low volume on mic on Intel mobo

[Felipe Figueiredo]

Hello,

my soundcard is the builtin in my Intel D945GTP motherboard, and I can't hear 
anything recorded with the microphone, except by maxing the output volume 
after the recording. Even then, it's fairly low, and this makes audio 
conferencing impossible (so that I must be mute, or get deaf after a couple 
of minutes of conversation).

I experimented more than one microphone, and both the OSS-only version of 
Skype, and it's ALSA-enabled newer one. I also tried Krecord and audacity, 
all, with the same result. 

I am sure the mixer settings are right, all capture channels are unmuted, and 
maxed. Apparently the mobo chip is (not!) smart enough as to pull down a 
little the capture volume when it thinks it will get much noise, but even 
when I keep looking at 

Does anybody have a clue if this is solvable, if it's a hardware problem and I 
must get a proper (please, define 'proper') soundcard, or if there's some 
special configuration

I'm not even sure of what information might be useful so you people can help 
me out, but attached is the result 'amixer -i'.

Thanks in advance.
FF
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Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
  Capabilities: pvolume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 255
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
  Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Front',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 127
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 127 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 127 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Surround',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 127
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 127 [100%] [0.00dB] [off]
  Front Right: Playback 127 [100%] [0.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Center',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 127
  Mono: Playback 127 [100%] [0.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'LFE',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 127
  Mono: Playback 127 [100%] [0.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Line In as Output',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [off]
Simple mixer control 'Mic as Output',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [off]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 14
  Front Left: Capture 14 [100%] [21.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 14 [100%] [21.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0
  Capabilities: enum
  Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line'
  Item0: 'Line'
Simple mixer control 'Mux',0
  Capabilities: cvolume
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 4
  Front Left: Capture 4 [100%] [40.00dB]
  Front Right: Capture 4 [100%] [40.00dB]