Have you tried listening to it through headphones or different speakers? Sometimes the speakers that come with the system are included as an afterthought.
Yeah, I’ve tried *everything* I can possibly think of. It’s weird that the sound is PERFECT when I’m in linux, but Max Headroom-y when I’m using XP!! Aggravating beyond belief. I’d been thinking about upgrading to Vista in the hopes that that might fix the windows problem, but I’ve seen a lot of complaints about Vista and I’d rather not trade one problem for more problems! *sigh*