Soubd problems solved with ... kmix!

[Pariksheet Nanda]

> Once I "fixed the problem" with KMix, I had no need to run it again and
> xfce4-mixer is not showing anything different than the last setup I did
> ----
>
> What should I do in order to "read" the setup dpne with xfce4-mixer?

kmix and xfce4-mixer are graphical front ends for alsa / oss mixer settings.

In your first email of this thread you explained that you were unable
to use your microphone via xfce4-mixer.  I assume that your mic was
unusable because it was either muted or disabled...and kmix was able
to to rectify the situation.  It could have done this by
1)  Unmuting your microphone and/or raising the volume by making some
changes to your alsa / oss mixer settings
2)  Making changes to the alsa / oss configuration of your sound card

Both these situations are what Alexander summarized in his reply.

I was assuming it would likely be (1), and the way to test for that
would be to mute / reduce the volume of your microphone and see if you
can undo the change using xfce4-mixer (to verify if kmix has that
something extra which made your sound work in 5 minutes ^_~)

Hope that helps makes sense of things.

For my sound card, actually, I was unable to use the microphone
because I never knew of the `alsamixer -V a' command which shows all
the mixer sliders including the microphone volume.  I then had to
press the :space: key under the "Mic" slider and then raise its volume
as well as that of "Mic Boost".
By default `alsamixer' does not show the mic controls for me.  Until I
had enabled the mic, the mic mixers"mic" and "mic boost" never showed
up in xfce4-mixer IIRC.