BF2142 surround sound issue

Hiya all, I bought battlefield 2142 a while ago and whenever I go to settings-sound and select the hardware option and I join a game, I will hear excellent surround sound with a very irritating noise of an airplane. That's a noise I won't hear when selecting the software option. Is the problem my onboard soundcard or what?
My computer specs are:
Amd Athlon 4200+ X2
MSI K9N neo
Nanya 2x512MB DDR2/800 + Nanya 2x1GB DDR2/800
Onboard soundcard Realtek ALC883 HD 7.1

Thanks in advance!!!

Another possibility is that your speakers handle the software option better than they do the hardware option. It may sound counter intuitive but sometimes weird problems have weird causes.

My problem is with my spdif out and my Sherwood receiver. I have my computer's volume control set at just 14% so I have to turn my receiver way up to hear anything. My receiver "hears" too well though. Even at that level it sometimes turns itself off to prevent overload, so going higher is out of the question. It can't go more than a minute or 2 before it does the same thing if the level is any higher. I expect it might have something to do with the fact that I am using Vista and the Realtek drivers for it are every bit as new as the OS.

I use two different 2.1 speakersets and whenever I turn when ingame I hear the sound of an airplane go from one to another speaker. I think it would be a weird if it has something to do with my speakers. But who knows. maybe other suggestions of what might be wrong?

I'm assuming that the Realtek sound you're talking about is the standard integrated sound on your mobo? If it's not and you have another output of some kind I'd try switching the speakers to that. (My receiver that I referred to has no problem when I use the analog out for my Asus board. That's why I'm not bothering with getting a sound card for 1 of its 2 PCI slots.) If you don't have the option of trying a different output, then maybe you should try a sound card to see if that works. I'm assuming that other than the sound the game plays better with the hardware option than the software option. Integrated sound isn't always the best and sometimes analog works better than digital.

I just read through the reviews for that mobo on Newegg. More than 1 person said that they've had problems with system stability in general or with the sound drivers. Are you sure the drivers for the sound are all up to date?

I'll check on that =D