So I'm looking to buy some quality door speakers, and a head unit for my AP1. I saw the post about the SONY MEX XB100BT head unit and it looks pretty sweet. Description says it has a 40 watt RMS. I'm not going to be adding on an AMP or sub. The justification to buy that HU is that it's power output is higher. I'm assuming this HU is worthless if you bought a separate amp. I'm looking to spend 200 or less on the speakers. Would a more expensive speaker with say a 100 power range sound better than one with 60 that's much cheaper even though the HU is rated at 40?

Edit: I'm looking at the Polk audio DXi651s for the speakers. My drivers side sound is completely dead. Should I buy separate tweeters as well to go with this setup?

 

is that headunit CEA rated at 40watts? you should take HU rms # with a grain of salt. you may want to just get a better head unit with a lower rating and couple it with an alpine power pac that does 45 watts rms all day long, it fits behind the dash too. typically its better to get pretty close to the RMS capability. you can adjust an over driven speaker via gain. you can't do it the other way with out issues (distortion). under driving some speakers considerably is not good for the speaker

 

all head units sound like crap without an amp.

 

Depends on what you define as "crap". A quality HU can sound just fine without an amp; however, sound quality will suffer at higher volume levels due to a lack of power. Will an external amp matched to your speakers sound better and be able to play cleanly at higher volumes? Sure it will, but this doesn't mean that the HU sounds like crap. Any decent HU will be a marked improvement over the factory stereo.