Update: I rebuilt ALSA to 1.09b and rebooted. I now have mixer 'sliders' in alsamixer for master and PCM, however. Neither slider actually has any impact on the sound lever in my speakers. Muting the PCM channel actually stops the sound. Muting the MASTER channel has no effect at all. I am testing with mpd (music player daemon) set to output as follows: o_driver "alsa09" ao_driver_options "dev=hw:0,0;buf_size=4096" I have also tested with XMMS and the Alsa Plugin v1.2.10 [libALSA.so] with the same results. Any hints / clues would be appreciated. aloha, dave Here are the proc entries for my system: /proc/asound/version Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.9b. Compiled on Sep 1 2005 for kernel 2.6.11. /proc/asound/cards 0 [SI7012 ]: ICH - SiS SI7012 SiS SI7012 with CMI9761 at 0xdc00, irq 10 /proc/asound/devices 25: [0- 1]: digital audio capture 16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback 24: [0- 0]: digital audio capture 0: [0- 0]: ctl 33: : timer /proc/asound/pcm 00-00: Intel ICH : SiS SI7012 : playback 1 : capture 1 00-01: Intel ICH - MIC ADC : SiS SI7012 - MIC ADC : capture 1 /proc/asound/oss/devices 12: [0-12]: digital audio 3: [0- 3]: digital audio 0: [0- 0]: mixer