What is your experience with amp power?

When the builder, who is from Italy, came over to the states, I got to talking to him and I asked him about the output power of my amp.  I got such a look of disdain from him; clearly I did not deserve that amp if I concerned myself with such irrelevant and trivial matters.  He thought about it a bit himself and took a guess (I would not expect him to have actually measured it, how it sounds is the only consideration)

@larryi I get that a designer might think of his product like a fine wine; or at least, convey that POV to a customer. But the idea that they had not measured the output power is a stretch! This is because you cannot know if you have optimized the output circuit without at least measuring the power!

I do not like high efficiency speakers, because they usually have poor dynamic floor. It's a trade-off. Heavier speakers can get a lot better dynamic range from quiet listening to very LOUD.

@czarivey 

High efficiency loudspeaker usually have greater dynamic range than less efficient speakers, due to something called 'thermal compression', which is heating of the voice coil. As the coil heats up, its resistance goes up too. This is far more common with lower efficiency loudspeakers! Most solid state amps will thus put out less power. This can happen with individual bass notes, causing them to compress.

Its often more difficult to find higher power amplifiers that actually sound like music, although that problem is not as big now as it was 20 years ago.