Yes, unless we're unconcerned with reality we have to be concerned with the math. At the moderate levels mentioned, Dr. Ohm's math teaches us that the speaker is using no more than a few watts of power and less than an ampere of current; discussion of high power or high current in that context is therefore meaningless.
Our ears and our other senses often can deceive us and we simply can't "just trust our ears", in the silly phrase whose origin is lost in antiquity, but may well have come about when a desperate audio salesman could come up with no factual basis for his claims. The only circumstance in which we can reasonably trust our ears is in a properly controlled blind test in which all factors are held constant. As Dr. Toole commented to an AES meeting during a presentation on blind testing techniques:" If you can see what you're listening to, you can't hear it".
The
Stereo Review blind listening test can again be pointed out; the results compared with the before-test comments of some listeners illustrate that the sincerity of their beliefs couldn't change the fact that they were wrong.
