I think he was being a dork. Red Hot chili PEPpers, paper, pepper, paper...get it? :hahano:

Maybe your bass sounds muddy cause you got the wires reversed. An amp helps tremendously even on not so good speakers, but too much power on not so good speakers is not so good. High powered decks (say 40x4) have lots of power, but it's not "clean" power. A 160 watt four channel amp will sound better than a deck with same power.