FosterCO, regarding "I dont plan on trying to power that whole room, really just my 15 x 20 living / listening area", you can't really power just the listening area in a large room, the sounds go to the entire space and thus dilute (weaken) the volume level when you're sitting at the listening position.

for a given listening pos., the larger the room, the more power is needed to keep the same loudness level.