How much amplifier power do you really need?

[RebelMan]

I found the video per the link below pretty much by accident when searching for something rather different.  I have to be honest, I found this to be utterly gobsmacking, I had always suspected that amps needed a little more power than simple maths based on required dB(A) and speaker efficiency would suggest, but nothing like this.  The video of the amp's display is a little blurry, but's lets just say that I has mentally parked the decimal point in the display a factor of 10 backwards until it dawned on me what was really going on.

I would say it is well worth 10 minutes of your time to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRMR9JZ1m0s&app=desktop

I had the pleasure of attending a DAC shootout today.  The system included a beefy SAE 2HP-D power amplifier driving a pair of Focal Utopia Evo speakers.  Peak output power never breached 6 watts and RMS power was even lower.  The sound was much louder than I typically listen to at home.  I didn't sample the SPL but it was clearly louder than the mid 80s.  The Evo's have a sensitivity of 93dB and dip below 3 ohms, an average load to drive I would say.  So if we assume for a moment that the Evo's were less sensitive than they are, say around 84dB, it would have taken less than 50 watts of peak power to produce the same SPL in that room.  Given that the amplifier was a 600W behemoth but would only need 50 watts at most kinda goes against the grain that the video above is trying to make claim to.  I have said this once before and it bears repeating, EVERYONE needs to measure the power they are using before making any conclusions on how much power they actually need.  And once again more power does not sound better than less power all else being equal.