I'm not sure if this is a problem with aRts or something else, but with KDE, the volume of the sound that comes out from my sound card is way too low. I usually make up for it by turning up the volume of my external speakers. However, I realized that I could not do that when I connected my headphones directly to the sound card in order to try my Skype account. The voice from the other end of the line was barely audible, even though the relevant volume controls of KMix were all the way up.

Is there any way to "up" the default volume that comes from the sound card, or any other way to fix this problem?

Thanks,
Dai

well, you should check out aumix in the K-menu. It's in multimedia.

If you want to turn up your headphones, you'll have to up the volume on another setting (test until you find the right one), I think mine is set to pcm2 or something.

Also, are you using ALSA?

Thanks for the reply. Looks like aumix and kmix show the exact same information. I plugged my headphones directly into the speaker input of the sound card and tried different settings, ending up turning all the settings to the max. The sound coming from the headphones was still barely audible.

I'm not sure if I'm using ALSA. How do I figure it out? I'm using KDE 3.1.5, if it gives you any clue.

go to a Konsole and, as root, type - set those volumes up...