12.04 How do I enable Mic without using alsamixer

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

Now xubuntu have dispensed with the xfce-mixer applet in preference to pavucontrol, I have to enable or unmute my microphone/line-in input with alsamixer. There doesn't appear to be any other way of doing it, or have I missed something?

[Toz]

Try using the amixer command. Something like:

amixer sset 'Internal Mic',0 mute

...and

amixer sset 'Internal Mic',0 unmute

You need to replace 'Internal Mic',0 with the actual mixer name that can be obtained by running just:

amixer

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

OK Toz, that's a good cli alternative,

I have been using:

amixer set 'Mic',0 'Playback' <'on'/'off'>

to good effect on another little project

but is there no applet that will do it?

[Toz]

You could create a new launcher that runs a microphone mute toggling script something like this:

#!/bin/bash

#get mic status
MIC_STATUS=off
amixer get 'Internal Mic',0  | grep "\[off\]" > /dev/null || MIC_STATUS=on

case $MIC_STATUS in
	on) amixer sset 'Internal Mic',0 mute ;;
	off) amixer sset 'Internal Mic',0 unmute ;;
	*) ;;
esac

Then by clicking on the launcher it will toggle the state of the microphone.

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

You could create a new launcher that runs a microphone mute toggling script something like this:

#!/bin/bash

#get mic status
MIC_STATUS=off
amixer get 'Internal Mic',0  | grep "\[off\]" > /dev/null || MIC_STATUS=on

case $MIC_STATUS in
	on) amixer sset 'Internal Mic',0 mute ;;
	off) amixer sset 'Internal Mic',0 unmute ;;
	*) ;;
esac

Then by clicking on the launcher it will toggle the state of the microphone.

Nice Just expressing my amazement that there is no gui way to do this, how would a newbie cope? Nothing shows up in pavucontrol when the mic is plugged in.

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

OK, had a pour over synaptic and found xfce4-mixer. Installed that, and got the old volume mixer back, by adding the volume plugin from Panel (right click) > Add New Items.