[gentoo-user] Alsa equalizer won't work

[Melleus]

Hi to all,

I got a problem with alsa equalizer (media-plugins/alsaequal) setup. The
error that I get is:

% LANG=en alsamixer -D equal ALSA lib
ctl_equal.c:268:(_snd_ctl_equal_open) Problem with control file
.alsaequal.bin, 3.  cannot open mixer: Operation not permitted

And when I login as root I get the same error. Meantime, the sound is
working and I hear the noise when doing:

%  speaker-test -D plug:plugequal -c 2

The only alsa configuration file present is ~/.asoundrc (no /etc/asound.conf). 
So it doesn't look like misconfiguration to me.

I use the stable branch of Gentoo on Thinkpad X201 laptop.

In Debian [that I have been migrating from] it was "just working". Am I
missing something?

Thanks in advance.