Can you hear me now?

I use KUbuntu 9.04 on my laptop (very simple system with snd_hda_intel driver) and I have lost an ability to record sound from its embedded microphone perhaps since the arrival of 8.10. In 8.04, that mic "just worked" in my Skype for some now unknown reason. Under Windows, it still works well. Do I have a reliable way to determine what channel name corresponds to my embedded mic and how to unmute it ? Skype gives me a list of channels with 'hw' or 'plughw' in the name, as well as variances of each with the number '0' or '6' after the comma. Total of 4. As 'Default' choice does not work, I am probably supposed to guess by myself which one of these is correct. And then, every of them could be muted, and I am supposed to know how to really unmute them and control recording gain level. In KMix, I see the proverbial picture very similar to shown above (why-alsa-sucks), only a little shorter. Of course there is no any hint about which is hw/plughw/0/6, but anyway I am able to guess that 'Front Mic' is a suitable input source for my case, as by unmuting it I can hear interference whistle from laptop's speakers, also it really reproduces other sounds heard around of it. I set 'Input Source' to 'Front Mic' in KMix but still have no luck of getting these sounds into my Skype (complete silence is heard in test calls). I turn 'Capture' on, or off, ho changes.

There should really be an understandable and convenient testing tool for sound inputs of the system (mic built-in or mic plugged into socket, as well as line input), and also accessibility of these inputs to the sound-system-of-the-day (oss-alsa-arts-gstreamer-pulseaudio-phonon-qtaudio-whatever). Like Sound Recorder in Windows, for example: if it works and I see waveforms and can hear them back, every other multimedia app should work as well. Else it is going to be useless for me. Soon I am going to reboot into Karmic 2.6.30-2 kernel in the hope this could give me any help. But now, I really really feel myself in the hell, and a prolonged hell.