Computer speakers? Ive got the best in the buisness JBL Platinum Series lol

I've got my computer hooked up to my Panasonic shelf stereo that I got for Christmas a few years ago. It's got something like 90 watts, 5 cd changer (don't use that too much anymore thanks to the big hard drive and itunes), and has pretty damn good sound quality for being one of those all-in-one shelf systems. This setup seems to work pretty well for the ol' dorm room.

I run my laptop on this:

2 12" 300s (of dubious quality, but have nice low-end)

and 2 Cerwin Vega 15" 300s

I power it with a 300 watt amp.

Its um... how you say... fucking loud and awesome. Nice low-end.

Hrmmm, I don't really like the Vega's for some reason, I think I have some baggage with bad Cerwin experience, but I play my laptop through a bunch of things, mostly two Celestion Alpha 12" and two Celestion Beta's. I have that setup in the music room, and in the living room I use some decent-good sony stereo. At my studio I run it through a pair of JBL's I believe, I dunno, it's not mine but I like them.

I just run my puter through my stereo. I got a set of kevlar reconed speakers (originally sony) for low end, and a couple of crappy old JVCs for a bit more high end (call me old fashioned, but for music I find stereo kicks the cack out of surround - CDs are only ever mixed for 2 channels.....). Amp's not exactly the dog's at the mo, but I've got a quad 404 to patch into my system. Then we're talking......

surround sound speakes are not necessary unless they are for watching DVDs or live concert CDs that were mastered for surround sound output.

and I don't have anything fancy at the moment. just an old stereo amp + a 3-channel mixer(everything routes to the mixer, from cd player to vcr and dvd player) with 2 small JBL speakers, which were given by a ex-coworker, and a pair of cheap whatever speakers from a thrift store.

I don't really want to invest into anything serious until I purchase my own house because there is no need to get evicted from my apartment at this point in my life.

I'm currently using a set of Creative I-Trigue speakers. They're pretty nifty IMO.

Since I'm on a laptop, I'm kind of restricted in terms of sound; so I'm just using a pair of dual Harmon Kardon speakers, they do the trick and sound a hell of lot better than the onboard speakers.

That said, I mostly use my Yamaha RH-5Ma Studio Monitor headphones....aaah, accurate sound reproduction, I love you...

Though they are laughed at by some audio engineers, Behringer sell things by the truckload. I bought the powered Truth B2031's after cranking them in a store, and for the price they were amazing. I'm looking at these babies now...

The extra speakers might not be neccesary, but you'll still get wicked good sound from a surround sound setup even if you're just playing stereo audio. Only the speakers that are needed are utilised (thanks to auto-muting on most digital systems) (ie left, right, sub) and the rest sit dormant, so unless you've just got real crappy speakers in the first place, it shouldn't matter whether you put the tunes through a 5.1 setup or a bog standard stereo- it'll sound exactly the same.

Beware of nasty 'features' like CMSS, which put simply is a way of making stereo audio being played through a 5.1 setup pretend it's actually 5.1 audio- so you get a 'virtual' surround sound situation. It's really crappy and cheesey, and a lot of annoying artefacts get through in the process.

Also, with the emergence of DVD audio and that funky super duper CD audio (SCD or something?), 5.1 setups are getting much more appealing.