Good audio is necessary for so many of the activities for which you use your computer. From their early days as number crunchers and word processors,PCs have continued to prove their value as the universal tool by taking on more and more duties. You can go from programming a spreadsheet to watching a movie to surfing the Web to playing a game--all on the same machine.. Although there are a lot of links in the PC audio chain, the rubber really meets the road at your speakers. You want a set of speakers that will faithfully reproduce the audio depth of a DVD, bring out the full range of your music, and make gaming so real that you'll be ducking for cover when the bullets fly.We've listened carefully to a variety of speaker systems to judge howwell they handle all these tasks, and found that most could do only one thing well, while a few systems were all-around wunderkinder. The speaker systems we've tested and rated range from two-channel desktop systems all the way up to four-point surround with a subwoofer.We even have a few flat-panel systems for those who want aesthetic quality to match audio quality. The prices range from $70 to $300, something we take into account in our overall ratings. But our emphasis is on audio quality. For each speaker system, we listened to a variety of music CDs, played Quake II and Unreal, and watched a DVD movie. With music, we listened for bass resonance and faithful reproduction of midrange and high notes. DVD movies have higher quality audio than CDs, and mix music, dialogue, and sound effects, so this is one of the tougher tests for the speakers to pass. Gaming is pretty specific. We listened for good surround capabilities to generate the feeling of really being in the game environment.