Volume control with STAC 92xx C-major HD audio

[mithion]

[Update: I no longer require a solution to this problem. The laptop I owned that contained this audio chipset has died on me and I'm thus getting a new one. However, I want to leave the thread up if others encounter similar issues.]

I've been having a problem with how volume is handled with my computer for several years in Linux (not specific to Mageia). I have a Dell e1705 laptop equipped with a Sigmatel STAC 92xx C-major HD sound chip. Somehow, volume control is all screwy with this setup. Volume goes from whisper quiet to quickly reach very loud volume at around 20% of the control. And then there's very little change in perceptible volume from as I change the volume bar from 20% to 100%.

The different channels (Master, PCM and LFE) also change in weird way. When I raise the volume using the keys on the computer, it seems that the PCM and LFE channels raise first. Pressing the volume up button twice will get both of those channels to 100% while the master channel will remain at zero. Then pressing again will begin raising the master volume. At this point the volume begins to become perceptible. But within two or three presses, the volume is incredibly loud. And because of the funkyness of the channels, the balance of sound isn't quite right also.

After reading quite a bit on the matter, I discovered that ALSA implements driver "quirks" to help cover the multitude of configurations possible the myriads of computers on the market. I saw somewhere that using model=dell-m27 is the quirk associated with my laptop. However, I don't know if this information is current. I'm also not quite sure where to put this quirk. Some places mention modprobe.conf while others mention modules.conf. I was wondering if anybody else had the same laptop with the same issue and whether the quirk helped fix the wonky volume. It's quite annoying as it make listening to any audio at a reasonable volume virtually impossible.

One additional thing of note which is quite peculiar, if I plug in headphones in the audio jack, the volume output works just fine with gentle gradients between mute -> soft -> normal -> loud. Anybody have any tips on how to get this sound setup working with the laptop's speakers?