These are the key speaker components that bring music to life:

Tweeters are the small speakers that deliver only the high notes. The ideal tweeter is small, lightweight and very stiff.

Midrange drivers are responsible for covering roughly 70% of the sound we hear, including the vocals and many of the instruments.

Woofers must move massive amounts of air to produce deep and loud bass notes. They must stand up to many "G"'s of force without flexing and distorting, yet have to be light enough to stop and start quickly or your bass will sound "muddy".

Powered subwoofers are included in many floor-standing speakers. These use a larger driver that is powered by an amplifier built-in to the speaker.

Bookshelf
Despite their diminutive size, many bookshelf speakers can do a great job of filling a small room with sound. That said, the sound quality of these speakers can vary widely. The biggest challenge bookshelf speakers face is producing deep bass that has impact.

Floor standing
These days many floor-standing speakers are towers that are much taller and narrower. Tower speakers bring the sound up off the floor and closer to your ears and take up less floor space. Also, floor-standing speakers produce the bass smaller speakers lack.

Subwoofer/satellite systems
For many people, subwoofer/satellite systems (or sub/sat for short) embody all the advantages of bookshelf and floor-standing speakers. Sub/sat speaker systems have very small speakers producing what they're good at-high and midrange sounds-and a larger box that sits on the floor producing the bass. The even better news is that the larger box-usually called a subwoofer-can be placed anywhere in the room.

A speaker with a separate woofer and tweeter is called a two-way system, and one that adds a midrange driver is a three-way system. A crossover network splits the audio signal up into different frequency ranges and sends it on to the appropriate tweeter, midrange or woofer. Sometimes manufacturers use multiple tweeters and woofers to add to the impact of the sound, but the number of frequency bands that the crossover creates determines how many "ways" a speaker is.

Speaker manufacturers use a variety of specifications to try and tell you about how a speaker performs. The numbers are a nice starting point, but there's really no substitute for hearing a speaker with your own ears. Sound is incredibly subjective, so what might sound great to you might sound bad to someone else. Would you buy a TV without checking out the picture? We didn't think so. You'll get the most satisfaction from a set of speakers if you head into a store with a few favorite CDs and spend a few minutes auditioning some options.