Speaker wattage question

Chris, Lots of good information above.  Just to expand on a couple of points - music in general has relatively little energy at the frequencies handled by the tweeter and these drivers are not designed to handle a lot of energy.  Once an amplifier is pushed into clipping it begins to generate harmonic distortion.  The distortion products relevant to this discussion are caused by the summing of fundamental frequencies in your music which produce higher frequencies.  Harmonic distortion is present in all equipment to a (hopefully) small extent but in most clipped amplifiers this distortion increases dramatically.  Your speaker's crossover dutifully routes any of these signals higher in frequency than the crossover point to the tweeter, increasing the likelihood of damage.  This is why the interaction between  your amp and speakers (impedance and negative phase angles), especially in the frequency ranges where most music - or the music you listen to - resides and why it's important to know your speakers impedance characteristics (see JA's measurements in Stereophile) when matching an amplifier.  As has been said many times, far more speakers have been damaged by pushing an underpowered amp into clipping than by playing a powerful amp loudly.  Dick

Harmonic distortion is present in all equipment to a (hopefully) small extent but in most clipped amplifiers this distortion increases dramatically. Your speaker’s crossover dutifully routes any of these signals higher in frequency than the crossover point to the tweeter, increasing the likelihood of damage.

well explained djohnson54. One point that djohnson54 made that i’d like to elaborate on - when the amp goes into clipping, the output music signal looks like it has lopped off tops & bottoms. The lopped off top comes from the fact that the output voltage maxed out to the B+ power rail. Anytime you have a music signal with sudden changes in amplitude it is like having a high frequency content in that signal. Sudden changes in amplitude = amplitude changes happening fast = high frequency content. So, it is this high frequency content that is dutifully passed onto your speaker’s tweeters (x-over is simply just doing its job). And, like djohnson54 wrote, the tweeter is not designed to handle high(er) power as there is not much hi freq energy but the clipped signal from the power amp does have high(er) power. And when this hi freq distortion power exceeds the tweeter’s power handling capacity, you fry your tweeter.....

Per the "danger of clipping" comments already seen here, the off-take is that you're more likely to damage a tweeter with an underpowered amp driven too hard than you are with an amp that has "too much power".

Why do speaker manufacturers put it in the specs when you can possibly drive anything with 1000wt of clean power?