Alsa mixer on picore - cannot save

I have a picore player which never remembers the level settings, which always start out too low...I adjust the volume, then forget how high it is, then switch to TV -- ouch says my ears !

I tried

alsactl store

but I get an error saying the state file is locked ...

file /var/lib/alsa/asound.state lock error: File exists

Would like to permanently assign levels --

THX