I had my headphones aroud 50 %, because I'm afraid to put them on 100 %.
But Speakers may be on 120-150 % for me, they will be good.
I compared N900 with 5530 and 5530 is louder.
Not to mention my phone was 3250, whitch is one idea louder.
Different people different quality, It must be Nokia new slogan instead "Nokia connecting people"
Today I will go to another shop and I will test their N900

The N900 has poor speakers that tend to break with low frequencies.
That's why pulseaudio has to do HP filtering on Maemo5.
Android doesn't do this so you get more bass but may put the speaker at risk in the long run.
Anyway has anybody outside Nokia seen the speakers break at all?

There's also some "Nokia Music Enhancement" filter, or something such, in pulseaudio. It probably does something evil like dynamic range compression.

I've broken headphones with my N900. There's always a loud pop when I plug them in, which ultimately killed them. Now I'm using an extension cable and plug that in first, then headphones into extension cable. No pops, no killed headphones..

As for headphone volume, I have to use alsamixer to drop "PCM" to 75% or so, because one step above mute is too loud for me.

I had my Sony headphones killed as well.
Now I use Philips.
I had my Sony headphones for 2-3 years and they serverd me prefect.I really miss them.

Today I was in another shop and I tested another N900.
The seller was kinda good, very good guy.
He and I tested their N900. (I didn't tell him I has N900).

Their N900 was with PR1.2. I can't be 100 % correct, because I noticed when your palm is about 1 sm away from each stereo speaker the sound becomes louder.
After the test in the shop, I imediatelly went to my home and tested my N900. They were close, or their N900 was 20-30 % louder.
I have the feeling that my stereo speakers volume level and earspeaker volume level varries. And it happens by themselfs.

I will post another threat about the differences I noticed.

It seems to be software issue, but It can be bad hardware connection (ribbon calbe, contact).

You're shure about this? It kinda makes sense (though I couldn't get those little speakers to distort even on full blast on NITdroid) . But why is there a huge difference in distortion? Even on headphones