I am running Mint Cinnamon from a USB Thumb Drive. I d/l’d VLC Media Player so I could get extra volume, since my speakers aren’t working so well. With VLC, I can boost volume to 200% & it works great in windows. But when I tried it in Mint, it’s all distorted. Any advice, or is the a better distro for working with audio as I will be recording original music with my laptop. Laptop is a HP Model 15-F337wm about 6 1/2 years old.
Good sounding audio does require good hardware. All the best software in the world will not make a speaker with a delaminated voice coil produce clear sound. If the audio hardware in the laptop is poor quality or damaged, there are external audio hardware options that can serve as a workaround. If you are recording original music, high quality external hardware will be the only way to get a quality sound for mixing and final production. That external hardware can connect to the laptop with USB interface so laptop can be used with it.
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My guess is windows was either mis-leading you and making you think you had 200% - there really isn’t such a thing (gimmick) it was either pre-amping or just fibbing to you. VLC just over amps the speakers, making it sound louder but distortion will always come with lame speakers. Mine distorts past about 110% on VLC with Mint. The speakers - are they powered or UN-powered? They are plugged into GREEN audio jack & not line-out jack - correct?
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I AM using external hardware… Peavey XR600C Mixer/Amp with Peavey PR-15 speakers. This sound system works great for everything except VLC running on Linux. I even had the volume down on the computer & raised it on the PA system… nothing works… 
It wouldn’t be windows fibbing, it would be VLC. My main reply explains the speakers I’m using and it’s going from the headphone jack to the amp… no other output on my notebook. I have used the headphone out jack for over 45 years when using tape decks, to computers & everything in-between.
The key to troubleshooting is divide and conquer, you can verify the external hardware is all in order with headphone output of music player or tape deck. It should be easy to determine that distortion is present at the headphone output of computer with a simple pair of headphones. From there it is a matter of testing the software, try an alternative to VLC. check the audio of the OS and look for gain stages that are maxed out or maybe there is some sort of boost or loudness contour setting that can be turned off. I had to help trouble audio issues once at a facility that has 17 or 18 room installations with identical audio paths through identical windows computers all loaded from the same image and for some reason the windows audio gain stages (volume bars) were NOT the same. My tech was running around the buildings getting under the appliance app to the windows OS to adjust the settings in a couple different places within windows and sometimes finding the settings had seemingly adjusted themselves. It was a very troublesome project. Audio can be really hard!