mixer strangeness?

[mal content]

Sorry, let me try that one again. I've just re-read it and it's totally
incoherent.

I believe it can be reduced to:

How do I set the volume of my Creative Soundblaster Live card
using mixer(8)? The output of mixer shows all zeroes and yet
I'm still getting a full signal:

Mixer vol      is currently set to   0:0
Mixer pcm      is currently set to   0:0
Mixer speaker  is currently set to   0:0
Mixer line     is currently set to   0:0
Mixer mic      is currently set to   0:0
Mixer cd       is currently set to   0:0
Mixer rec      is currently set to 100:100
Mixer igain    is currently set to   0:0
Mixer line1    is currently set to   0:0
Mixer phin     is currently set to   0:0
Mixer phout    is currently set to   0:0
Mixer video    is currently set to   0:0
Recording source: mic

(rec is set to 100:100, but it's an input and it's also the only
recording source, whatever mixer thinks).

MC