I once heard two very similar Rowland amps playing in a system which had, I believe, power hungry Magnepan speakers. One amp was rated at something like 50 watts and the other 200 watts (basically the same amp with a larger power supply and more output transistors). I thought the 50 watt amp sounded better, and the dealer doing the demonstration agreed. He suggested that having fewer transistors operating in parallel probably improved the sound and that the bigger amp would come into its own if we asked it to play more loudly (it was plenty loud for me when we did the demonstration).
Too much power?
I have a wonderful system with a great amplifier, and yet auditioned a more powerful version of the same amp. It indeed seemed to have more punch and drive, but at the expense of playing it a bit too loud. As my current system I rarely play over 70 db, since it’s perfect at low levels. I wonder other than bragging rights, what does more power get you? Since we aren’t here for PA style sound, is there a reasonable limit to how much you will benefit from higher power/ more expensive and? Especially since tire just using one watt most of the time?