Headphone jack distorted, but internal speakers fine?

I haven't even had it a day and I've already run into problems on my Macbook 2.2GHz C2D. It seems the internal speakers work just fine for music, but when I plug in headphones or earbuds into the output jack the vocals and anything that's not panned hard left/right basically goes away. And when I plug in a stereo system to the output jack it gives me a loud low frequency hum. This happens both in Leopard and in XP (I have both installed on the macbook). No red light in the output jack, and everything else works just fine (although I recently noticed I no longer get an XP boot screen... Kind of odd, but it may have to do with the fact that I have so much RAM installed).
What's weird is, if I go into the system sound preferences either in XP or Leopard and mess with the left/center/right balance, all the way left or right the vocals come back in (although it's still in both ears, which it shouldn't be), but when you center the balance you lose everything that is centered in the mix (mainly, the vocals and any main instrument that's not panned hard left/right).
I tried updating my drivers, using different headphones/earbuds, wiggling the jack around, different songs and players, even went so far as to reformat and reinstall Leopard. Still messed up :-[
The only aftermarket modifications I've made has been an upgrade from 1GB to 4GB RAM and a boot camp install of XP. Unfortunately, as I'm going to be using this computer mainly for Pro Tools music production and editing, I really need the headphone jack to be at 100%!
Any suggestions? I'm thinking it's hardware related, as it happens both in XP and Leopard with all the latest drivers installed.

Try switching back to your previous ram and see if there is any difference. It may be hardware as you say, and a quick trip to your Apple tech should verify that. I work with audio too ...I like to use the Griffin iMic for both sound in and out - it's a USB devise that'll give you a better signal and keep your line in/out ports free so you're not jarring them when you have the small 1/8th adapters/cables plugged in.
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic

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