It seems to me like a problem with the sound card drivers. What sound card is it? I don't think you can overclock a soundcard because I don't believe it has a processor in it, but even if you could, and you did, it would just speed up the clockcycles of the processor, it wouldn't make it play any faster.

Right click on My Computer and go to Properties. Get into the Device Manager, and let us know everything listed under Sound, video and game controllers. And whether anything has a little yellow exclamation mark or question mark next to it.

Thanks for the input. That was pretty much my take on it as well.

The drivers are a standard AC97 set of drivers.
I can't find any mods or anything out of the ordinary.

It's system wide as it sounds the same no matter what media player I use.


Maybe someone in IT was bored enough to write a custom AC97 driver?
(I highly doubt it) Just to mess with someone? If it is, it's from sometime
before my employment there.
This computer has been this way from the first day I started using it.

It's just reaaaaaally strange to me and even though I've gotten
used to my trance playing at almost happy hardcore speed, I
wonder about it every few days. Wish I had opportunity to
open it up and poke around heh. Not my dept there though.
Oh well

Thanks again for the input... maybe someone
will read this and be the person that's run into it a few
times and knows what's going on hehehehehe

My computer does the same thing...did you ever figure out what was wrong with it? I'm sick of watching movies where everyone sounds like a friggin chipmunk lol...let me know.

Have you tried removing and redetecting the soundcard from the Control Panel?

Are you sure that your Soundcard needs the AC97 drivers and not SoundMAX? There are some issues where updating the system can cause them to switch with onboard-based sound systems.

I have founhd an answer to this problem. In the system bar, at the lower right hand corner of the screen, there is an icon called Sound Effect. Right click on this and it will bring up a menu with a screen called Sound Manager. On the main screen of this there are three boxes. In the box on the lower left, (my computer is Italian and I dont' have an english version) marked KaraOK there is a box marked, on my computer, Apice which has a number with two arrows for adjustment. If this number is anything but 0 that is your problem. Reduce the nmber to zero with the arrows and click on OK.
If this doesn't work for you, then I am stumped. It worked for me, but there may be other arcane devices inswtalled by MS to confuse us proor mortals. Good Luck.
Fred Lovett
www.fredspage.org