Is Your Sound Very Soft in Ubuntu?

Ever since Ubuntu 7.10, my sound in Ubuntu has been very muted. Normally I just shrugged and jacked the volume up, however recently I was forced to use headphones to hear my music and I noticed that the sound was unbearably soft. I did a bit of looking around, and found the solution here: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15851:

try running alsamixer in a console and check everything is unmuted and maxed. (use arrow keys to move/adjust , M key to mute/unmute and ESC to save and exit)

Worked 100% for me, though that’s because I’m using ALSA as my playback device.