I agree that power ratings of speakers are sometimes meaningless but I don't know if we'd be helped by having power ratings of simple sine waves, or not. Somehow that doesn't seem like a real world solution. Most music is not a simple sine wave at a single frequency. Music is so much more complex than that, and speakers in the real world need to play music pleasingly.

If a speaker that plays music well even when played loudly, were to smoke its tweeter if only one watt of a 17k Hz sine wave played through it (with a 'music duty cycle'), would that be meaningful information?

[This message has been edited by Will (edited September 09, 2002).]