Guess that depends on your hearing doesn’t it. I’m not as old as some of you sods 
Mmmm Kay,
A little headroom I can understand, even if it’s just for peace of mind. But power overkill for the fuck of it or the belief it is necessary runs contrary not only to the designers here you are jousting with but also pretty much every expert horn co I can think of. If you could hear the difference ‘blind’ between flea-powered horns and big-dick muscle amps through the same, it would be a remarkable achievement, you could take your expert findings to the ETF for validation after you’ve proved 1st W theory incorrect - I suspect you’d get a medal.
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No one looses the ability to hear deep bass, it’s the high frequencies that go.
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Not entirely true. Mostly yes, but not exclusively.
But this assumes someone wants / desires speakers of that type. If someone doesn’t want enormous horns taking up half the room, the odds are they’ll need more than a few watts to make it work.
I’m partial to designs that follow the BBC lineage of monitors, and those tend to respond well to a reasonable bit of headroom, certainly at least 100w or so. Damping factor also an issue with heavier polymer drivers.
The assumption here seems to be that the only way to create sound in a room is with high efficiency and low power. I’d suggest that this isn’t the path everyone will desire. Watts are cheap, why not use some.
Do you listen near field?
Sorry, but this isn’t what happened.
You started with the assumptions - right at the top that all speakers would benefit from a lot of headroom, and when it was pointed in response that that isn’t the case with efficient speakers you then shifted to ‘but horns can’t do bass, bass needs power’ which is plain nonsense.
Then you pivoted to an assumption that bass had to be 20hz levelled to 1khz, despite probably >95% of systems being nowhere capable of that - makes you wonder how all these can stand to listen to their own systems.
The 20 hz bar seems particularly odd given your preference for BBC style monitors which are going to struggle to meet your own demands for bass response.
No wonder you keep banging on about power! You’re going to need more than monster amps to get one of those cat coffins to squeak that low 
In my defence my original comment about throwing power at any speaker was massively tongue in cheek and deliberate priggishness. Hadn’t assumed everyone here would latch onto it so badly.
Most larger Harbeths / spendors / grahams will get into the low 30’s relatively convincingly, but this does (as you suggest) require power.
While I’m not qualified to answer fully on the matter, my understanding is that even sensitive speakers can have drivers that present unusual phase and impedance requirements that are not always met by super low power amplifiers. Valves in particular prefer to see a more consistent load no?
While huge watts may not be needed for many speakers, I do feel the sturdy power supplies and ability to cope with anything a speaker presents load wise, is one of the benefits of a more hefty design.
Surely even with a high sensitive design there’s the possibility that amplifiers with greater headroom and load stability could sound smoother and flatter across the whole range of frequencies.
You sure about that? Just had a browse of the Harbeth website (because they were (in)famous for voicing their speakers entirely with purely spoken word stuff). Even the new NLE-3 only goes down to 35Hz, at checks notes £23,000 per pair. Even the current SHL5, one of their larger units, only goes down to 40Hz.
40’s are good down to 35hz or so. A bit more in room I’d imagine.
Bake offs may be instructive?
I’m surrounded by friends and families with systems. I listen to different combinations of kit almost every day.
Sadly most other events are simply too far away to be practical / feasible.
I wouldn’t assume that everyone with horns etc is powering them with valves. I don’t, and nor do a lot of others.
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I power my horn with Spanish fly.
It goes deep. And it’s fast.