Riddle me this...

Let's not forget about the magazines here. How many times have you read a review of an amp, often fairly powerful amps, where the reviewer tells of how he was listening to some piece of music at insane levels and, lo and behold, the amp clipped. I've seen this on reviews of 300+ watt amps. Always followed by, "but if you listen at normal levels in a normal room you'll be fine". Well, if audio reviewers seem to need power to get their thrills, how do they think their readers will respond. Looking for more and more powerful amps. I realize this doesn't apply to all reviewers but I've seen it in a variety of magazines. Personally, I listen at sane levels and have never needed more than 60-70 watts to drive various speakers.

Ron from McIntosh brings up a very valid point and one that i have "preached" on more than a few occasions. That is, dynamic headroom is king when it comes to clean reproduction. Most people do not realize how much their system is compromised when running low to medium powered amps with low to medium efficiency speakers. That is, until they try an amp with a much greater level of power and power reserve. This is not to say that all "big" amps sound good or are created equal, but that more power is not necessarily a "bad" thing if done right.

While i agree with Trelja that listening nearfield can be very rewarding, requires lower power and provides you with a completely different listening experience, it simply does not work well with a LOT of different types of music and / or speakers. Then again, i would hope that the buyer would have taken their listening environment into consideration when purchasing the components ( especially speakers ) for their system.

Unless you strictly listen to chamber music or use your system for background music, i would recommend begging or borrowing a good sized power amp with fast responding wattmeters on it to try in your system. Taking into account the impedance variables that come into play, i think that most of you would be amazed at how much power is required to reproduce momentary peaks when listening. I am talking about "good" listening levels, not even the levels that one thinks about when "cranking".

Personally, i found this out when i brought home a Yamaha M-80 power amp that i purchased for a friend at the same time that i had a Bryston 4B here. As a point of reference, both amps are rated at 250 wpc @ 8 ohms. While i would not call the Yamaha "reference quality", that specific model is about as good as "mass-fi" gets in my opinion. It is a dual mono design with individual iron core transformers for each channel. It is also capable of well over 1000 wpc on momentary peaks at low impedances, so it is not a "push over" when it comes to tough loads or "more reputable" hi-fi brands.

The point that i'm getting at is that the Bryston had clipping indicators on it. During normal listening sessions, the LED's were coming on VERY frequently. I substituted the Yamaha into the system, which has a very large LED based power meter on the faceplate. Rather than just seeing one led flickering per channel on a regular basis, i was able to track the power demands as a whole. What i found is that i was seeing very regular peaks of appr 900 watts appearing on the wattmeters. I then began scratching my head and thinking that the meters just HAD to be wrong. It simply was not that loud, at least not to me. Then again, the Bryston was going into clipping at the drop of a hat, so that made me think twice.

Substituting over a half dozen amps into that same system, i was able to see that some amps could drive the system with far greater ease and musicality than others of similar power ratings. The one thing that really shocked me was that i was able to drive the system to similar peak levels with some amps that were WAY less powerful. At least on paper and on the bench the amps were less powerful. The only consistent difference that i could find was that amps that remained in Class A bias for a longer period of time always sounded cleaner, clearer and "more powerful" than if i had an amp that was of lower bias and rated for more power. This taught me that it is "okay" to sacrifice power so long as the power that you have is of the utmost quality. You can still run into problems with lack of control, clipping, compression, etc.. with a low powered Class A amp, but the sound that you have the other 90% of the time is FAR superior to what you get out of a high powered low bias AB amp.

