Indeed, I'm sure my sound card cost however much you'd spend in one night at the pub or one weeks worth of beer or whatever, so can't be a big loss at all, if it's that important to you xD

Anyway, do Raf's checkilist, and maybe also check in dxdiag (from Start, Run) since that'll tell you what audio devices are installed and detected too, and has a sound test thing in there too.