Inadequate sound device control

[stan]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2012 09:32:27 -0400
Jonathan Kamens <jik at kamens.us> wrote:

> In particular, I would like to be able to control things at this
> level:

came through blank here

> Except (a) the alsamixer curses interface is hardly one that's easy
> for random users to find, and (b) even in alsamixer, I have to hit F6
> and select my sound card before I see the level of granularity shown
> above.

Use alsamixer -c <card number here, start from 0>
You can find card numbers with
aplay -l
Once in alsamixer, F3 is playback, F4 is record, F5 is combined.

For really detailed settings, install alsa-utils and use amixer.

> In any case, instead of being able to adjust settings at that level,
> the GNOME system settings give me a single output volume slider and a
> single input volume slider.

That is the interface to pulseaudio, its replacement for alsamixer.

> Am I missing something? Is there a way to make the system settings
> give me access to the whole shebang and I'm just missing it?

Don't know the answer to this, have always adjusted alsa directly when
necessary.