We're not talking about the price here. All I'm saying is, if you want better than ordinary sound, you don't solely depend on good speakers, you get a good source too. If he's comfortable with onboard sound, then good, so be it. But if he wants [much] better quality, then there are a wide choice of solutions available from $30 to $infinity. Fortissimo3 from Hercules and Creative Audigy are good budget recommendations. At ~$100, both Creative Audigy2 and M-Audio Revolution 7.1 are rather fine cards (24-bit cards, very nice DACs, great music performance on the Revolution specially, great gaming performance and 3D sound especially on the Audigy2). At $250, there's TerraTec DMX-6Fire 24/96, etc., etc.
If you want to know what I mean about different sound cards having a very large effect on the sound coming out of identical speakers, check out and search Tech-report.com and read their subjective auditions of various sound cards out there (they've got 3 articles). The difference is mostly because of the different DACs used on the cards and their respective quality. e.g. AKM builds some very high-end DACs used in almost all M-Audio, Terratec, Echo pro or consumer cards. Crystal has also some real high-end offerings used in from Audigy2 to Lynx Two to set-top DAC boxes...<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by r2k on 04/05/03 10:58 AM.</EM></FONT></P>