Hi Mr. H,
Yes, your JVC would be able to drive the M22ti's to reasonable levels in an "average" room--about 2000 to 2500 cubic feet (length x width x height)--as long as you don't try and raise the levels at a party, or think you can recreate 100-dB sound-pressure levels of a live orchestra at peaks. You'd drive the little JVC into clipping and likely burn out the tweeters. Most speakers are damaged by being overdriven by low-powered amplifiers, not by large 100-watt per channel amps.
But a few modest corrections: except for large, horn-loaded speakers (Klipschorns, Tannoys and the like), domestic speakers like the M22ti and other "bookshelf" models are NOT very efficient. They're actually inefficient at converting watts to acoustical output. Paradoxically, big, floorstanding speakers like the Axiom M80ti will play much louder on a few watts input than the M22ti will. As you make a speaker enclosure smaller, and use smaller woofer(s), other things being equal, you have to use MORE power to achieve the same level of loudness as a larger speaker.
The reason giant horn-loaded speakers were popular in the 1940s and 1950s was because amplifiers were tiny--10 watts was typical, but 10 watts can deafen you with a horn-loaded speaker. I built one in 1957 for my audiophile father--our tube power amp was the biggest in town, at 25 watts!. Horns, however, are very colored and inaccurate, and don't produce deep bass (unless they use huge enclosures). Nowadays, amplifier watts are inexpensive, so less efficient speakers with much greater fidelity have become popular. It all began with Edgar Villchur's invention of the "acoustic-suspension" bookshelf speaker around 1960, which allowed a modest-sized speaker to produce very deep bass. But they needed lots of amplifier watts to do it.
And your "20 watt" JVC speakers as surrounds could be easily driven by a 65-watt per channel amp. In a surround mode, it would by very unlikely that more than a few watts per channel would be directed to the surrounds.
Regards,
