I get no sound from my headphones. Help?

[StachuK1992]

Actually, to be honest, they emit SOME sound, but it's barely barely audible. In an entirely quiet room, I can't even hear the specific words people say, I can just hear that something is happening.

It's Mint 13 32bit, and has this issue both with Cinnamon and MATE. I've also had this problem previously when I had Ubuntu 12.04 installed on this same laptop.

The speakers work fine, but the headphones don't work well. I've tried resetting pulseaudio, playing with alsamixer, all the usual stuff. Help?