Wierd Audio Issues

[Sharp-kun]

The story:

Two days ago I did my twice annual wipe/reinstall on my PC. Before this my audio was fine. I used my onboard Realtek sound at this point, I run Vista64.

After the reinstall, anything played, be it games, music, video would sound underwater and tinny, as if the centre channel was missing. After another reinstall and loads of mucking around with drivers and settings I assumed something had happened to the chip. I toddled off and bought a new Audigy.

Same problem.

Now loads of frustrated cable pulling has led me to discover that the problem only occurs if the speaker/headphone cable plug is fully inserted into the jlot. If its almost in but not quite everything is fine. It seems something is detecting this and fucking everything up.

Any ideas on what it could be? While its working now it seems a bit of a patchwork job. :\

[Starglider]

Have you tried disabling digital out (assuming that is a hybrid analogue/digital jack and your sound card supports autodetect)?