Edit: I may have misinterpreted what another poster was saying which triggered my post below, but I'll leave it for now. Sorry if I did misunderstand and essentially went off on a tirade for no reason (wouldn't be the first time LOL)
That is essentially an audio myth that having more power available than is being used provides some kind of benefit (unless the amp has no headroom for dynamic peaks or is so poorly designed that as it reaches it's full capacity it starts to distort and become unstable). One day I was having coffee near where I worked and I happen to overhear a conversation between two men beside me and I joined in. One of them had just returned from China where he had been running the full technical oversight of a Bose production facility. The other gentleman turned out to be a very experienced audio engineer/designer who knew head-fi well as he had been designing amplification circuits and power supplies for some pretty heavy hitters we all know. We of course got to discussing what really has the most impactful influence on an amplifiers ability to handle a load and when all things were done properly they both suggested that stable power supplies were far more important than lots of unused power waiting. The one person (not the Bose dude) specialized in building power supplies for audio applications and we had quite a good chat.
So the notion that having lots of unused power capacity matters does not hold up, not just from that conversation of course, I have never heard of evidence that suggests otherwise and over the years here I have had the opportunity to learn from people who actually are engineers and know what they are talking about. I know this is sound science stuff, and I apologize for this, but I think that it is important enough to at least start a dialogue about this myth wherever it creeps up. It isn't done to be challenging or denigrate others, but new members may get the impression that somehow it is an established fact that you need gobs of extra power waiting in storage. Once the pipes are at full capacity driving a load what isn't travelling directly to the load is not a factor, it is simply static power. Again, you need capacity to handle dynamic peaks, and yes there could be poorly designed amplification circuits that are distressed as they approach their operating ceiling, but it should not be over-represented as a guaranteed fact.
Point in hand. So I am using my FiiO Q5 AM3D module now driving the Edition X V2 from the 3.5mm input. We are talking mW of power here, not watts. I have the Q5 volume dial at close to full out, not quite but close. I have also just a few minutes ago used the same headphone connected via speaker tap cable to my 180Watt NAD M3 amps speaker terminals (it has no headphone inputs) which is stable down to 4ohms. So with all that power on tap and unused nothing sounding different or better that I could hear and this is orders of magnitude more power.
Edit 2: I'll add another data point of reference that may be familiar to some. Years back when I purchased an Asgard2 I was a little worried as the headphone I was using most of the time required me to have the amp at almost full so I emailed Schiit and one of the principles responded and told me that there would be no worries and while the amp was basically being used at full capacity the stability would be fine and should have no audible impact on the sound.
I think what may be a confounding aspect in these conversations is that it is highly likely that in many cases amplifiers with larger power output have decent power supplies and the overall designs may be better so that when people hear their headphone sounding great they sometimes may ascribe the sound improvement to all the extra power that is there waiting when the stability of the power supply design (and delivery architecture) is actually what really matters. Really sorry for going OT and posting such a long-winded post, but I just think it is worth responding to sometimes. I don't always do this, just sometimes. My apology again for being OT and I hope I haven't been over the top while presenting my thoughts.
