What is your experience with amp power?


So I wanted to know what my fellow audiophiles feel about power.

I realize that some speakers are current hounds and need a prodigious amount of power or watts (lets say Maggies). But my question is for speakers that do not. Speakers that are easy to drive, or maybe just higher in efficiency and can be driven by a modest tube amp or even an adequate receiver. 

What is you experience with high power, high current amps ? Do your speakers sound better with more power? At low volumes, in a small or medium sized room? Do you think the quality of the music is dependent on higher powered amps?

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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 own a set of DQ10’s. Notorious power hogs according to everything I read.  "You need at least 200wpc 'to make them sing'" is the famous opinion.  Horse dung!  I run them with this little gem. A Proton D540. 40 wpc but with 6db of headroom. No need for a heat producing beast. Why? Because my ears tell me so..... This little amp makes them sound absolutely stellar. And no sub either...fabulous and tight, full bass. Check the review and bench test for it here........https://www.hifi-classic.net/review/proton-d540-410.html

I listen to electrostats. Although they’re known as power mongers driving them with tubes more than gets the job done! I’m using 75 watt monoblocks which get the job done. I don’t need more power.