Ron from McIntosh brings up a very valid point and one that i have "preached" on more than a few occasions. That is, dynamic headroom is king when it comes to clean reproduction. Most people do not realize how much their system is compromised when running low to medium powered amps with low to medium efficiency speakers. That is, until they try an amp with a much greater level of power and power reserve. This is not to say that all "big" amps sound good or are created equal, but that more power is not necessarily a "bad" thing if done right.
While i agree with Trelja that listening nearfield can be very rewarding, requires lower power and provides you with a completely different listening experience, it simply does not work well with a LOT of different types of music and / or speakers. Then again, i would hope that the buyer would have taken their listening environment into consideration when purchasing the components ( especially speakers ) for their system.
Unless you strictly listen to chamber music or use your system for background music, i would recommend begging or borrowing a good sized power amp with fast responding wattmeters on it to try in your system. Taking into account the impedance variables that come into play, i think that most of you would be amazed at how much power is required to reproduce momentary peaks when listening. I am talking about "good" listening levels, not even the levels that one thinks about when "cranking".
Personally, i found this out when i brought home a Yamaha M-80 power amp that i purchased for a friend at the same time that i had a Bryston 4B here. As a point of reference, both amps are rated at 250 wpc @ 8 ohms. While i would not call the Yamaha "reference quality", that specific model is about as good as "mass-fi" gets in my opinion. It is a dual mono design with individual iron core transformers for each channel. It is also capable of well over 1000 wpc on momentary peaks at low impedances, so it is not a "push over" when it comes to tough loads or "more reputable" hi-fi brands.
The point that i'm getting at is that the Bryston had clipping indicators on it. During normal listening sessions, the LED's were coming on VERY frequently. I substituted the Yamaha into the system, which has a very large LED based power meter on the faceplate. Rather than just seeing one led flickering per channel on a regular basis, i was able to track the power demands as a whole. What i found is that i was seeing very regular peaks of appr 900 watts appearing on the wattmeters. I then began scratching my head and thinking that the meters just HAD to be wrong. It simply was not that loud, at least not to me. Then again, the Bryston was going into clipping at the drop of a hat, so that made me think twice.
Substituting over a half dozen amps into that same system, i was able to see that some amps could drive the system with far greater ease and musicality than others of similar power ratings. The one thing that really shocked me was that i was able to drive the system to similar peak levels with some amps that were WAY less powerful. At least on paper and on the bench the amps were less powerful. The only consistent difference that i could find was that amps that remained in Class A bias for a longer period of time always sounded cleaner, clearer and "more powerful" than if i had an amp that was of lower bias and rated for more power. This taught me that it is "okay" to sacrifice power so long as the power that you have is of the utmost quality. You can still run into problems with lack of control, clipping, compression, etc.. with a low powered Class A amp, but the sound that you have the other 90% of the time is FAR superior to what you get out of a high powered low bias AB amp.
Obviously, these are just my thoughts and experiences on the subject. You can take them for what they are worth. Personally, i learned a lot with that group of experiments. I tend to think that others running relatively low powered Class A or very high bias Class AB amps have similar thoughts on the subject. Even though i may have GOBS of high biased AB power in most of my systems, i still love and respect smaller Class A amps to a great extent. Sean
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