my Z33a Audio-out is producing horrible sound quality and low sound levels

All of a sudden my Z33A has baffled me. Now when I use the audio out jack with anything (e.g. speakers, earphones, and headphones) I hear crackling sound that I can’t understand at a low sound level.

The best way to describe it is the worst AM radio feed you have ever heard. I tried turning the wave control past half way and the master volume all the way up, but that didn’t help. It only made the sound quality worse at a higher sound level. When I lower the wave control to the first or second notch the sound quality is okay, but I can only hear it when I have my external powered speakers hooked up and turned up very high. Using earphones and headphones, I can barely hear any sound even when I turn the wave and master volume all the way up and the sound I hear is not understandable and sounds like a chime.

Oddly enough, the internal speakers work perfectly. I have been running a Klipsch GMX 2.1 system from the audio-out with no problems and clear and perfect sound. I have tried reverting to previous restore points to no avail and have tried installing new ALC880 audio drivers and rolling back previous ones. The problem occurs when the laptop is in battery and AC mode.

Nothing has worked. I don’t have any weird application messing things up on startup. I called Asus tech support about the problem and they told me to go to my OEM store. I thought I would ask you guys what you think the issue may be.

I have not dropped the laptop at all, In-fact before and after I discovered the problem the laptop remained in the same place, untouched.

My setup is as follows:
Z33A
P-M 533FSB 1.7ghz
80GB Hitachi 5400rpm
768mb DDR2

 

have you changed the drivers at all? Anything new at all since this started happening?

 

I did update the ALC880 drivers two weeks ago, but the audio-was still working fine then. It wasnt until a couple of days ago I noticed there was something wrong. I tried reverting to the restore point before the driver update, but It didnt seem to improve anything.

Here's the driver i downloaded..
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...52&famid=2004052&series=2004061&Software=True

 

That's odd..... check the cables? You're saying speakers and headphones sound bad now? Could be the jack itself.

 

Yeah, i tried uninstalling the newer realtek drivers and installing the ones directly on Asus's support site in the Z33a downloads section..but it didnt fix the problem. When I look directly at the audio-out jack it doesnt seem like there is anything broken. Where should I go from here?