Audio Systems: basic car stereo stuff, watt speakers, channel amp

Question
i bought separate components on ebay to upgrade my car system...  they include a new jvc cassette with regular speaker connections as well as one set of rca jacks to go to a power amp...  also i purchased 2 sets of 300 watt, 3-way speakers for the front and the rear...  it turns out the power amp i got on ebay, being used, wasn't in working order, but too much time had gone buy to return it, so i'll have to replace that... but i'm not concerned about the rear setup right now...

ok...  the question is this, i have the new front door speakers connected directly to the radio which puts out a puny 8 watts or so...  the speakers sound like utter crap...  no real bass, easily distorted within normal volume levels, let alone higher ones...  do i need to drive the high powered speakers with more wattage than the radio can muster in order to aleviate this problem?

thanks for your help

mike

Answer
Mike,
With the 300 watt speakers you will need at least a 150 watt amp to drive them. You may want to purchase a 150 watt 4 channel amp with equalizer adjustments to boost up the output of the head unit. As for the speakers sounding bad from the stereo, if you are using the 300 watt speakers with the stereo with an 8 watt output, this is why the speakers sound bad!, not enought power to drive the speakers efficiently.

TOM,
T&D ELECTRONICS
tdeser@zoominternet.net