Issues with sound card on Dell Inspiron 9300

[dbau]

Hello,
I'm running Mint 3.0 on my Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop (2.6.20-16).
I do have sound, but the sound quality is really poor. For some strange reason the sound quality gets better the higher the volume is. As far as I can tell the on board sound card is being recognized, and the driver is installed properly:

dbau@(none):~$ lshw -class sound
*-multimedia
description: Multimedia audio controller
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1e.2
bus info: pci@00:1e.2
version: 03
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=Intel ICH latency=0
resources: ioport:ed00-edff ioport:ec40-ec7f iomemory:dffffe00-dfffffff iomemory:dffffd00-dffffdff irq:16

Any ideas what could be the cause and how I should go about fixing this issue?

Thanks,
Daniel

[Husse]

Welcome to Mint dbau
A quick googling for your problem reveals nothing.
The main reason is (of course) AC97 which is a standard integrated soundcard but with not too good quality and also heavily software dependent
On the other hand I've got one nvidia/AC97 with OK sound.
Check if there is a difference between alsa and oss - this is selected in the preferences of your application
As far as I can see your lshw looks OK

[dbau]

Thanks for your fast reply. I'll check if switching between alsa and oss makes a difference.
---Daniel