No Bass from Sound Card: Onboard Realtek HD Audio: HELP!

Hi guys,

I recently built a computer with a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 motherboard, which has onboard Realtek HD Audio sound. Currently, I am getting no bass from the front or back audio. I have tried it with 2 different headphones, and my 2.1 speaker system, all of which have been confirmed to work fine on another system.

I installed all the drivers correctly (three times now =/), and I have tried all the Realtek HD audio drivers up the most recent release, v1.46. Additionally, if I set the balance of the speakers to the centre, I lose some of the audio channels (e.g. I can't hear vocals in WinAmp or Media Player, on top of getting no bass from the output). To fix this problem I have to force the balance to either the left or right speaker, and I get the vocals, but then the balance is off.

I've played with the equalizer, but I'm still not getting any real bass, just some crappy distortion. I've tried uninstalling everything (all the sound card related drivers, including the UAA bus driver) and disabling the onboard audio from the BIOS, restarting, renabling the audio, and then reinstalling everything, and I return to the same problem.

My only guess is that the bass is going to another output (although I set the software to headphones or 2.1 speakers, not 5.1) but I can't figure out how to fix that.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!