Jake should enjoy his new speakers anyway. The joy of music listening ought to come from software, not the hardware.
Spinorama dot org is a great site for new speakers; most speakers on the market don't sound good. Anything scoring over 4.0 will sound great as long as you add a subwoofer; a score above 8.1 with "perfect subwoofer" (whatever that is) is considered state of the art. It doesn't have to cost more than $1500 US to reach that nowadays.
Craigslist or Kijiji can be a great source for inexpensive used speakers. I'd stick with mass market brands that aim for neutral sound: Angstrom, Athena Technologies, Audio Engine, Axiom, Energy, IKEA (!), Infinity, Kanto, Mirage, Nuance, PSB, Revel, and Sonos.
I'd steer clear of brands that flagrantly disregard the research or are wildly inconsistent: anything from China/Denmark/England/France/Japan/Norway/Scotland; Bose, Definitive Technologies, JBL, Klipsch, Magnepan, MartinLogan, Paradigm, Polk, and Totem.
