the same occour to me on a dell inspiron 6000, it seems to me that some volume controls are not tied with master ones, i've to switch to totem application and move the volume control inside the application, the master volume does nothing on pcm volume
this is on edgy (clean install, not upgrade), it worked for me in dapper -- Volume keyboard shortcut fails to increase volume https://launchpad.net/bugs/36302 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
