Better Sound Options

Yuor best bet is probably to get a combimed sound card and speaker set. Company's like creative do a range of combo sets from very basic sets up to home theater suround sound units, as with any thing in life you get what you pay for.

The quality is limited by the sampling rate. Most commonly 16k or 44K, you won't get good quality till 96K or better. Incidently all CDs are 44K, won't come close to clean vinyl or analog tape.

Sound is a multipart situation, the quality of sound you hear is governed by the sample rate, number of channels, sound driver limitations, sound app being used, the sound card limitations, and the quality of speakers. You have not provided enough information for an educated answer.

Here is somethings we should know before answering:
1) what distribution of linux.
2) are you using standard linux soundconfig or
the much improved ALSA multimedia interface.
3) what chipset are you using for the onboard
sound
4) which player frontend are you using (there are over 150 players for linux with varying degrees of performance)
5) what are the capabilities of your current sound card

By varying any of the aboveyou can attain radical changes in performance. But without further info I cannot adequately give direct advice.

For example: A sis 7100 chipset onboard sound works crappy with standard soundconfig but excellant with ALSA. Using cdplay as the frontend works well with soundconfig but marginal with ALSA . The audioorchestrator app works well with both on highend speakers and high end sound card but sorely lacks if speakers and soundcard are low end.

So you see more info would be helpful.rick

You may want to consider upgrading both,using a PCI sound card and a surroung sound speaker system,depending on your taste you can get both for a reasonable price
Creative Labs,Canbridge and other manufacturers offer good sound quality systems

Check out this site:

http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/index.htm

They rate sound cards for their audio performance.

Most on-board sound systems use a lot of system resources to process audio. Thus, you often get breaks or skips in the playback.

My son (who is a music student) and I are VERY happy with our Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound cards.

I choose the Santa Cruz based on it being the best rated of the "affordable" sound cards on the list from PCAV Tech.

If sound quality isyour goal, and you don't want to compromise, check out some of the sound processor cards at music stores (Guitar Center) or the true D/A processor cards at the top of the PCAV Tech list.

Once you have a good sound card, then, yes better speakers are a good investment.
I would take a good look at:
Cambridge Audio
Polk Audio
Boston Acoustics
Harmon Kardon
(or any manufacture that ALSO offers audiophile speakers)

Chas

a better sound card, also i used 2 of my home theather speakers (optimus 900 mhz wireless)(the transmitter/reciever stoped working).i attached speaker wire to the speakers then ran
the wires to old pc super woolfer, i can play music
very loud without that im ready to blowup sound or
distortion.

Standard multimedia speakers sound like crap. Since you have onboard sound which should be able to produce decent sounding music I'd get better speakers that have a sub woofer. If you get a speaker system that has enough power you can connect stereo speakers to that. I have a 300 WATT sub-woofer with 4 satellite speakers and a 12" stage monitor connected to my system and that really sounds good.

Or if available attach a cable from the sound to your home stereo system.

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