line-in stays clean, mic signal processed

[raydar]

 > On Wednesday 20 February 2008, raydar wrote:

> > > This seems tantalizingly close to sounding like an audio port
> > > configuration change of some kind, but I'm just clueless enough not to
> > > know precisely where to prod in Linux. Does this sound like a symptom
> > > anyone else has had?
>   

> Sounds like some trouble I used to have with the emu10k1.

> I'm not looking at a setup with the same hardware as yours, but this might 
> work.  Try running QAmix, and play with the combo box on the Capture tab.  I 
> bet it's sitting at "Mic" and you want to change it to "Line."


Aha, thanks--I do think I've found a solid limb on the troubleshooting tree . . . I had fired up QAMix before, just looking for levels to adjust or mutes to unmute, but now that you said "combo box" and I just have a big blank space where apparently it should be, I'm thinking something's definitely odd.  I.e., if my QAMix "Capture" tab is supposed to look anything like it does here http://www.suse.de/~mana/kalsatools.html then I need to reinstall QAMix or reconfigure whatever QAMix looks to in order to populate the "Capture" tab with appropriate controls, 'cause all I have are (1) 2 vertical sliders with green fields for numbers above them, (2) 2 "Lock" checkboxes, with the labels "Capture" and "Active," and (3) 2 checkboxes without any label, roughly centered under the vertical sliders. (All those checkboxes are checked, & sliders are at 50%.)  To the right of that, the "Capture" tab is just blank, as opposed to having the 3 combo boxes I see in the link above. QAMix is showing version 0.0.7 and "HDA-Intel" at the top, and under the "Soundcard" menu item it shows "HDA-Intel (hw:0)."  (But I just can't have an outdated version; this is a fresh install. :] )  

So, I'm reckoning you're right on as to the setting that needs to be changed; any thoughts on where to go from here, to make it present itself for alteration?

--Ray