Here's why amps can be more important than speaker

That's why some people like over-powered amp than under-powered your amp. The amp will be more in linear region if your power amp is capable of higher current and power than the speaker's demand. If under powered(you can call it bad match), even a good speaker can't perform. If having enough power or up, a good speaker is much better than bad ones.

No, the resulting output will be a combination of the fundamental plus the distortion components.

Hey folks,
How about gettin' some Studio 100 blown by some old Kenwood receiver huh?

Hi,
If you worry about amp blowing up your speakers, add some fuses for speakers. But in normal condition, it seldom happen unless someone accidentally turn the volume close to max. Human ears can take so much dB, and most of speaker would be too loud for you to bear if you turn the volume too high. A short trasient of bang of music will not generate enough heat/energy to blow speaker in listening level.
Someone here also pointed out in Audiogon before: many speakers were blew because receiver's power rating is too low (especially true for transistor amp). A transistor CKT is more likely voltage-limiting. When input signal is too large a sine wave, it will drive output CKT to srong nonlinear region (engineer call it saturation). The result is a sine wave in becomes a square wave out(in voltage). A sharp coner of square voltage wave will create a huge spark of current in inductor load. In this case, speaker is in dangerous of clipping or even blew up. On the hand tube amp is usually more close to current limiting(in this case voltage will overshoot), which is safer to the speaker. But nothing is free(evergy is conservative), energy will burn your power tube not speakers, the result is shorter tube life.
I am not encourging people to use 1000W amp on a 30W speakers, but at least give it 30W to make it a fair game when you do comparison.