These days, most PCs come with sound cards that are good enough for most purposes. Speakers have gotten generic enough that shopping for a good pair, with something to differentiate them, isn’t that easy. In a sense, if you aren’t massively picky, you aren’t going to  look very hard or far, since what you have is probably good enough.

I’d start by saying that sound is subjective – different people expect different things from their sound system, and look at different things. A pretty good idea when actually trying to put together gear for sound output is to decide  …