If (like me) you have a Creative Sound card, and you can't work out why your audio has a strange sound to it, you need to go to your 'AudioHQ' and make sure you don't have any effects applied.
After days of just accepting that all my beeps sounded like they wre coming from a cave, I finally had a look for it today.
All fixed, and it loads on startup if you select it from the Options menu.
