Sound/fps related problem..

[Unilux]

Okay for the last few days I have been suffering horrible lag (system specs below) and have had to run with everyting turned down to low and 16 bit color to compensate. So today i'm checking settings when I realize I have my sound driver selected as 'Direct 3D
Software Emulation' so I'm thinking this must be using CPU and causing some slow down so I switched it to 'Direct 3D hardware support' (I have AC 97 On Board sound btw) and I saw a dramatic increase in FPS performance. I can now run with medium settings and 32 bit color smoothly, however now my sound is utter garbage. It went from full rich sound to tinney midrange like listening to a AM radio and I cannot adjust it to sound better. I have installed the latest Audio and Video drivers. Any idea how to get the audio performance back without losing fps?


System Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ @1.4ghz w/ Thermaltake Volcano 7
MSI K7T266 Pro2 Ver:2.0 (VIA KT266A)
768mb pc2100 DDR
Visiontek Geforce 3 ti200 64mb
On Board Sound (AC'97)
Intel Pro 100S 10/100 Ethernet Adapter
Plextor 8x4x32 CDRW Drive
Western Digital 30GB 7200rpm ata100
Maxtor 60GB 7200rpm ata133
Generic 1.44 Floppy Disk Drive
Lian Li PC7 Case
Sparkle Power 250W PSU
Envision 19" CRT Monitor
Microsoft Internet Keyboard
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0
Win XP Pro SP1