Are you using the prefix -c (or --card) to select the usb sound card?

Here's what I found after a fast internet search: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Amixer and http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/amixer1.html

Hope this helps, now it's my turn to try to help you out.

Att.,

BC

Thank you, I did not know from kultex's post that the amixer command was specific to one card only.

Does a modem on a sound card have its own amixer settings?

Thank you

@ slicel - did I write a alsa sound howto? - normally you just have only one soundcard - so it is enough to type "amixer contents" - if you have more, you have to identify the card before with "aplay -l" and then type eg "amixer -c 0 contents" for card 0. ""And a modem has no amixer settings!! "" - !!Edit- not true!! And a equalizer for a soundcard is always software based and has nothing to do with hardware - even in windos!

And it would be nice to tell finally the name of your laptop / hardware - as I already told you, there is no guarantee, that all hardware is running under linux, even when you know, that normally the chip could work under linux. In my now I think 16 years of linux experiance ( I started with Suse 1.0), I had quite a lot of devices, who never worked.

I just have seen, that the modem is seen as a soundcard - Subdevice

like on my X31:

tux@slitaz:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel 82801DB-ICH4]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Modem [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 Modem], device 0: Intel ICH - Modem [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 Modem - Modem]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

and the output of

tux@slitaz:~$ amixer -c 1 contents
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='Caller ID Switch'
  ; type=BOOLEAN,access=rw------,values=1
  : values=off
numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='Modem Speaker Volume'
  ; type=INTEGER,access=rw------,values=2,min=0,max=3,step=0
  : values=0,0
numid=1,iface=MIXER,name='Off-hook Switch'
  ; type=BOOLEAN,access=rw------,values=1
  : values=off

but as I tould you, that I never used these modems, I have no idea, what this meens