There is certainly a lot of misunderstanding about audio output power by many that have been bamboozled by all the marketing claims and myths. I've been involved with vintage hi-fi equipment for many years and have had many different amps and receivers to play with, the largest being a Pioneer SX-1980 receiver that specs at 270wpc at rated distortion (very low) into 8 ohms. I think that unit has +/- 90vdc rails.

Many of the units have average responding watt meters and I can tell you that the majority of my listening to vintage rock and roll is at around the 2-5 watts output, and that is loud enough for the wife to bitch from the bedroom. The main advantge of having more wattage is the extra headroom responds to audio peaks with a lot less distortion then lesser wattage amps. It's mostly marketing hype and I would state that a good clean low distortion amp that maxes out at an honest 50wpc is more then enough for 95% of the home applications.

Lefty

Your hearing's response to loudness is logarithmic so 100W sounds only a little louder than 50W. 500W sounds twice as loud as 50W and you can feel the bass.