surround sound speaker system

[frazzled74]

my son has hinted that he would like this for his room, for his music. how cheap could i get one ? what am i looking for? is surround sound the same as home cinema system? dont want to ask my son as want to suprise him. all advice appreciated.

The main problem with surround sound, which is pretty much the same as home cinema, for music is that there's not much of it available. There's a few audio DVDs that come with 5:1 mixes but they're few and far between. CDs and MP3s are usually just stereo. Sure a decent stereo will try and "fudge" its output to make it pretend to be surround sound but it's not really.

For music alone I doubt that it's worth it.