Spring RTS Engine

I've a Logitech speaker set with 2 speakers and a subwoofer that cost me ~£40 when I bought it. I'm happy with the Bass it puts out though I know most aren't but I cant help notice that for everything else, songs sound sharper/crisper and clearer when played on the loudspeaker on my iPhone 4S.

Faced with the embarassment of a smartphone that can sodcast at higher quality, what would be the best thing to buy? I'm not looking to spend beyond £100, I'm sure something around ~£60 possibly £80 if its well recommended. I'm also using onboard motherboard sound ( ASUS P8 H67-RB3 ), though I have SPDIF outs etc I just have nothing to plug into them ( if I end up buying a soundcard I'd want something with a built in headphone amp for when I finally splash out on quality headphones ).

FTR: headphone amps for soundcards aren't usually very good. The XONAR cards are considered pretty good sound cards for HFs, but even something like a Miller Starving Student amp ($40 if you know where to buy the parts) has been said to work better. This isn't from personal experience, though (I run HFi-700s unamped), so, if you can, then take a listen before buying.

I own an ~$80 Logitech 5.1 system, and I know exactly what you mean. It strips the entire high end off the spectrum. I await the day when I have the time/money to go speaker-shopping.

I hear M-Audio makes good speakers for not-that-much, so you may want to give those a look.

I've heard of external headphone amps, there's an article on coding horror that goes into it, but before I splash £100-200 on a pair of headphones I'd like to sort the speakers out first =p

These appear to be the cheapest M-Audio speakers I found: http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do?p ... 3817352112

The M-Audios tend to go on sale often.
Amazon has the AV30s for $90 right now:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0051WAM1O/

hmmm my sound and audio question was moved out of the sound and audio forum ( yet this same off topic logic was not applied to 30 or 40 other threads in that forum? )

It is (Spring) Content Creation->sound and audio.
The other threads are misplaced too but there is no use in moving year olds/dead threads.