It was interesting, because everything I read, said that if the amp is of a high enough quality, there should be no difference in the sound, as long as you are not pushing the amp past it's intended power.
I think that is still true, however (a) it seems to be a whole lot easier to drive an amp past its intended power than people think, and (b) amps and preamps both seem to have more differences in frequency response than I previously suspected.
In my case I went from the ~65WPC amp stage of an HK receiver to a >200WPC Adcom 555 power amp - no noticeable difference when playing quietly but even at what I thought were "moderate" levels of loudness the difference was eye-opening.
