hissing is killing me

[hammeraxe]

so today i turned on my old xubuntu desktop just to acknowledge that the sound output is replaced by some extremely annoying hissing. both the speakers and headphones when plugged in the comp just hiss. when a sound file is played some notions of it can be heard but everything is overthrown by the noise.
the alsa volume sliders do nothing about it so my only solution is to remove all audio devices for now.

i am not sure if this is a software problem or my sound card has just gone wild.
does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this? or at least understand whats actually wrong?

my soundcard is Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (Chip: SigmaTel STAC9721,23)

EDIT:never mind, i figured it out and almost lost my hearing when the headphones suddely exploded with maximum volume
it had something to do with the IEC958 value, whatever that is