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so i have a question regarding amplifiers pertaining to sound quality. I feel like in my equilizer settings i cant come to a happy medium. no matter what settings i use i cant get that great sound i'm looking for; out of bass, mids, and treble i find myself always lacking in one area. is purchasing an amplifier going to fix this and worth the purchase? i have a 50 watt max headunit and i have 200 watt and 250 watt max speakers. thanks in advance

 
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It will help.
But if you want it to sound better, you're better off using the speakers as mids/highs only, and getting a sub for lows.

especially if you have 1 or 2 way speakers, it's either mid/high or mid/lows

You're not going to get a good balance between the two without additional equipment

 
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Sound separation is one of the ways that makes a system sound good. Like Kenny said, 2-way speakers for your highs and mids, and a sub for your lows. The more you can seperate the frequencies the better it sounds. Also keep in mind that its important to match your rms voltages. If those are door speakers that your talking about at 200 & 250 watts then they have to be driven off of an amplifier. Your headunit will under power them resulting in poor sound quality and speaker damage.

 
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In general, amping your speakers will help, but there are too many unknowns as of now and too many factors involved to say much more. One thing I will say, an amp is not going to magically fix everything though.

Lets get a bit more info if we can. What model is your HU, a 50 Watt max HU means nothing. As stated, the RMS (Root Mean Square) power rating is what's important. Also, the quality of the HU, a cheap Wal-Mart bought Dual is not going to be able to produce the same clarity and quality of output as a higher quality more expensive HU, such as an Alpine CDA-117 or Pioneer DEH-80PRS, which are both designed for superior SQ (Sound Quality)

Next, the speakers you say you have are 200 and 250 PEAK, again, this is a meaningless spec that manufacturers tend to use to trick consumers. Chances are the speakers you have are rated at half or even a third of that PEAK power rating for their RMS. This is the maximum continuous power the speakers can safely handle. The materials of the speakers are key as well. You may be finding that the highs are too harsh or not very natural sounding, metallic tweeters tend to produce these harsher highs, while silk tweeters tend to produce smoother, more natural highs. And again, a cheap pair of speakers are less likely to please your ears than higher quality speakers. So what are the model of speakers you have front and rear?

Adding a sub to the mix will allow your full-range speakers to produce the frequencies they were designed to produce. While your speakers are "full-range" speakers, they just aren't meant to produce lows very well, even the mighty 6x9 tends to produce muddy and lifeless lows below 60-70Hz depending on the model.

If/when you do get an amp, be sure to properly set your gains. Use of an O-Scope is best, but using a DMM with test tones is effective if done properly. Setting the gain by ear has proven to be quite effective for most on highs as you can more easily hear when the amp is clipping, but for lows it's a poor choice as even a trained ear can have difficulty in detecting a clipped signal from a subwoofer.

The last bit I will add to this is that it's going to be quite common that the EQ setting for one song will not suit your taste for the next. Sad as it is to say, changing up your EQ from one song to the next (especially if your music genre varies greatly as well as the source quality, such as FM, SAT Radio, CD, MP3 high bit rate/low bit rate) is going to most likely be something you'll have to live with to get the sound you want. The acoustics of your car are also going to have an impact, your car is going to, I'll say naturally, boost and cut certain frequencies and you'll have to counter that with your EQ if you don't like it. Be careful on boosting any frequencies though, boosting the signal will add distortion, the more you boost a frequency, the more distortion you'll add. A finely tuned system can be listened to for hours at moderate volume levels with ease, a harsh sounding system can begin to cause ear fatigue in under an hour. Lastly, be aware of the volume levels you play your system at, permanent hearing damage can begin to occur at 85dB with prolonged listening. Higher levels will cause damage much quicker. In all hoesty, I listen to my system at levels around 92-95dB and permanent hearing damage can begin in less than an hour of continuous listening. Luckily my trips are less than 20 minutes.

Oh, and if you'd like more help in the audio section of your ride, you may fair better on a car audio forum, such as the forums on Crutchfield.com. Now I'm not insinuating that the assistance you'd get here won't be good, it's just that a car audio forum is going to specialize in car audio.

Edit.
I'd like to disagree with GolNat on his last sentence. While it is true that his current HU is defiantly not rated at the same RMS as the speakers he has, the lack of power does not imply damage will occur to the speakers. If too little of power were a cause of speaker damage, then no one would ever listen to stereos at low volume levels. The sound quality can surely suffer and if the user turns the HU up beyond the level it produces unclipped power, then yes, damage may occur to the speaker.