Odd sound problem

Emonk

My PC seems to exhibit some strange behavior when it comes to sound, and I'm not sure what the cause is.

I'm not much of an audiophile, but it seems to me certain sound channels may not always be functioning properly.

The two things I've noticed while gaming that caused me to notice the problem:

Casting a fireball as a mage in WoW. The crackling sound of the fireball doesn't always come through the speakers.

Inner-party banter in Baldur's Gate. When standing around, or when party members talk to each other, some times I can't hear it at all. I know they are speaking because the character portrait has a white outline when they talk, but I can't hear anything. Other audio such as background music and ambiance is still audible.

I have a Gigabyte GA-K8U motherboard with onboard sound. One thing I noticed is that the right speaker is the one that doesn't always play full sound. I have two satellite speakers that plug into my sub-woofer, and regardless of which satellite speaker is plugged in to the right port, the sound problem exists.

Any ideas? I'll be happy to provide more relevant info if needed.

Firebrand

Do you get the same thing with a pair of headphones?

Bad output jack? If you're using analog outputs and you have the Realtek icon in your systray, go into that program and see if there's a tick box for "always show popup when i connect a device" or something similar. Plug your cable into any other sound output jack and it will ask you what you just connected and reroute the sound there.

Emonk

I get the same problem with headphones. The issue exists regardless of which port I plug my speakers into.

Edit: Just tried out my USB headset. Sound works just fine with them. Maybe I should just buy USB speakers? Unfortunately I already have analog speakers and a nice pair of analog Sennheiser headphones.

Scrublet

This is weird. Normally if you're missing sounds like Mage cast effects, that means your center channel is muted (pretty sweet if you don't even have one, right?) I don't know why your USB headphones are working.

Emonk

I don't know the best way to describe it. The fireball crackling comes in and out, even in mid-cast.

In Baldur's Gate I set up the character's voice to always activate on click and on command, and to display subtitles to confirm that a sound is being made. Maybe one out of every ten times I can hear the voice, sometimes it comes in during the middle of the their phrase, sometimes at the end.

There is always game music, city noise, crowd ambiance, whatever going on though.

If there is a front channel and rear channel, it would seem like the front channel isn't always working, but I don't know if that is the right terminology. It also only happens with analog connections.