt power from the amp.
We discussed this in quite a bit of details back in early May 2013. Lots of good info in that thread by some very knowledgable members. here is the link to that thread -
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1367644336&&&/Current-amp-vs-Voltage-amp

i know it's a lot to read but do take the time to read & digest the info.

I have upwards of 25 amps and they all sound best when they're 'cookin'. Does that not make sense from an engineer's point of view? Or from the one buying the amp for that matter.

Bombaywalla,

I'm going to read that thread, for sure. Thanks for the heads up.

Runnin,

Yeah, the Minuets are small, but they can eat some power. As mentioned above, I'm running an old Aragon 2004. It's a bit of a beast for what it is. It's rated at 100wpc at 8 ohms and 200 wpc at 4 ohms; and weighs right at 40lbs. My only problem with it is that I don't get that satisfying feeling from the music until I turn it up a bit until everything comes together.

My feeling was that maybe if I got into a smaller amp, I could get that satisfying sound at a lower volume. The NAD for me sounded good, but it didn't quite get it for me. It also didn't go quite loud enough for when I do want it loud.

I could have gone for one of the more powerful models, but at those prices, I'd have several options in terms of getting an amp.

Right now, for some reason, I really have a bug to get into a class D amp just to try it out, but that's a subject for another thread, which I'm gonna start right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves