VIA8237 AC'97 Audio
 

Curious to know if there is a newer/better driver sitting around for this thing. It's old, I know, and I would just get a Creative Live USB audio box, but I don't have the money for it right now.

The reason I am asking is because the driver I have for Leopard is OLD. 10.5 OLD. I cannot change the volume through software, as it's always at 50% volume. The only way I can change it is via my speakers' wired remote/headphone jack, and because it's at 50% volume, turning it loud distorts music. I also cannot change the balance via software at all, and the balance is still off a bit (not 50/50 as it should be, more like 55/60 for left/right respectively), although it's way better than the vanilla AC97 driver from Apple that's near 10/90 balance...

Can any one lend a helping hand?

00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)

Anyone got any info about this?

are you sure these are actually via. They usually tend to be realtek onboard with this chipset. Even tho they would be identified by anything that matches ids as via

After some research, it is a Realtek chip (CMI9761A), but lspci -nn identifies it as:

Any ideas?

Recompiling AC97 driver with added device ID would do the trick...
It is freely available from Apple's opensource site (http://developer.apple.com/opensource) under 10.4.3

The device "works" (I have sound). That's about all it would give, if anything. I'm looking for software controls to be working, I don't know what it would take to get that.