I actually put that line in there myself (model=laptop), I learned that a while back for getting the speakers to mute when plugging headphones in

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I'll give your better suggestions a go though and report back.
Thanks

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Actually the biggest problem I'm having at the moment is the mixer forgetting the (laptop) keys that I assign to it on each reboot, extremely annoying!
I get no on-screen feedback either like I did under 10.3, well, the little red mute icon comes on when I press mute, but no volume feedback

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But I guess that's a SUSE problem, not an ALSA problem.