Originally Posted by markl
Yes, stock card in my Dell XPS (2 month old computer). The sound card may be responsible for the upper-midrange hump (though I didn't hear this on the stock speakers, or the M-Audio AV20s), but the boxy-ness, hollowness and "cupped hands" are definitely an artifact of the enclosures of the speakers themselves.
I'm not high on my Dell's stock sound card. Have you tried hooking up a good CD player to the A5's? Do you still hear the artifacts you were describing? I suspect the A5 is more revealing and shows the flaws of the source, as a pair of good speakers tend to. If that's the case, you may consider upgrading your sound card next.