Possibly the weirdest sound glitch ever.

Hey guys.

I just removed Ubuntu from my system and I suspect this is related to my issue (my computer's issue, I mean xD).

Basically, the voices in all my music and games don't play (I can hear them a tiny bit, but it sounds like the singers are in the bottom of a well!). Sound effects and musical instruments sound like they've been through a high-pass filter, and the volume varied a great deal from note to note.

I suspected the voice cancellation had been turned on, but my audio hardware doesn't have that option, and neither does any of the software. (I suppose there could be some program I don't know about, though. This computer has surprised me more than once before.)

And here's the weirdest part: Instead of panning side to side, moving the Balance slider to its extremes almost fixes the sound (but doesn't pan :suspiciou ).

Any ideas?


Edit:
My headphones are sorta on their way out. Anyone think it's possible that the left and right wires are touching and interfering with each other (and stopping the pan from working)?

No, Ubuntu has nothing to do with this. Any sound card settings do not survive through a reboot.

Yes, broken headphone wires can be a cause. Try with some other ouput device.

I think I found the problem. My sound card was set on mono, but my headphones are stereo (and not broken!). This was probably what was interfering. I went to try another output device, so I unplugged the headpnones, but I don't have another device. But when I plugged them back in it worked again, so it just probably needed to re-detect them.