Comment 9 for bug 14333

This bug report seems to be an amalgum of symptoms, but the ac97s are important.

Jaime, the cmi9739 codec uses a binary toggle; your mixer "volume" elements are
incorrect in 1.0.6 and have been corrected upstream in 1.0.9rc2. You will need
to use the softvol pcm plugin with 1.0.8 (which you can get via alsa-source in
universe), because your Master and PCM volume controls are bogus (really there
are only "on" and "off" states). This was corrected in r1.66 of
alsa-kernel/pci/ac97/ac97_patch.c. To use softvol, try making an ~/.asoundrc
with something like:

pcm.something {
   type softvol
   slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
}

You will then use the plug:something device for ALSA applications.

Mijndert, Diego, and Daniel, please provide the output of ,,tail -2
/proc/asound/oss/sndstat''. If your mixer is the C-Media 97xx, there's a very
good chance your symptoms will disappear with 1.0.9rc2 (cf. ac97 fixes for
cmi97xx codecs in ALSA 1.0.9rc2).