Sound trouble.

I have a fairly new mother board (less than a year old), speakers are even newer. The 1st sound card lasted several months, then just died. I used the on board sound which lasted just a couple of weeks then stopped as well. The next sound card only lasted about six weeks before it quit on me. The last sound card I bought didn't work at all. I made all the idiot checks, it's not muted, everything's plugged in, I installed the drivers, device manager recognizes that it's there and working properly.

On a whim I tried the on board sound again, it was working as far as beeps and the start-up shut down sounds, but mp3's and any video that has sound sounds like it's being played in a tunnel.

Any ideas?

 

A few questions
Did you completely uninstall the old drivers before installing the new ones
Did any of the sound cards you purchased install a user interface to control settings?

I ask the second one because I have a sound card that lets me make all sort of stupid effects that completely garble up the sound (make it sound like your underwater, in a cave ect.)

If any of your cards did, make sure all effects are disabled, and then uninstall the program.

Also if you have onboard audio, and you are using a separate audio card, make sure that the onboard is either disabled in the BIOS or your Audio Card is set as the default audio device.