amixer help

[Chime Hart]

Well Glen, hopefully this will at least handle an unmute.
And this begins with where this script is run from on  my Debian machine.
type /usr/local/bin/volume.py
import subprocess
import alsaaudio
from subprocess import call


cards =  len(alsaaudio.cards())
for card in range(cards):
   mixer = alsaaudio.mixers(cardindex=card,device='default')
   for mix in mixer:
     result = alsaaudio.Mixer(control=mix, id=0, cardindex=card, 
device='default')
     if len(result.switchcap()) > 0:
       try:
         result.setmute(0)
       except alsaaudio.ALSAAudioError as error:
         pass
Back again live, I am not a programmer-and-I didn't write this, but I hope it 
will help you
Chime