JockVSJock,

From what I know, considering the HELL I went through getting ALSA to work, the "alsamixer" is provided within the "alsa-utils" package. If you can't run the alsamixer, then you don't have alsa running, or not completely, that is.

This is the extent of my knowledge, on the subject, to get ALSA, you need three things:
(1) ALSA drivers for your specific Sound Card
(2) ALSA-Base
(3) ALSA-Utils

You might want to view my two threads, currently running on this forum, "General Questions" -=- Topics: "Sound Editing K3b and cdaudio, sound slowed?" and "Shopping List (Part II)" - the exact topics are not known, but the jest is close. Even though the "K3b" topic is resolved, it got me to install ALSA, which began a new "internal" thread in that topic, and the "Shopping List" topic was started because now that I have ALSA running, I now get static, or noise, introduced into my audio recordings.

I am sure you will also get a response within this topic, but, it can't hurt to see what "you" might be getting yourself into Among the many who helped me, get where I am now, are frequently assisting on these topics, those in particular where: Stephen, Windos_No_Thanks, Fingers99, and Markus -=- as for my issues, if you get ALSA running, and you can record an audio source, and when playing it back, you don't have introduced noise (static), I would be interested in seeing what was done - not to mention, I will be watching this thread/topic, as well, to see the progress

Good Luck, and hope yours doesn't go as bad as mine,
Cuddles