Why is your capture device at volume level 0? That means a recording level of zero.
I seem to have missed the first part of this thread. I had some trouble getting my SB Live! card to capture properly. There are so many different mixer devices on the card, and I had to set one that said "AC97" (I think) to an on setting with amixer, a device that would seem to have nothing to do with recording. Or maybe I turned that device off so that I didn't hear the mic at the same time. Anyway, configuring cards with ALSA can be complicated, but using a combination of alsamixer and amixer, it can be done, and then saved with alsactl.
