I ve had some problems making my headphones and mic to work.

I am using Hardy on a Vaio laptop.
alsa recognises my sound card, in alsamixer I have master, PCM and digital all to max. (and changing to OSS or other options in sound preferences only limits the choices)

I am trying to make volume control show the switches tab and external amplifier option based on several threads, but when I try to modify the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base there is none and gedit opens an empty file so I have nothing to modify...

according to alsamixer I have v1.0.15. Should upgrading to 1.0.18a help anything in this case?
I am asking because I wouldn't want to mess up anything, and according to the thread it is mainly for driver support, so I am a little confused on whether it's worth it since sound works ok