Peter, my thought about that old saying would be that it's certainly valid if simply taken literally, i.e. if an amplifier was so poorly designed that even at 1 watt it had problems with noise or variations in frequency response and wasn't transparent, the ability to put out a lot more equally flawed watts wouldn't make it acceptable. What would be ridiculous would be an implication that a correctly designed amplifier, either solid state or tube, with flat response and inaudibly low noise and distortion, would nevertheless be distinguishable from another meeting the same standards. Blind listening tests indicate that there's no factual basis for this, and when we have to trust our ears alone, the differences previously claimed disappear.
