how to handle now sound control needs?

The recent updates removed volume control applet from a panel. It is still there on an "Add to panel" list but marked as "deprecated" and when I tried, out of curiosity, to add that back to a panel then nothing happened. Why it is still on the list is anybodys guess. It does not look like that any other "mixer type" application showed up on menus as a replacement. In any case the current version of gnome-volume-control appears to be bowdlerized now to such extent that it is not likely to be of any use outside of the most trivial situations; in other words not then when it is really needed. Is alsamixer from a terminal window the only thing left? I do not mind, as long as somebody will not try to steal that, but I know users with whom this will not sit very well. Michal