Sound card issue

Hello. I just bought a Gateway laptop a couple of weeks ago and the sound quality has been bad from the start. It sounds almost as if the speakers are blown out but I also get the same problem when I have headphones plugged in. I'm running Vista and under device manager it says I have Conexant High Definition Audio and below that it says High Definition Audio Device. I tried to update the drivers for them but it says they have up to date drivers. Does anyone have any idea about this or is it just a faulty sound card? Thanks in advance!