A couple of points here about low volumes and speaker "fullness" -- first, the human ear is hardly linear in response to sound, and perceived sound level drops off very quickly at low frequencies. What that effect does is reduce the perception of bass as volume goes down, and how much is "lost" depends greatly on any individual's hearing status and sensitivity (which is highly variable even with young ears). I never use the loudness controls, which are specifically designed to compensate for this hearing effect (not audio, SPL meters will still show the bass is present, but many people cannot HEAR it). Too much boom for me, I seem to have, even at 66, very sensitive low frequency hearing -- I can actually just barely hear 15 Hz from my Kennys with HPM-500 speakers from one of my test albums. My friend the musician cannot, at all. 20 Hz is clear for me, almost inaudible for him. The same is true of higher frequency sounds, but the effect is less. Also highly dependent upon individual hearing ability and condition of your ears (and age, alas).
The second point is that modern living beats the living snot out of human hearing. Even living fairly far out in the country (less far out than 50 years ago, sadly) I am doused with noise. I can hear the train a mile away right now, for instance -- further probably, it's blowing for the crossing a mile up the road plus a mile to the East of me. Driving is noisy, cars are noisy, my workplace has computers and instruments with fans running, there are aircraft above me all the time and I can hear them (definitely noticed a difference after 9/11 when they were not there), and so forth. I have lost nearly all hearing above 12kHz, which is annoying, but what I have left seems to be quite good as far as sound perception, and I'm working to keep that! I almost always wear earplugs where there is live music or a DJ, sound levels these days are insane. Most of us are exposed to far too much random noise, and most of us over the age of 60 have some hearing loss. Many of us have significant hearing loss without knowing it.
So bottom line, it doesn't surprise me when people want more power, as they are needing to compensate for their particular hearing, speakers, and room. I'm finding so far that I don't hear differences in amplifiers so much. However, I suspect that most of us are still really in that first watt most of the time.
Note when someone talks about "feeling" a piano vibrate the floor and want to replicate that with a recording, they are going to be badly disappointed by any speaker system -- it's the strings in the piano strings vibrating the piano and hence floor, and no speaker is ever going to do that, it's purely mechanical transmission and speakers have diaphragms vibrating in air, not metal strings attached to a cast iron sound board. No reproduction system will give the same mechanical transmission of sound percussive instruments so, it's just not going to happen. Boosting bass just makes the air transmitted vibrations louder, it's never going to replicate the transmission of the vibrations through solids.
Cheers!
