Very very weak sound from the speaker

[Rommel Martinez]

I'm wondering why is it that no matter what I do, I can't seem to make
my laptop emit sound lounder than a whisper.  The laptop is an ECS
Elitegroup W330 (Arima W330-UCX) and this is the website of the
laptop: http://www.arimacorp.com/ViewProduct.asp?View=145

I thought at first there was no sound coming out at all, so what I did was I
plugged an external speaker to it and maxed out the volume via the
volume knob and set my mixer settings all to 100, then I was able to
hear sound from the speaker, but it's too weak to be of any good use.

The following is my configuration:

$ cat /boot/loader.conf | grep snd_
snd_ich_load="YES"

$ kldstat | grep snd_
 3    1 0xc0d30000 6f88     snd_ich.ko

$ kldstat | grep sound
 4    2 0xc0d37000 4a5ac    sound.ko

$ cat /var/run/dmesg.boot | grep pcm
pcm0: <Intel ICH6 (82801FB)> port 0x5000-0x50ff,0x48c0-0x48ff mem
0xb0040800-0xb00409ff,0xb0040400-0xb00404ff irq 20 at device 30.2 on
pci0
pcm0: [ITHREAD]
pcm0: <Avance Logic ALC250 AC97 Codec>

$ cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 32bit 2007061600/i386)
Installed devices:
pcm0: <Intel ICH6 (82801FB)> at io 0xb0040800, 0xb0040400 irq 20 bufsz
16384 kld snd_ich [MPSAFE] (1p:1v/1r:1v channels duplex default)

$ mixer
Mixer vol is currently set to 100:100
Mixer pcm is currently set to 100:100
Mixer speaker is currently set to 100:100
Mixer line is currently set to 100:100
Mixer mic is currently set to 100:100
Mixer cd is currently set to 100:100
Mixer rec is currently set to 100:100
Mixer igain is currently set to 100:100
Mixer ogain is currently set to 100:100
Mixer line1 is currently set to 100:100
Mixer phin is currently set to 100:100
Mixer phout is currently set to 100:100
Recording source: mic

I tried audacious, xmms, and mpg123 but I still get
the same behaviour.

What's causing this? Can anybody give pointers why
is this happening?

Thanks.

-- 
Rommel M. Martinez <ebzzry at gmail.com>