What decibel level do you listen at? What is ideal?

@jonwolfpell 

I find it funny that so many people listen at levels where their amps, even with very inefficient speakers, are barely putting out a watt or two or maybe 10 on peaks. What’s the point of having big powerful solid state monsters if that is so? 

exactly. I’ve said this many times to the dismay of people who say (usually parroting what their dealer told them) something along the lines of, “but it provides more grip” or “but the transients come out better with more power”. 
 

If you are listening to 2 or 3 watts, the 50th watt or 80th or 405th watt are literally not even being created or accessed whatsoever. Just use a true RMS meter on your speaker wire and see for yourself. Press the “peak hold” button and see the highest number that gets hit. It’s that simple. 

it’s typically the higher power amps have a different component mix that changes the sound. You replace 0.6mm low mass wire with 2mm thick buss bars and 4x the power tank capacitance and that’s gonna change the sound.
 

 I’ve built many amps and power supplies and learned this first hand. 

" I’ve said this many times to the dismay of people who say (usually parroting what their dealer told them) something along the lines of, “but it provides more grip” or “but the transients come out better with more power”. 

I have fifty years of experience in pursuing high end audio. Solid state amps benefit greatly from more power in the vast majority of cases. No dealer has to tell me that, it's not a rule of thumb to benefit sellers of high powered amps. 

I match the DB level to the year of release. So wish you were here at 75 DB is ideal. Burning down the house by talking heads at 83 db is fantastic. Gets to be a bit of a trial listening to car wheels on gravel Road by Lucinda Williams at 98 db. Can't yet hear anything made this century unfortunately

While I can relate to music "coming alive" at a certain volume (average 65-70dB in my room), I’m astounded by some of the higher listening levels posted here. I don’t expect I’ll ever have the resources to experience what @ghdprentice describes, but I’m OK with that. 

Mid 70s C weighted average, peaks low to mid 80s depending upon music.  One of my systems runs Altec 604-8G.  At those levels my homebrew SE45 amp is using less than a tenth of its 1.6 wpc.  The first watt really does matter.