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a few general guidelines...

Posted by Some Guy on August 8, 2003 at 06:20:04:
The main thing you want to do is make sure the impedance is matching. You're better off driving higher impedance speakers with a lower impedance amp... so the 8ohm amp is fine with the 8-16ohm speakers. I'd skip on the 4ohm speakers if possible just to be safe.
As said elsewhere, the wattage is more or less meaningless in regards to apparent volume. Different manufacturers rate it different ways or market different types of wattage (peak vs. RMS), but you also have to check how many watts they kick out at which load... Denon has listings on some of their amps at 6ohm, some at 8ohm, etc. Then you have to worry about speaker type, speaker efficiency, etc...
My general rule is find the amp with the most features you want, then find the one on that line that has the most watts you can afford. It's better to have more than you need for a couple reasons. First, the higher the capability, the less chance there is of having to push your speakers to distortion. Not only will they not sound as good, but you could also damage the speakers. Next, it gives you some room to grow if you move to a larger place... that way you can improve the rest of your components in stages rather than dropping a large dime all at once. Finally, it comes in handy in territorial disputes with the neighbors... but only in severe cases, mind you.
Something a salesman used on me that you might want to know is that you don't have to match the wattage of speakers and amps. I was told years ago that you should match this wattage to make sure it doesn't blow out the amp. He was mistaken: this relates back to the bit about pushing to distortion... The danger comes in pushing a 100 watt speaker with a 50 watt amp: if you jack the amp too high, it can damage the speaker when it craps out on peaks, etc. If you're mindful of this, it won't be a problem... just treat it like a 50 watt speaker (whatever that means...)
One final note: a 100 watt amp is not twice as loud as a 50 watt amp. The general rule is that an amp has to have 10 times as much power to crank out twice as much volume. Therefore, to be twice as loud as a 50 watt amp you would need 500 watts.
Take everything salespeople say with a grain of salt. They say what they have to to make the sale, but they usually have no idea what their talking about. This is probably common knowledge, but just wanted to reiterate it.