What governs sound quality / volume?

[NaN]

The latest garuda installs use pipewire for the audio server. Infact if you look at your garuda-inxi that would have answered your query right away.

This is my inxi’s audio section.

Audio:
Device-1: Intel Ice Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio vendor: Lenovo
driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-icl
alternate: snd_hda_intel,snd_sof_pci_intel_icl bus-ID: 00:1f.3
chip-ID: 8086:34c8 class-ID: 0401
API: ALSA v: k6.4.7-zen1-1-zen status: kernel-api tools: N/A
Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.76 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
4: pw-jack type: plugin tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl

As you can see pipewire is my audio server. Apart from it I also use easyeffects to increase audio’s loudness on my laptop. Here is my experience with easyeffects.

Input and output audio issue with pipewire

Hey I have another idea for your low volume issue. How about trying easyeffects? Please note the following if you are going to use easyeffects. You need to install all it's optional dependencies as well since without them you won't be able to apply any effects at all. They are needed. More on them on this post below There are times when waking up from sleep leaves me with no sound on my machine. This didn't happen before using easyeffects. And changing TTY doesn't do anything at these time…

This software isn’t necessary I just use it because I need it.

PS: Also whenever posting help request in future please always follow the template you deleted and provide the full output of your garuda-inxi even if you feel it’s un-necessary.