well i hooked up my old amp and speakers to the laptop to give it a run, I came out of the earphones hole with a split into two cable, I then had loud music that is reasonable.
so i called my mate who has a cracker of a laptop, a brand new one and did the pepsi challenge with a few songs on i tunes between mine and his( ice cube- a bitch is a bitch for bass and presets-are you the one for dance)
His sounded like the best clearest music the world has ever heard with bowel clenching bass and heaven reaching highs while mine was all muffled bass and sounded like it had a mattress on it. even my mrs who was upstairs could tell the difference ,I even plugged the 200 dollar altech lansings back in to his machine and aside from feedback at low volume the sound was twenty times better than when it was in mine!He has suggested that my sound card(?) might be geared towards gaming and soundeffects not music.
So i googled "external notebook sound cards" and found this puppy "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook " it was the same brand as one mentioned in a post in this thread, so i got him on ebay for 70 bucks.
Cannot wait till it arrives, as now i have the amp all set up i am going to go and dig the rest of the systm out of the storage unit.
Thanks heaps for all the advice, I will post up when the sound card comes in and let you know how it goes.
Cheers
Mark