Recording problem

I'd be very pleased to know if anyone else has tried recording on one of these. I bought it because it has Line-in and a better sampling rate for live recordings (built-in mic) than most MP3 devices, but it appears to lack any sort of level control, so when I record anything close by (e.g. piano) it quickly peaks and distorts very noisily. This seems a strange omission, and I wonder if mine is faulty, or if I should be looking for a software update - the current version is 2.600.300

I'm recording at 32k using PCM, which seems to be the least compressed.

Any feedback gratefully received.

James