yesterday i was using skype with a friend, writing my messages while listening to him. today i bought a headset - but don't hear anything from it. i connected active speakers and now i'm able to hear something [edit: very silent!!], when volume is screwed up to maximum.
what did i do in between? i ran realplayer, that's all. i checked all my sound-preferences, volume is at maximum (while "master" has no influence on the volume, in opposition to "pcm").
what can i do? what is the problem? i read about someone having the same kind of trouble in fc; not knowing how to fix it.

best regards
ungua

start playing something, a CD or MP3 then hit alt + F2 on you keyboard, you should get a windows waiting for a command type xterm and hit enter
now you should have a terminal window type:

alsamixer

hit enter and you should get something that looks like a mixer use the keyboard arrows to change the level. up and down lowers and raises the sound the left and right buttons change which channel your working on. see if that gets the sound levels to go higher.