What is Computer Speaker?

1. A speaker is a term used to describe the user who is giving vocal commands to a software program.

2. A hardware device connected to a computer's sound card that outputs sounds generated by the computer. In the picture to the right, is the Altec Lansing VS2221 speakers with subwoofer and resemble what most computer speakers look like today.

When computers were originally released they had on-board speakers that generated a series of different tones and beeps. As multimedia and games became popular, higher quality computers speakers began to be released that required additional power. Because computer sound cards are not powerful enough to power a nice set of speakers today's speakers are self-powered, relatively small in size, and contain magnetic shielding.

Speakers are rated in Frequency response, Total Harmonic Distortion, and Watts. The Frequency response is the rate of measurement of the highs and lows of the sounds the speaker produces, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) is the amount of distortion created by amplifying the signal, and the Watts is the amount of amplification available for the speakers.

Source: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/speaker.htm