cannot load mixer controls: Ogiltigt argument

Did you tried the command I gave you? Thoses a just to validate that your mic is working, after you can work on alsamixer. The basic command are great tools to make sure stuff is working as you want.

Maybe a long shot but did you tried the following solution provided here?
https://askubuntu.com/questions/765396/alsamixer-cannot-open-mixer-invalid-argument

It seems alsamixer can be tricky to config and some files need to be created manually (sound is muted by default at install).

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ alsamixer
cannot load mixer controls: Ogiltigt argument

and if go the settings i selcet the usb, it mutes the sound, cant use my spekars… is so stanges… i have been trying to fix this for over 4week now, and cant find any solution to it,

Mine is a webcam so I got the following:
Bus 001 Device 012: ID 046d:0826 Logitech, Inc. HD Webcam C525

Then I confirmed it was seeing my mic with arecord -l
pi@raspberrypi:~/MagicMirror/config $ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 1: C525 [HD Webcam C525], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

So my device is plughw:1,0

Try this to record 3 seconds and play it
arecord -D plughw:1,0 -d 3 test.wav && aplay test.wav

If sound is faint you can adjust the ‘gain’ by doing the following

Open the Audio Device Settings :
Open the Menu in the top left corner->Preferences -> Audio Device Settings

I also tried with a 9$ amazon mic but the sound and recording was really crappy.

Good luck!

Install again, copy stuff from old folder as needed