Comment 9 for bug 921397

I, too am affected by this issue, or at least an issue which quacks like this one.

I am using a samsung 7 series (700Z5A-S01), with a 3.2 kernel. For me, slightly different alsamixer values are reported (see attached file). Most notably, it reports my headphone as a sliderless control. For me too, headphone volume is controlled with the 'speaker' slider.

My workaround required a little bit more magic:

in analog-output-headphones
[Element Speaker]
; link to muting
switch = mute
; set volume to zero, so only the master slider controls playback volume. This gives better linearity.
volume = zero