Sound Magic

[cooldip10]

I'm planning to add a 5.1 speaker system to my desktop. My mobo (Intel 845GV) has AC97 onboard sound card which supports 5.1 systems.

But recently i found that assembling a speaker system will cost you much lower than that for buying a ready-made one.. My father told me assembling it will cost only 3K where as going for a company made product of same type costs 7K!!

I found it true and am planning to do so.. it'll be fun to work out things like this but the main prob is that i need specifications..
So guys if you know any specifications of a good 5.1 speaker system plz tell me..( info required - RMS of all the spakers i.e. centre , etc , frequency range and all )

Help required..

[teknoPhobia]

Some friends and I once built a speaker system of one of us, and since we did not have much idea about power ratings we landed up building a 5.1 system with a 12" woofer with a total power output of about 430 watts RMS using mostly spkrs from Boltone. A reasonable rating for home use on the other hand would be about 20w RMS for the satellites and 40w RMS for the Sub, you biggest expense will be an amp, unless you know a qualified engineer. The system we built had 2 way satellites, i.e. with a tweeter and a midrange, with the filters in the satellites. The spkrs and ratings we used were: Woofer: 130w, Midrange: 30w, Tweeter 30w. For a sane person I'd suggest 40w 6" long throw for the sub, 3" 10w mids and aluminium/titanium tweeters of abt 10w apiece( these are going to be horribly expensive, I would suggest you skip them, go for 20w midranges instead, it'll save having to put passthrough filters as well). You have to find a decent carpenter to make the casings.

[cooldip10]

No i'm planningto buy the case available in mrkts. Where do you live?? As far as an engineer is concerned my father is one (and i'm a budding one...)