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#11
I had this issue too, but I managed to fix it by trial-and-error
Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound
Right-click "Speakers," proceed to the Enhancements tab. It came, by default, with a few enhancements that, in my opinion, distorted the sound. I believe Bass Management, Equalizer and Speaker Fill were on -- and to make matters worse, Equalizer was set to a flat mode (I changed it to Rock, I felt that it suited me).
I turned all the enhancements off except for the Equalizer, which I set to Rock. Once I did this, the sound came through much more clear.. but I still preferred my X-Fi card sound compared to the Realtek contraption.
-- On Topic --
I have two partitions set up, one for Vista and one for 7. Each has a 200GB partition. I stick with Windows 7 for most of my daily, and gaming, needs.. but when a problem arises, I jump on Vista, then promptly back to 7