Power Uber Alles ?

Elizabeth, so you place Class A Uber Alles? I'm not trolling you, I'm genuinely curious.

In your mind, class A trumps power? (assuming power was adequate).

Best,
E

I bet nobody here has one of these: a Will Vincent 45 SET built on a ST70 chassis with Edcor OPT's. A mere 1.75wpc! But capable of driving my Heresy's very well! Horses for courses!

I  find simpler amplifiers to sound better which pretty much means less power 

It all depends on what it is you're trying to do.

Can you get by with a 100 watts...uh, like...yeah!! But, if you want better bass sound in a normal size room, you can always expand and go for better results. 

Put it this way: I have 3 stereo amps in an active setup. The bass amp was originally in stereo at about 150 w into one 15" woofer/channel (crossed in at 150 Hz). Result?? Very good...excellent, I would've said.
Then, just to see, I tried bridging the amp and then running into the two mono 15-inchers at 4 ohms. Same amps, same woofers, same crossover settings, same EQ, same placement...just a different amount of power feeding each woofer. Now about 500 w/chanel, RMS. This was more than the 225 w each woofer was rated for at 4 ohms, but for the sake of the test, I wasn't at all worried about that.

Holy Cats! Wow! BIG difference...subjectively more reserve "force" on tap. More 3D, more transparent, not really so much noticeably more "power" per say (which was not really an issue beforehand), i.e. I couldn't really play it that much louder, but clearly the amps were no longer sweating! More relaxed. More grip on the woofers. More sinewy, more lithe. I could go on, but it was clearly better in about every way I could think of, and worse in none. Didn't take me long to realize I was not going back.

If you're looking to draw the line somewhere and choose your battles carefully, then not trying to jump in with a new trade-up search for a more powerful amp in your existing system makes some sense. Bass is the hardest and most expensive part of the spectrum to get right, but it's also the one most people express the most dissatisfaction with in their system. To seriously commit to fixing bass problems, you end up having to cross what amounts to almost a personal threshold, since better bass itself can end up covering an awful lot of territory, depending on how far you want to take it.

But, is "more power" a viable option to "normal power" for those looking for better sound? From what I've gone through, I'd say that could be a resounding yes...but you may notice that I jumped up quite a lot with the power ratings, even well beyond what my woofers could take (but then, I was able to adjust gain wherever needed in this setup).