Yeah, the Conexant cards are known as crippleware because you can't do shit with them.
The issue I had is not the same as yours actually, so I'm not sure it will work for you. However, I suggest you try using a USB sound card and seeing if there's any improvement. I bought a Creative X-Fi Go for mine and it solved the problem I had and also made a world of difference to the audio sound quality. It's basically a USB stick with line in and line out mini jacks on it. No idea how much they go for down there but here in the UK they're about £35 new but I managed to get one off ebay from a private seller for £20 and it was well worth it. Once you've installed you into your sound devices and make sure you disable your Conexant for input and output otherwise it tried to use those instead of the X-Fi. I needed the X-Fi to resolve a lack of 'stereo mix/what u hear' option and the Creative cards are the only USB ones that do it, but for what you want you should be able to use pretty much any USB card and there are plenty about for small monies.
Best you have a word with Dave first detailing the exact problems as he'll probably be pretty clued up on these kind of issues with all the different feeds he hosts, but those Conexant cards are a pile of crap and I know a good few folks that have had problems with them.