Since I re-installed Lubuntu recently, the microphone volume on Skye is very, very low. In a test call I can hardly hear my own voice. This is true whether or not I set Skype to "let Skype control mixer." All sound devices are set to "default" and the Skype drop-down offers 10 or 12 options, far too many to test them all.
So, I tried to install a mixer. I tried pavucontrol and xfce4-mixer. These do not run at all, they fail on startup.
Alsamixer appears to work OK. Two of the mic settings were set to zero and I corrected this, but still no sound in Skype, if anything it is worse. And, there is now a constant hiss from the speaker, apparently due to the mic having a constant "presence". So, several questions:
(1) How do I get control of the microphone volume in Skype?
(2) What is the best mixer to use?
(3) If alsamixer is the best mixer, how do I stop the background hiss?
Many thanks
Andy