Hi Slackware folk at LinuxQuestions!

After a year or two of living off other people's problems and solutions here, I've finally gotten stumped enough to post my problem. It's my mic, on Slackware 10.1. I don't think it's a driver issue, because I've watched DVDs, the playback's fine. I just can't get my built-in mic to work properly.

But here's the rub: it works for arecord, but not krec or audacity. And it has only worked for arecord for about an hour, since I finally (thanks to a post here) downloaded kamix. In kamix, I activated the mic and Capture. Nothing. Then I activated ADC (whatever that may be) and - it works. In arecord.

krec shows levels, but doesn't seem to record anything. Audacity goes nuts, records my voice like I'm Darth Vader.

And the golden fleece that began this whole charade - VoIP with Skype - is as far away as ever. The test call sort of worked once, but only once, and now, even after restarting Skype, even automated voice menus can't recognize my voice. And the test call didn't work again either.

(Any other VoIP recommendations gladly accepted; I haven't been able to get any other programs to even run. All seem to need libraries that are inextricably woven with Slack 10.2, which is a whole other story. In fact the only Skype that even dials for me is a Win version from 2005 with wine.)

So - does this mic problem sound familiar to anyone? Is there some magical combination of kamix buttons to press? Or some control to set with amixer? I just did a default install of Slack 10.1 on a Thinkpad T21, and the playback always just worked. Don't know what to do next.

I'll gladly post output from any commands you like.
Thanks in advance for any help!

I remember some time ago having some trouble with Audacity, but it was just a matter of selecting the correct input device (although I may have had to select the character device as well).

ADC is short for Analog to Digital Converter, so the mic input is ultimately being sent to the DSP for processing.

Thanks for the note! I'll have to look into the character device thing; the only option Audacity gives me for input device is /dev/dsp, which doesn't work.

I'm also hoping to get Skype to work, but no luck. The test call doesn't tell me it has a problem with my sound device, it just doesn't hear me. I don't suppose anyone's had success with Skype on Slackware 10.1?