Obviously, these are just my thoughts and experiences on the subject. You can take them for what they are worth. Personally, i learned a lot with that group of experiments. I tend to think that others running relatively low powered Class A or very high bias Class AB amps have similar thoughts on the subject. Even though i may have GOBS of high biased AB power in most of my systems, i still love and respect smaller Class A amps to a great extent. Sean
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AH-HA! It's not just me. My bottom line suspicion has always been that it's 100% about money. The production cost differentiation between making an equally nice 60wpc amp and a 200wpc amp (parts being the only difference, as labor, overhead and everything else are more or less static) must be negligible. However, you can sell the 200wpc amp (same brand, same build quality) for many times more money. Simple: costs stay near the same, margins increase by 2-300%, and all folks need to invest in is the marketing to convince consumers it's a good idea. Actually, it's so simple as to be rather obvious. That said, as convincingly noted, it's obviously more complicated than that on a couple of levels -- most of which, again, have very little to do with sound quality and more to do with the rather perverse tastes of the consuming public. Eh, maybe we are suckers (and by "we" I don't mean "us," but, rather the insidious "them." And please excuse the gratuitous use of quotation marks).

All else being equal, and assuming a fantasy world where price equates roughly to quality, I'd certainly prefer my, say, $3k dedicated to 60 super-watts than squandered across 200 commensurately inferior watts -- especially since I can get - no, have to get - the 60 watt amp for 1/3 the price as it was made 10 years ago.... (Yea, Lugnut, I've not been writing this for a couple of months for precisely that reason. What can I say, I just can't shut up). Cheers.

Mezmo: The power dissipated in a "good" 50 wpc Class A amp is appr equivalent to what a "typical" 200 - 250 wpc Class AB amp has to dissipate. As such, the costs are about the same to produce. The low powered Class A amp may actually be more costly to produce as the chassis and components have to be able to dissipate more heat on a consistent basis than the more powerful yet lower biased / more thermally efficient AB amp.

Most "good quality" AB amps strive to deliver a good amount of Class A power ( 8 - 15 wpc ) and then switch over to Class B above those levels for increased dynamic headroom / circuit efficiency. Most "mass-fi" amps and quite a few "respected brands" run Class A for less than 2 watts or so.

An easy way to tell if your amp is highly biased is to feel the heatsinks of the amp at idle after being on for a while. If they are not physically warm to the touch, you have a low bias amp. Even if you have a huge amount of heatsinking available, Class A amps dissipate a ton of heat as their efficiency is quite low. Most of the "lost power" is converted into heat i.e. "thermal losses".

A simple trick that some "tweakers" / "modifiers" will do is to raise the bias level on an AB amp and make it richer. This means that the amp stays in Class A for a longer period of time before switching over into Class B for higher power demands. Thermal losses and heat are increased, but so is the linearity of the amp under "most" operating conditions. Sean
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My feeling for this kind of a trend is related to a few things. One, I think the trend now for a lot of companies is to multi channel gear, which even by the THX standard thing is promoting 100 watts/ch or more. And having been working around high end audio for years myself, I can see that multi channel, even high end multi-ch, outsells 2 channel by leaps and bounds! People getting into high end, are geared towards doing it with 5 channels and above it seems. And everyone promotes and recommends higher wattage for Surround sound for certain(unless using high sensitivity horns, which do better with tubes anyway) So all that I suspect leads towards an easy obselescence for tiny watt SS offerings...which is already dominated by "niche" tube amp makers for the "tweek" audiophile.(a small market proportionately).
Of what I speak, I speak largely for what's happening in the US market! I'm sure it might be different elsewhere.
If you are really interested in an answer to this question however, may I suggest calling Pass, Krell, and others personally, and talk to them?! That way you can get the inside shimmy as to what's the real reason!!
REally, I've worked in 4 high end audio stores, and 1 chain store over the years, and the Pass lower wattage amps were almost NEVER bought, and outweighed in sales vastely by larger X series amps, and multi channel amps as a whole! We had piles of 35w/ch class A opperation 2 channel SS amps in one store I worked in, and they sat there unmoved for years! I can honestly say i don't recall selling any lower wattage SS amps more than a few occasions, and mostly for high end sound in MULTIZONE/ROOM SYSTEMS, as secondary sound! Of all the lower wattage amps I sold, the tube amps far outweighed sales of SS similar wattage designs. Hummmmm....

Two, lower powered tube amps