So, I compiled Audacious with LADSPA support. I have a LADSPA Plug-in called Stereo Amplifier. I enabled the LADSPA Plug-in from Preferences, and then selected the Stereo Amplifier. A window with a control opened up, but it was too small to move the slider, so I stretched it a little bit and moved the slider a little to the right. The space below the slider showed 86 dB and the sound was distorted.

The sound card seems to working just fine. All my applications run smoothly and there is no problem.

The problem is that, well, I'm scared. I want to know what exactly happened here. Did my soundcard actually send 86 dB to my stereo system (which is connected to the computer) ? Can I actually fry my sound card or my stereo this way? Can please anybody clear me up on this? I use ALSA, and I tried reading the documentation that came with the kernel, but there was nothing about such a thing. So, please, any help?

I use Fedora Core 4, by the way.

No, you can not fry an amplifier from too much distortion. You can fry speakers from too much distortion. A 10 watt amplifier can output 100 watts with distortion, so if the speakers are 20 watts, they are going to be fried. The same goes true if you increase bass and treble controls.

When audio distortion gets more intense, it will look more like a square wave than a sine wave.