Hello. I'm using Mandrake 10.1 for PPC with my iBook.

I cannot get sound past a certain threshold after which it distorts greatly. I can hear everything well but it's a bit too low for confort whereas Mac OS X can blast this baby to the roof.

I have tried aumix to balance volume, bass, treble, etc. but it doesn't help very much.
Does the hardware have some kind of volume control that Linux may have access to, something that would emulate Mac OS X speaker buttons ?

I am using OSS support. I don't know if changing my sound wrapper, to ALSA for instance, would fix anything; the sound works, albeit it's low.

If I understand correctly, I have the same problem. I tried Alsamixergui to tweak my sound, but the bass is just too loud, and it seems to alternate volume levels during songs...
for example, if I'm in terminal and I type something, and keep backspace down until I get to the beginning of the line, the first warning beep will be louder than the others that follow... ?????? weird. same thing happens when I play music. the fist fraction of a second of a song (and all the bass beat...???) is louder than the rest of the song. HELP!
Da Panther