Amp experience

Yeah..... That's the typical claim.... Like nothing else even comes close..... Which is demonstable false. 

I bought an OHM 5000 in 2012 and had a Bryston 4bsst 300 watt. The sound was less dynamic than I was accustomed to hearing. I went up to a 14bsst 600 watt and it was like taking a v6 out of a Cadillac and putting a v12 in. Varoom!. Dynamic slam, headroom and bass impact came back and beyond. The speaker came alive.

@kfz03110:  After rereading your original post, I realize what you are really asking about is the crest factor of music.   Crest factor is a term used in physics to define the maximum ratio of RMS voltage to peak voltage.  For example, for a pure sine wave the crest factor is the square root of 2 or 1.414.   If you have a sine wave, the peak will never be higher than that.  

For music, the crest factor is around 20 for uncompressed recordings.  So if you had music that typically ran 2.83 Volts RMS, then the max should be around 56.6 V peak.   With an 8 Ohm speaker, that works out to 1 Watt RMS and 400 Watts peak. 

Now, that being said, if the composer added other things into the music, such as uncompressed gunshots, the crest factor would rise to 30 or more.  Cannons, 1812 Overture for example, then the crest factor is obviously greater than 30. 

It isn't just brute force, as I mentioned earlier.  That amplifier has to be very linear in its transition from 1W to 400W and it should, obviously, be very musical at the same time. 

You can read a bit more about crest factor here (scroll down to crest factor): http://www.aes.org/par/c/#cps