Not really looking to change distros. I've invested a fair amount of time in the fedora line over the years, and have come to understand many of its quirks. Don't particularly want to have to change to something else. Sound "works" for me, it's just that there is likely some program that's trying to be all fancy with surround processing that I haven't been able to locate the configs for.
I’ve heard that adding yourself to the alsa group can help as well.
See if it’s updated to ‘pulse’.. (I prefer Alsa).. and even pulse is a little outdated now :p
I have great sound out of Fedora - I choose as my output device “Analog output - Built in Audio”. It sounds low tech compared to the ones you are describing but it sounds great on my Bose companion system.