Sound fades in, can't stop it

Hello, my computer has recently developed a slightly annoying problem where the sound fades in over the course of 1-2 seconds. This happens no matter what, whether it's using windows sound effects, the start to a song, the start of a youtube video, etc. It fades in from nothing, getting louder until it reaches the volume it should be at over a second or 2. How can I fix this?

Have you installed the latest audio driver? Are you using speakers?

Yes I have, and yes, I am using speakers. Klipsch Promedia 2.1. However, when using the speakers built in to my monitor, it still does the fading in thing

I wouldn't even mess with your monitor's speakers. Sound quality of a telephone if not worse.

Does this happen to all sounds and audio files too?

Sure does, when I run the test audio in the speaker configuration screen (where it plays a sound through one speaker and then the other), I barely hear the ending of the sound that plays through the first speaker, but the one that plays through the other is clear, and that is only because of the fade in time.

It happens during all windows sounds, all youtube videos, all songs. Once sounds are already playing then they play perfectly, but there seems to be some sort of fade setting somewhere that I don't know how to change

Agreed, sounds like a software setting in your player. What program do you use to play stuff?

Well to play songs I use Windows Media Player. To play youtube videos I play them through google chrome, as for the windows sounds, well, I use windows 7, lol. It happens for all sounds, so I feel like it has to be some sort of system setting somewhere

Do you use onboard sound controllor or a sound card? I don't have any real ideas as yet but the more information we get the more someone might find the clue to your problem.

Onboard sound, someone on tomshardware suggested a new sound card, but I've never had this problem with onboard sound before, so I wasn't sure if it was even worth the investment.

Have you recently run any of those "tweak up" type programs? Anything that might have altered any of your settings. ? How old is your machine? I'm assuming your running Windows 7?