USB sound output is really loud

[fumanju]

I got myself a USB sound stick here in Beijing, China. I paid 30RMB for it, that's about US$4. It's obviously made in China, of unknown manufacturer with unknown chipset. For 30RMB (+1RMB for roundtrip bus fares), I didn't really care much. The problem with buying cheap stuffs is that you often get what you paid for.

 

The USB sound stick works, just that the output sound is really really loud, the quality isn't much better, but again, that's what you get for 30RMB. So, the music from iTunes is still pretty loud even when I set iTunes to the lowest volume as well as the volume in the Sound panel of System Preferences.

 

Does anyone know of a way/tool to fix this problem?

 

By the way, I got a Dell E1405 with the STAC9200 or something like that. The issue with the built-in sound is that the speaker doesn't mute even with earphones plugged in, that's why i gotta use an USB sound stick. However, with the one I bought, it might just be better to use the onboard sound so as to not blow out my very nice Sony earphones (which cost me about 10 times the USB sound stick).

 

Thanks, cheers.