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Low frequency Effects are all important in action movies even though they have no real bearing on the actual sound of the event in Real Life (sort of like the "swish" of a starship as it moves through the airless vacuum of space). The rumble of an explosion or car crash, the visceral crunch of a fist impacting with a face - all of these get shunted to the subwoofer. You'll have to decide how much they mean to you in the face of other tradeoffs in the sound. Some systems have terrific LFE effects and mediocre spatialization while others have great spatialization and lukewarm bass. Of course all of this has to be balanced in the context of what else you're going to use the speaker system for - not an easy choice. DVDs don't necessarily require a 5.1 system either - a quality 4.1 system matched to a good soundcard can produce a "phantom center channel". This uses the front two satellites to produce effects close to those of a dedicated center channel speaker which is primarily used for speech and effects occurring immediately in front of you. If DVDs are lower on the priority list than games and music, this can be a viable option.

A couple of paragraphs above, I mentioned that it wasn't necessary to have a digital speaker system to get true 5.1 surround sound. I'm going to take this opportunity to squash an oft-prevailing myth perpetuated by quite a few of the so-called "smart" reviewers, namely:

"Digital Output From A Soundcard Is Superior To Analog".

Repeat after me:

"There Is No Magical Advantage Or Increase Of Sound Quality Inherent In Using Digital Output"

The quality of sound is largely dependent on the quality of the DACs (Digital to Analog Converters) and the algorithms (methods) used to convert the sound. The ear is an analog device and the PC is a digital one. That means that at some point a conversion of the signal from digital to analog MUST take place so that we can actually hear something. Where that conversion takes place is the point at which the quality is either retained or lost. If you have digital output from a soundcard going to a set of digital speakers that produce good audio quality BUT the DACs in those speakers (the conversion will take place in the speakers) are junk, you'll get poor quality sound. Conversely, if you have a soundcard that has terrific DACs (the conversion will take place on the soundcard) going to a set of analog speakers equal in audio quality to the digital speakers I just mentioned, you'll get good quality sound. See the weak point?

Reviewers, reviews and specifications

That leads nicely into a couple of pet peeves of mine: reviewers and specifications.

Let's start with reviewers. To put it politely, the number of PC audio reviewers out there who know anything about audio is scant. Far too many of them are Johnny-techie-audio-reviewer-wannabe types who wouldn't recognize quality audio if it reached up and bit them in the butt. Want proof? How many speaker reviews have you read where the general consensus of the piece was "They ROCK, Maaaan!!!". No explanation of why they rock or how they rock. They're loud, they blast away big time for games and so they rock. Or you'll get what I choose to call a SpecFest (basically a regurgitation of what the manufacturer published as the specifications for the system) with no real explanation of what the numbers mean. That might be well and good for the old days when the only concern was the limited dynamics of games but what about music and DVDs? That requires a whole different mindset from "They ROCK, Maaaan!!!".

Now to be fair, not all reviewers are like that. A couple of the boards I frequent regularly have well versed reviewers who not only test the speaker systems thoroughly but can also write well and explain what they find in terms the average person can understand. They'll tell you HOW and WHY it rocks.

The moral of the story? Be careful of basing buying decisions on reviews.

Similarly, and building on the SpecFest comment I made above, do NOT base a buying decision purely on paper specifications (my second pet peeve).

Specifications are funny things. They are a good place to start but they don't necessarily tell the entire story at all and as you've seen already with power ratings, may not necessarily even be accurate. I've encountered a number of systems that on paper didn't look all that impressive but when auditioned produced audio quality that rivaled others with considerably more impressive "paper pedigrees". A good audition will beat a SpecFest any day and I'll get to that very shortly.

"So getting back to the reviewer issue, if so many of them don't have a clue… "

"…who should you trust?"

The answer is really simple:

YOU.

It's YOUR ears, it's YOUR money and it's going to be YOUR speaker system. Of course this requires some effort - you have to go out and actually listen to speakers. And it's a lot easier to just read a review and go out and buy something but spending the time and effort will pay better dividends in terms of overall satisfaction.

But, hey, waitaminute!

Come back here!

Sit back down in front of your monitor and keep reading.

I haven't finished yet.

There are a couple of things you have to do before you can run off and do that.