Greetings!

An excellent question. And one I would like to know more about also. I am a novice at car audio (yes, the empeg was my first non-factory radio - I do not like settling for "second best"...), and I would like to learn more about sizing and tuning amps and speakers as well.

Yes, I know - look for the distortion point and turn it down. Unfortunately, I would like to know more. How do you know if your amp is powerful enough? What do the speaker ratings mean? Really basic stuff that I would appreciate if someone could point me to a good tutorial.

And, one step beyond that, some advice on what to look / listen for to isolate and identify problems with your installation.