Why do speakers improve with more powerful amps?

"So why the hell do people buy inefficient speakers?"

Speaking only for myself, I buy speakers that:

A - fit the space I have for them; and

B - sound good to me

In my case (home office/desktop audio), the speakers that fit the space and sound best always turn out to be sealed/acoustic suspension 2-ways. As it happens, that type of speaker design really does tend to sound better with more powerful amps, mainly because so much power is required to move the woofers harder and harder w/increasing volume as the frequencies drop to neas the speaker’s resonant frequency (bass reflex designs operate more permissively near their limits).

But having said that, it’s probably not true that an amp twice as powerful as the one that can happily drive a given pair of sealed speakers, would necessarily sound better. More like the amp that can happily drive sealed speakers to fairly loud volumes has to be more powerful than one that would happily drive bass reflex speaker to fairly loud volumes.

I have a 2.5 watt Decware amp and a 300 watt Aavik amp class D....a 35 watt 845 SET amp and a Belles 70 watt integ amp.also a Peachtree GanFET 400 watt amp.....They ALL sound DIFFERENT But they  ALL sound Great !......To each his own....If one was BEST....No one else would sell any equipment......I love this Hobby!

I wonder if what I often read is correct. That high current / high powered amps improve significantly the sound rendition at low listening volume like 60db.

@ricco275 

Yes, sometimes. But ultimately it is the whole system, and really important to have that power paired with the right speakers. 60db is fairly low… I typically listen at volumes I in the low 70’s. But I am using a 70 wpc tube amp. When I had a 350wpc solid state amp I listened about ten db or more higher. There are a lot of variables.

Same amp brand, same board engineering, the bigger amp with the larger power supply and power reserves is going to sound better. That power is always there, at low or high volume.   Push your left finger (speaker) with your right finger (50w amp). Then push it with your right hand's palm (400w amp).   For one you almost always get a better damping factor and bass control. Think about it. and when the going get's tough it's even better.

But, different brands sound different, and quality varies. I recently moved from a 570w/1140w amp to a 160w/?s  watt smaller power amp (although with large supply and capacitance). The Odyssey amp bested my old W4S (decent sounding to me, before...) amp in five very audible ways almost immediately. Stunning. Power had nothing to do with it. The bass got way better too.   :-)

As for why buy low-efficiency speakers, I'll go with @Clearthinker's view on it (grin). Honestly, my ears have never heard a high-efficiency speaker that didn't seem 'in my face' to me,  but that's just my ears...  I'll just plod along with my 85dB Raidho D2s (room equalized flat to 30Hz and smile lots as they play.