Hello Remy,

I'm not certain this reply will be of much help.

I also had an audio problem, on maverick, after installing VLC, it somehow increased some volume setting somewhere, resulting in heavily distorted audio, like from a cheap ghetto blaster at maximum volume (does that sound familiar?), not just with VLC but with every program that produces sound, also sound was much louder than before, even tough the volume applet and the external speakers were set to the same levels as before installing VLC (Is Debian louder than Maverick on your box?). Setting either higher or lower had very little influence on the sound quality, removing it (apt-get purge) did not help either. In the end I found an answer (on the web) and on the command line I reset something to it's factory default and now I have good quality audio again but, I can't remeber what I typed to get there. I tried to recreate the problem by playing with all the controls I could find, to no avail, I could not produce anything like that amount of distortion. Perhaps someone knows how to reset everything back to it's default or what commands (if any) directly affect the digital to analog converter.

Frank.

PurpleAlien
I tried your advice and it solved my problems with sound in certain high profile videos.
Thanks!