...

Something wild is merged in his system. It has a wrong "Master" control without suffix. Also a strange "Pre-Amp" control is found there, too. The string doesn't fix in kernel or alsa-lib codes at all.

The softvol master volume must have been from a try > with asound.rc

config, but it didn't help.

Here is updated alsa-info script without asound.rc: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=ab5362501881befcdaee94e44278820d43bf92f1

Meanwhile, in order to test sound, I have tried severeal live distros including: Ubuntu/Lubuntu 12.10, Mint, Crunchbang and the result is the same: no sound or sound that is very low with a lot of noise.

Tried to update alsa to 1.0.25 following this tutorial: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1681577 but that also failed, resulting with "no driver to compile".

Don't know what else to try, and cannot believe that after more than 7 years with Linux now when I finally have completely Intel based computer the sound is making this much trouble.

it is not easy to remove the softvol since it is recreated by "alsactl restore" and you still have those softvol controls and a 191dB Master playback volume

there must be a bug in alsa lib when you have a stereo softvol master and a mono virtual master playback volume

when both softvol without suffix "playback volume" , the capability of pre-amp is volume(global) but master is pvolume

Amixer output !!-------------

!!-------Mixer controls for card 0 [Intel]

Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xfeaf8000 irq 43' Mixer name: 'Realtek ALC887-VD' Components: 'HDA:10ec0887,10438445,00100302' Controls : 43 Simple ctrls : 22 Simple mixer control 'Master',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 255 Mono: Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [191.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [191.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Pre-Amp',0 Capabilities: volume penum Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: 0 - 5 Front Left: 5 [100%] Front Right: 5 [100%]

control.32 { comment.access 'read write' comment.type INTEGER comment.count 1 comment.range '0 - 64' comment.dbmin -6400 comment.dbmax 0 iface MIXER name 'Master Playback Volume' value 64 }

control.40 { comment.access 'read write user' comment.type INTEGER comment.count 2 comment.range '0 - 255' comment.tlv '0000000100000008ffffec1400000014' comment.dbmin -5100 comment.dbmax 0 iface MIXER name 'PCM Playback Volume' value.0 255 value.1 255 }

control.42 { comment.access 'read write user' comment.type INTEGER comment.count 2 comment.range '0 - 5' comment.tlv '0000000100000008fffffe0c000001f4' comment.dbmin -500 comment.dbmax 2000 iface MIXER name Pre-Amp value.0 5 value.1 5 } control.43 { comment.access 'read write user' comment.type INTEGER comment.count 2 comment.range '0 - 255' comment.tlv '0000000100000008ffffec1400000014' comment.dbmin -5100 comment.dbmax 0 iface MIXER name Master value.0 255 value.1 255