Have you checked the equalizer settings in Media Player or whatever it is you're using? The soundcard might also have these.
-pat
It was skipping before because my DPC latency would spike. I turned my color bit depth down to 16-bit and it fixed the latencies, then later I figured out that it was some Nvidia power management thing that was effing everything up. The thing is, with the skipping, I didn't notice the quality was sh!t.
Once that was fixed two days ago, I didn't really notice because my mind has been on other things. Today it sounds like everything, even my flac files, are encoded in 64kbps bitrate, or they are being run through a flanger effect, or something - I was almost thinking it reminded me of a nightmare I had where DRM built into everything automatically downconverts the quality on all your music because it assumes you stole it...
It is like Creative EAX is effing with it, but it isn't. Anyway...I can't figure it out. There is a Winamp EQ, but it is off unless I need to tame the boom in my headphones, but this issue is present whether I am plugged in with headphones or speakers, and whether I am using the onboard soundmax crappy audio or the Creative Audigy 2 ZS notebook PCMCIA experience.
It's pretty frustrating.