First system for my 2001 impala

The difference between a store's "Product Specialist" and someone giving you advice is that I want to help you, he wants to help you buy there gear, in all seriousness he probably doesn't have much product knowledge outside of the training the store gave him to sell you stuff... I used to work at circuit city as a "product specialt/salesman/rip off artist" and all they wanted was a sale and unless you know for a fact this dude knows his shhh DONT trust him as pimpincavy stated it all depends on gain. 99.99998 % of the time a speaker is not blown from overpowering but overdriving the amp into clipping from either

A.) Too low of HU Preamp Voltage and the gain cranked too high to compensate it. ( the classic using the gain as a volume knob)

B.) Cranking the HU volume to max and ignoring the fact peak voltage occurs in the 90% volume range without line level distortion. ( turning the volume all the way up on the HU doesn't mean that you're getting the highest signal, it's when you have all your equipment tuned to it's peak performance range BEFORE gettin the distortion that you get the desired effect)

C.) using eq, bass boost, and bass controls to compensate for poor tuning road noise, poor quality/inadequite equipment

All these umong other things cause distortion and ultimately clipping which heats up the voice coil to the point it melts and the speaker is then considered "blown", a good simile for clipping; picture jumping on a trampoline.... A fluid up/down motion, right?  Now picture jumping on a trampoline with a six foot ceiling above you and trying to jump to 8 feet. It's not the jump that hurts it's the sudden abrupt stop at the end...the time between when you hit and when you plummet back down is the clipping when a speaker is forced to reproduce a signal that it's not capable of either from the distortion, or overdriving the signal, it causes the speaker to violently hit peak excursion and it just waits there trying to produce more while  the music catches up and it drops to signal it can handle... all the bouncing around and current transfers to heat which in turn fries the voice coil.

I'm not trying to overload you with technical BS but just stressing why you gotta be careful to set all controls right and just cuz' a store told you something doesn't mean it's true... not necesarily a ALL out lie but just store usually give advice from a saleman POV ... Hope I'm helping

      -Mike

I most aspects comp's are better then coax's I agree but a better quality co ax will do a lil better at volume and or SQ with HU power and why create a weak link with cheap comp's if an external amp with enough clean power to drive comp's that are at least as of the same quality as your bass is not in your budget...

My Alpine Type S comp's sounded like MUCHO ass on my HU at 22 watts RMS the built in amp wasn't abe to take advantage of the comp's ability just  as an anorexic ( spelling ??? lol) wouln't get into Professional Boxing, a HU amp shouldn't drive comp's, in all aspects a external amp and even lower end(still decent ie. none of the brands previously listed as bad, fake, to good to be true, etc... lol) would do better but in your case, and for your taste's within your budget I say start slow for a begining listener Coax's won't sound bad if they are of good quality...

Probably a little too generous to say "any" in the above statement.  If an amplifier produces more power than a sub is able to handle, great care must be taken (using equipment other than your ears) to ensure that the sub is receiving only its RMS rating.  And, it's not always possible.  The amp gain is just to match the deck voltage output...when set at the proper level, the amp will produce the power it's capable of making.  That is "correct gain setting" and doesn't include the capabilities of the subwoofer when it's being set.  Actually, if you were to try to set the amp gain to a higher expected voltage input than what there is (turning the gain down), you are incorrectly setting the gain.

Now, sometimes this type of incorrect gain setting can be used if the amp is more powerful than the subs, but not always.  It's easy to find such a great mismatch between amp/subwoofer to see that even with the gain at minimum setting, the power would be far too great for the driver.  Overpowering will kill the sub when this happens.

The driver's continuous capability should exceed the amplifier's power output in every case.  If you want to try to reverse this and go the overpower route, you're asking for a load of trouble and added expense down the road.  You'd better know exactly what you're doing....and what your equipment is doing.  The Best Buy clerk was correct in trying to help you match your gear properly.

Within reason RMS power isn't a brick wall, it's more like a staircase. You can safely climb to a certain point then damage will occur. In this case the 750 Watts RMS power handling can safely be driven a decent amount higher. Usually I go by the formula I heard from Polk:

RMS power of the speaker divided by .75. In our case the sub is rated to withstand 750 RMS watts (the amp produces 1100 RMS watts) so...

750/.75 = 1000, sooo... in our case with the gain at the "proper" lever the speaker would be safe

I see things this way... the point in this extra power isn't to turn it up louder then if  the speaker weren't overpowered, but to drive enough clean power to get sufficient  volume w/o taxing the components... out of ALL the speakers I have owned home and automobile I have blown (unintentionally): a set of tweeters (x-over issues), and  one subwoofer it was an audiobahn 15" in a small sealed enclosure and it was UNDERPOWERED by its RMS rating, my amp wasn't clipping.... audiobahn is overated... any wise person will learn that lesson though....

                            -Mike