Mark, I've been on a tight budget all my life. I'm what you would call
your average, middle class factory worker. What you gathered, from any
statements I made, that would suggest I've never been on a tight budget,
are figments of your imagination.

I thought it was a good inference based on your insistence that nobody
should buy small amps even though that's all they can afford. Evidently, my
inference was wrong.

As to the debate, your statement that refutes my comment that a system
that sounds great into 2 ohms will sound better into 4, tells me all I
need to know about your expertise. With all other things remaining the
same, to say that the system will actually sound better into 2 ohms as
opposed to 4, is absurd, not to mention misleading.

I'm still waiting for your explanation. I provided mine. I'll repeat it if
you missed it the first time: more power means the likelihood of clipping is
decreased. Clipping is essentially the only audible form of distortion that
can be introduced by the amplifier. Reducing the likelihood of clipping,
therefore, will improve sound. However, as I've already stated, there will
be no upgrade or downgrade between 2 and 4 ohms if the user is NOT driving
the amplifier beyond its linear operating range. This is usually not the
case, though, which may come as a suprise to someone like yourself. Since
the crest factor of "typical" music is often upwards of 20 dB, a few simple
calculations will demonstrate that clipping can and does occur at even
relatively moderate volumes. For instance, if we assume a crest factor of
20 dB (often accepted universally as a good estimate of "typical" music),
then a 50 watt amplifier will begin to clip the transients as the average
power exceeds 5 watts. Send me a song you like. I'll determine the crest
factor of it for you.

I am of the
impression that you mistake sonic clarity and loudness for being one and
the same, and they certainly are not.

I agree that they're not the same. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Loudness and output power aren't even the same, though they're often (but
not always) related, so I'm not sure why you bring loudness into the
discussion. But I'm glad you did, because it gives me the opportunity to
point out to you that the quest to achieve a certain loudness (whatever your
loudness tastes are, you name it) requires a certain amount of power if the
goal is to prevent the amplifier from behaving nonlinearly. I suspect that
this amount of power is larger than you think it is.

Some of the highest scoring SQ
systems are very, very low powered, and not necessarily loud, in
comparison to SPL systems.

I don't "score" systems, nor do I pay attention to scoring. I can't quite
figure out how this has evolved into a sport, but hey, more power to you, no
pun intended.

So, I suppose you could say that if a person
is not particularly concerned about SQ and aims for SPL, then difficult
loads for an amp is the way to go.

My assertion, however, is that if a person wishes to minimize distortion,
then 9 times out of ten this can be achieved by running at 2 ohms rather
than 4 ohms. And zero times out of ten is the other way around true.