Its probably the best reasonable rating anybody could come up with without getting to much into specs that are hard for a lot of people to understand.If they give it at full bandwidth,it sure helps.The speaker being driven creates a hard power rating spec for a one fits all amps.Their impedance,(speakers resistance) is always varying making power ratings tough for amps rating.Amp matching with speakers can be more critical than watts.Speaker efficiency is very important also.Doing some research on whether your amp will drive xyz speakers can be more useful,especially if they have low impedance dips.
Amp's nominal power rating - any use?
I just paired a couple of Coincident Frankentein monos with my SF Guarneri Homage. The sound is great (fat, rich, dynamic, transparent) and sounds well with any type of music (opera, rock, electronic...). These are 8W monoblocks and sound like with more power or at least the same as my previous fabulous pass aleph 3 (30W class A SS). Of course it depends if tubes not tubes, class A or not, speaker sensitivity, impedance load, room dimensions etc, but what i see is that it's not a relevant criteria at all on its own. Maybe there should be some transformation formula to take into account some of these factors to get some Apparent or Perceived Power, but maybe it would be hard to take into account all factors. Any ideas, opinions, on this?