Repairing and Upgrading Your PC

Speakers and Headphones

No matter how good your audio adapter is, it's useless unless you have speakers or headphones to listen to the audio it produces. Computer speakers span the range from $10 pairs of small satellites to $500+ sets of up to nine speakers that are appropriate for a home theater system.

As is true of displays and input devices, personal preference is the most important factor in choosing speakers. Speakers that render a Bach concerto superbly may not be the best choice for playing a first-person shooter game like Unreal Tournament. For that matter, speakers that one person considers perfect for the Bach concerto (or the UT game), another person may consider mediocre. For that reason, we strongly suggest that you listen to speakers before you buy them, particularly if you're buying an expensive set.

Speaker and headphone characteristics

Here are the important characteristics of speakers:

Number

Speaker sets are designated by the total number of satellite speakers, followed by a period and a "1" if the set includes a subwoofer. Choose a speaker set configuration that your audio adapter supports. For example, there is no point to buying a 7.1 speaker set if your audio adapter supports at most a 5.1 configuration.

The price of a speaker set has little bearing on the number of speakers in the set. For example, there are $75 7.1 speaker sets available, and $500 2.0 sets. We recommend that you decide on the number of speakers according to your budget. If you have $75 to ...