Ipod touch audio problems?

When I plug my ear buds into my ipod touch, some sound goes through the ear buds, but most of the sound just comes out the speaker and everyone can hear it. This is a 64 gigabyte ipod and I just got it for Christmas. It is brand new and I cannot see something is already wrong with it. It has not been dropped, sat on, or anything else. It just happened when I took the ipod from my JBL speaker system that is made for ipods. My ear buds have a control for sound and the ipod does not respond. I have never owned an ipod, just an mp3 so I might just be missing something.