Sound Problem

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Several days ago, my sound started acting up with no discernable reason. I turn the comp off one night, turn it on the next day and all of a sudden my sound has a weird reverb effect. I've messed around with just about everything in the audio/sound control panel tool. Normally its not that annoying, but some sounds (I'm not a sound person, I dunno what kind of sounds) grate on the ears from the distortion, sort of like if the volume for a TV is set way too high. Except, that isn't the case here, volume has no effect on it.

Any idea what's up? Bad speakers, maybe? (they are kinda old now). Only problem with that idea though is that I tried one speaker by itself, then the other, and both had the problem.