OpenSUSE Hardware :: Distorted Audio - Unless At 50 Or 100% - Nvidia Nforce2 AC97

I've gone through the process of installing and setting up OpenSuse, which has been fairly streamlined.

The only problem I am having is with my Soundcard the audio coming out of it is highly digitally distorted unless I set it to 100% or 50% in the sound preferences section. Once this is done, the audio quality is still fairly awful, but doesn't sound like my guitar's fuzz box!

I'm assuming this is some sort of drivers issue and I have a few options in my yast audio configuration that I'm unsure what to do with.

They are as follows:

Now, these options are all able to be given a numerical value, first question, what do they stand for and what does the value do?

And second question, does anyone know what a semaphore is in relation to audio codecs? I have worked with audio for years and never some across this termanology?