creative Inspire 6.1

What you are hearing is possibly clipping. This is a very common distortion for a system as underpowered as the Inspire 6.1.

Here are the specs:
Front / Rear satellites : 8 Watts RMS per speaker
(Measured @ 10% THD @ 1kHz, one channel driven)
Center satellite : 20 Watts RMS
(Measured @ 10% THD @ 1kHz, one channel driven)
Subwoofer : 22 Watts RMS
(Measured @ 10% THD @ 1kHz)

Although the power of the amp is known, sensitivity of the speakers will also need to be known in order to know how loud the speakers can get. Assuming these speakers have average sensitivity, then the front, rear, and subwoofer speakers are very underpowered, which may be why you cannot turn them up too high without distortion. However, 8watts/20watts/24watts are not the true powers of the amplifier. Notice that the THD (total harmonic distortion) at this power level is 10%. That means at this power the sound will be extremely distorted. Normally anything below 1% THD will be acceptable. This means that the power of the amplifier should be much lower at distortion-free volumes. Furthermore, the distortion is measured at 1kHz, one of the easier frequencies to drive. This means that across the entire range of the speaker, say, 80Hz to 20kHz, the distortion will be much higher at this volume. For some reason the subwoofer is also measured at 1kHz. Let's just say a subwoofer is not supposed to produce that frequency. Lastly, the measurements are taken with one speaker driven, whereas the user will use all channels driven at the same time.
Here should be the parameters of the specs of a good system:
xx Watts RMS @0.06%THD 20Hz-20kHz, all channels driven.
Compare the above to the specs used by this system:
xx Watts RMS @10%THD @1kHz, one channel driven.
As you can see, the specs of this system are made so that it would appear to be much more powerful than it really is. For this reason this system could not reach very high volumes without distortion.

The Audigy 2 NX is a good card. I have never tried it, but the reviews are generally good. The US Creative site still has it: http://us.creative.com/products/prod...=&product=9103 But it may not be available in other countries.

Since you have bumped into this problem, I can reasonably assume that you want to play music at high volumes. The Inspires are not bad systems, but apparently do not conform to your needs. You may need to spend more money to satisfy your needs. The GigaWorks and MegaWorks systems from Creative are decent, but more expensive. The performance you can expect from these is directly proportional to their price.

I guess I could've explained the specs clearer. I did not know if you know of such things as frequency response, clipping, harmonic distortion, sensitivity, impedence, etc. You don't need to know all of this to understand the problem: basically the amplifier of the Inspire 6600 is not powerful enough to play sound at loud volumes, and when you try to turn up the volume the amplifier begins to produce a lot of distortion. If you'd like to know more about sound and understand these terms, you could subscribe to a good magazine. Or I could try to explain some of these things, such as what harmonics are and how clipping occurs. But there are lots of things I don't know as well.