I have looked over prior Kmix discussions and tried some things to get my Mic on my headset to work (I can hear fine in Skype). None have worked and I am looking for a more sure path to restoring what used to be possible with Kmix.

I did not notice problem with Kmix until now because on my desktop system I had to do a motherboard replacement to restore it to working. (Win XP dual boot is still damaged from prior MB problems and I have not tried to revive it yet.) New MB is ASUS A8N-SLI-Premium with Realtek ALC850 audio chip.

I just upgraded to Kubuntu 10.10 amd64 and got Skype installed. I tried echo123 in Skype and my voice did not come through. (Same thing happens if I use Phonon to make my webcam mic pick up my voice.)

alsamixer starts up, but I have not found what will let me make the mic volume control active. I press F4 to get to the right spot, but have no luck there.

Kmix Mixer has only 4 tabs. Playback Devices & Capture Devices have "internal audio analog stereo" sliders at reasonable settings. Playback Streams has Event Sounds and a slider. None are muted. Capture Streams is blank.

http://userbase.kde.org/KMix says the "The KMix interface has been significantly changed. This page does not reflect the current status of the program"--and it is dearly missed by this user.

I downloaded the ALSA Volume Control plasmoid 0.37 zip file from
kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=138990&forumpage=0
but was unsuccessful in following the instructions to get it unzipped and set up.

I have not tried pavucontrol, etc.

Was I close on any of the above and need to persist more?
Is there any hope for Kmix fixes (I already reinstalled, deleted some prior files in .kde4 etc., but I was shooting in the dark.)

Since you are using Kubuntu, you should try pavucontrol indeed.

Mamarok, Thanks for the guidance.

I installed pavucontrol. It works great. I get a visual picture of what's happening and have sliders, etc.

I tried Skype again. It's still not getting mic input from either my headset or my Creative Live Cam Optia webcam. Neither is muted but with pavucontrol feedback it is clearer.

In Phonon I made the webcam the primary source.

In the Input Devices tab of pavucontrol it shows for the webcam sound level a solid blue bar constantly as if it is getting high volume. The voice of the Skype call test shows up lower as Internal Audio Analog Stereo in that same tab with a varying blue bar reflecting the sound level for the voice of the test program from the web.

So I need to see if I can get either and eventually both mics to capture sound.

Any suggestions about where to go next?

You need to play around a bit, Skype has quirks that have no standard solution on Linux. For me it worked out of the box, for my boyfriend who uses a very similar laptop it took several changes until the Mic worked.
Currently I don't use Skype anymore but prefer the HangOut feature in Google+ which just needs the installation of a package. Both sound and image quality are far better than Skype IMHO.

Thanks.

I went and checked out alsamixer more closely and found I could make the headset mic pick up my voice.

I adjusted the volume up for Register Mic at last. I fiddled with Mic boost and Front Mic. I got voice pickup from my headset mic coming out of my speakers, so at least that mic's hardware is working.

Skype still does not pick up my voice. Using pavucontrol, I can see that my webcam is the main input as I had set it in Phonon, but neither it nor my headset mic have actual pickup in the Skype voice call test.

I will have to come back to this later. I will try focusing on Skype for awhile.

Thanks for the recommendation of Google+ HangOut.