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RMS is a real world measurement, or can be and that's why you look at it. The peak ratings that many manufacturers use is strictly a marketing gimmick to lure in new buyers who aren't educated to the fact that the peak wattage number can be any made up number they want it to be. I like to refer to the peak amplifier wattage ratings as ILS ratings, If Lighting Strikes, lol. The RMS ratings you were referring to are measured ratings BUT they don't use music or speakers to make those measurements. They use a single frequency or tone and measure using a high power capacity resistor. It's the only way to get consistent, repeatable measurements. They have to use a single frequency to keep the output constant and consistent. They also have to use a resistor because a speaker is what's called a "reactive" load. Due to the physics involved in the inductance of the voice coil and several other physical factors the impedance, resistance or in other words the load the amplifier sees changes with frequency. So let's say at 1khz our imaginary speaker has an impedance right at 4 ohms, but say at 100hz the impedance is 10 ohms. Because of that the measured power applied to it would change just because the frequency did. A resistor is a dummy load, no matter what frequency is applied the resistance never changes. Therefore it's possible to get a consistent and repeatable measurement. Once you go and hook it up to a speaker and play music through it everything changes. The only analogy I can come up with to explain the dynamics in music is driving on a country road. The majority of the surface is somewhat smooth and the suspension doesn't have to travel much but mixed in with that is bumps, holes and things that make your suspension travel much more. It's varying constantly and therefore is dynamic in its response. Music works much like that where the smoother parts are the quieter instruments and parts of the song (think woodwind instruments, backup singers, a rhythm guitar). The rougher parts are lead guitars, the lighter rhythm of the drums, the lead singer and the roughest parts are the hard drum beats and bass guitar riffs and those parts of the song. All together it's a cacophony of sounds in a rhythm one finds pleasant to listen to. As far as the many more things it's a bit complicated to explain some of the aspects. The simple ones like location, aiming, mounting and deadening are easy enough and if you can get them right makes a lot of the other aspects less of an overall issue. Location doesn't mean just right where they put them from the factory. In fact the factory location and aiming are often about as bad as one can get for both. The best location depends on the speaker being used and what it's being used for. Typically the closer you can get the aiming to "on axis" or aimed at you, the listener, the better it is. Mounting refers to how the speaker is attached to the vehicle. The most common factory mounting methods are plastic rings or baffles or right to the sheet metal of the vehicle itself. Neither are great options as a speaker can produce a considerable amount of mechanical energy, especially when turned up loud. It should really be mounted to something solid, unmoving and acoustically dead. Which brings us to deadening. Deadening stops panel resonances (unwanted vibrations), mechanical noises (an interior panel slapping against the body for example), and blocks outside noises from coming through and into the cabin of the vehicle. As you can imagine this all can be quite an undertaking to accomplish inside of a vehicle. Which is why I keep saying "as close as possible".

15 feet isn't long, hell in the audio world 30 feet isn't long. At least not for that application. Power (watts) is a product of both CURRENT and voltage. First, look at it like this, say for the sake of easy math we're talking about 100 watts even. It would take 10 volts AND 10 amps of current to have 100 watts in our imaginary circuit. Now I wouldn't want to try to flow 10 amps of current through a 20 gauge wire, it would get ugly. However the power supply in an amplifier turns your cars 12v system into an AC signal, runs it through a step up transformer, and then turns it back into DC for the amplifier section. Now, let's say that in our imaginary circuit that the voltage is 50volts, not 10, that would mean the current would only be 2 amps to supply 100 watts of power. The 20 gauge wire may still be a little light but for the distance of run inside a vehicle it's manageable. Now we get into the other part of the way it works in audio. Just because an amplifier is rated as being capable of 100 watts of output does not mean that 100 watts is coming out of its outputs all the time. In fact, the only time the output gets anywhere near the full 100 watts is when the input signal is causing the amp to try to produce maximum output. In other words only when you have the volume cranked. Even then it's not holding there at maximum. Music is dynamic, it's lots of low to medium level material with some high level and occasionally maximum level material. So even at full volume 90% of a full song is low to medium level material, 7% is high level material and 3% is maximum level (depending on the music itself, how it was recorded and the quality of the recording. This is only an example). That means that even when you are listening to your music as loud as it can safely go that your amp is only outputting in its upper power ability 10 to 20% of the time. That's why we try to tell you that reading into and worrying so much about the numbers is such a waste of time. Trust me, I used to worry about every little number and everything years ago too. It wasn't until I spent a lot of time on here reading up on things, asking questions and talking to people that I realized that all my time and energy was focused on the wrong aspects. There are far more important, far more consequential things to worry about that make a much bigger difference than the power you're running to the speakers. That's not to say that what you're worrying about doesn't carry with it some merit but it should be lower on the scale than things like HOW the speakers are installed. Things like location, aiming, deadening, and many more items are the sum of HOW they're installed. The closer that stuff is to as good as it can get the better the overall result no matter how much power you run or things of that nature.

Worst day ever.

NO, DO NOT BUY AN AMP THAT DOESN'T HAVE THE RMS LISTED. NEVER EVER!! I understand you want to buy what you thought you found and were looking for re-assurance on a car audio forum, but you won't get it and if you keep asking the same question trying to force an answer that will never come people will stop reading your threads and taking you seriously. We can't help you, only you can help you and it is starting to seem like you don't want help. Please prove me wrong.

DC isolator installed.

mini dsp in (the glovebox) :