i'm sure that's true if you have the hearing of a bat...then you could hear a flea fart from 100 yards away but for most humans, ultra super duper pie in the sky isn't necessary. and there is no such thing as actual 5.1 headphones. sound quality has as much to do with what is driving the speakers as it does the speakers themselves. unless you're running a professional sound board in your computer, a typical computer sound card isn't going to do what a component stereo system will.
Hlbly is your computer setup where you can take full advantage of 5.1 surround sound? i mean area and placement. have to take into consideration that there will be wires running everywhere.
http://www.dolby.com/us/en/consumer/setup/connection-guide/home-theater-speaker-guide/index.html
you could check out logitech g51, creative t6160 or maybe the altec lansing fx5051 sets.
Heh, this is where you're wrong. Even the cheapest amp setup will produce about 100x cleaner sound than any conventional speaker can ever reproduce. Speakers induce phase distortion (most speakers even use passive crossovers which by themselves cause problems as the impedance curve of the speaker changes the way passive crossover works and 2nd level Butterworth typically used in speakers reverses phase by 180°) this basically means that the speaker designer has to reverse the polarity to the tweeter, compensate for acoustic difference between speaker element distances meaning delay circuits which then again cause more problems... and field radiation problems (audio energy doesn't necessarily spread evenly to the room at all sound frequencies, causing blurred or harsh sound even if measured responses are flat looking), acoustic reflections (the main reason for audio problems usually, extrapolated by field radiation problems) and just pure old distortion and power compression created in the speaker elements due to their analog operation. The speaker box in itself causes acoustic problems. A square box is almost the worst speaker design you can use, but it's used by default because a square box is cheapest to produce
An optimal shape for a conventional speaker refraction wise would be a totally round enclosure. Internally a round enclosure is not optimal though but that's another discussion there.
If you look at the near field response of a typical speaker you'll notice the frequency response has very harsh spikes in the upper frequency and wider alterations in the lower frequency range. The spikes are introduced by floor reflection and early wall reflections. When direct sound from the speaker mixes with reflected sound from close by surfaces, mixed polarity sound get combined and as some may know, if you add reversed polarity sounds together the end result is silence. This means when you mix reflected sound to the direct sound, you get big dips in some frequencies and double boost to others. The reflected sound arrives to the ear with such low delay that the brain doesn't handle it as echo, it gets just blurred in. These spikes get multiplied when listening outside near-field in a normal room for this reason and this is why you should always place your speakers 2-3ft from any nearby wall whenever possible and small speakers should be raised to stands. Even the cheapest amp can produce sound with very little distortion and near flat frequency response - then the 1000 dollar speaker will introduce 100-1000x worse room response from that sound. That is why speakers are THE most important component in the whole setup, theyre the most difficult and expensive component to produce.
Best sound can be achieved with electrostatic panels combined with cardioid subwoofers which bring directivity to bass range at the cost of size and cost. Using electrostatic panels you get extremely close to the original sound produced by the amp even when listening from a regular distance and in a regular room. This is never the case with conventional boxed speakers.
Headphones do not have any of the room based problems, which is why decent sound can be achieved with a ridiculously simple hardware. The speaker directly modulates the air in the ear canal which makes bass response flat even with a miniature speaker element (same effect happens in a car below 80hz by the way).
