Compaq 4640 speakers

[ash4640]

Any compaq 4640 owners here....
I have been owning a compaq 4640 model witha jbl pro speakers.....
Now i just have the speakers with me.....but it does not sound as good as it sounded on the compaq 4640 i want to find out what sound card or what technology the speakers were driven on the 4640.....
What were the speakers model no if anybody knows....theses were white colored tall pair of satellites with side wall hanging and monitor fixing facility.
i googled found out that the sound card was ess 1869 ( is this the correct sound card on 4640 )

The jbl pro speakers features....

Dolby®Digital Surround Sound combined with JBL 3D VirtualTheater? (VMAx) delivers realistic audio from two JBLPro speakers,

JBL Pro SpeakersJBL 3D VirtualTheater (VMax)
Dolby®Digital Surround Sound (AC-3)
Dolby®Digital Surround Sound (AC-3)10-stage equalizationSpatializer®sound

this has the full details on the pro speakers....
http://embur.com/webcam/specsheets/compaq/4640.pdf.

Now Iam using a onboard audio with 5 channel support (AC97)

I want to get a good sound card which supports all theses features....and jbl pro should sound the same as it was on my 4640....
What is the sound card i can get and which is the modern sound card similar to ess 1869 which supports the same features of ess 1869.....
Ash.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I know VMAx was a setting on my HK receiver and I know JBL is related to HK as well as Infinity... so that's a setting on the speakers themselves?

Just wondering here... what's the point of Dolby 5.1 on a stereo set of speakers?

Are you just looking for a soundcard that can give you an AC3 stream that the speakers can decode?

Do they take a digital input then? What kind?

Something as cheap as a Chaintech AV-710 will give you very nice digital output, but it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles if that's what you're looking for.

I don't know a lot about computer speakers that are this old. Is this a really nice set?
If you're looking for a surround sound experience from DVDs, I think it's likely you would be better off getting a real 5.1 set.

If these are really good for music or something, getting a 5.1 set and running these as the mains is another thing to think about to get yourself a 7.1 set in total.