At my work I was recently upgraded from Windows NT to Windows 2000. 
After this conversion, the audio on my PC through my sound card has
gone through some changes.  For starters, it's much louder.  Secondly,
the audio through my sound card now has a slight echo.  It doesn't
matter if I'm listening to mp3s or CDs, or what application I'm using
to listen, it has a slight echo.  If I plug my headphones directly
into my CDRom drive, it's fine.  This only happens through my sound
card, and only after the Win2000 upgrade.  I would like to get my good
sound back! Can anyone help?  I'm assuming that you will need to ask
many clarifying questions, so ask away!

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Request for Question Clarification by seizer-ga on 03 Dec 2002 11:07 PST

If you could please post the type of your soundcard, and what drivers
you are using, that would be a great help. (To identify this, hold
down the Windows key, and press the Pause key. Then go to hardware,
device manager, and look through the sound card section).

Thanks,

--seizer-ga

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Clarification of Question by mkeller-ga on 03 Dec 2002 11:18 PST

Ok...let me know if this is not what you are looking for.

Under "Sound, video and game controllers" the following are listed:

-Audio Codecs
-Legacy Audio Drivers
-Legacy Video Capture Devices
-Media Control Devices
-SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio
-Video Codecs

I'm not sure where to find my specific sound card.

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Request for Question Clarification by seizer-ga on 03 Dec 2002 11:27 PST

That's it! The "SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio" is your soundcard.
If you right-click on that, and choose Properties, then Driver, you
should be able to see who made the driver, and the date on it.

If you could provide that information, and also the maker of your PC
(Compaq, Gateway, or whoever), that would prove very useful to myself
or another researcher.

Thanks,

--seizer-ga

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Clarification of Question by mkeller-ga on 03 Dec 2002 11:31 PST

Ok, here's the scoop:

Driver Provicer: Analog Devices
Driver Date: 5/7/2002
Driver Version: 5.12.1.3506
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

My PC is an IBM Netvista, it seems.

When you upgraded to Windows 2000, did you or anyone at work have to
update the drivers automatically?  I'm assuming that Windows
automatically detected your sound card and installed what it thought
was optimal.

Either way, I have found drivers for SoundMax sound cards for your IBM
NetVista that are much more recent than the driver you specified. 
What I suggest is to go to: http://www.ibm.com/support/us and proceed
to the support section.  Go ahead and click on NetVista personal
computer.  You should be brought to a search page.  Go ahead and click
on "Downloadable files" on the left side.  Then you will be brought to
another search page (tired yet?).  Select Audio from the Downloadable
files by category.  This should bring up a list of downloadable
drivers for Sound cards.  If you know what model NetVista you have,
then go ahead and select the appropriate driver for Windows 2000. 
When you click on the appropriate file, the rest should be a cinch
since IBM is generally good about documentation in their installation
instructions.

Hi,

The echo should be because of the environmental audio settings or
something like that. You should be able to turn this effect off. Try
installing recent NetVista sound drivers for Windows 2000.

I had this same problem, but with an integrated ESS1887 sound adapter.
The difference was that origianlly, the driver was provided by the
company, and when I went to windows 2000, it had to use the
'reference' drivers, since it was an integrated sound card.

I looked for new drivers, but it ended up I could do nothing about it.