no microphone activated for dell 1525 laptop, no skype sound etc

[galen]

what's the best approach to fix this? alsamixer pulsemixer or is some upstart configuration needed?

[paxmark1]

 Posting the relevant part of lspci -vvvv     never hurts.  Myself I like inxi -A

pulseaudio just went from 0.80 to 0.90  in testing.  In sid(uction) for some installing the recommend  pulseaudio-module-udev helped a few.  I cannot remember if Sparky automatically installs recommends. Check to see which version of pulseaudio you have. 

Musca's reply in http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=6277.msg51672#msg51672  is elegant.  But only if you are lacking pulseaudio-module-udev.  Also a similar topic in German on Siduction with similar concerns.  http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=6275.msg51657#msg51657

Myself - when things flip from digital to analog or vice versa or output jacks stop working -  for first debug I go with pavucontrol.  Then to alsamixer.