Can Terminal access the microphone in Catalina? (for SoX, FFmpeg, Ecasound, pyaudio etc.)
If Terminal isn't showing up in the System Preferences list for microphone permissions, open it by:

open /System/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal


Then run a program that uses the mic e.g.

sox -d -d 


(Not a pre-installed program. This will let you hear your mic input)

That should trigger it to request. If that didn't work try running the command on a different command line e.g. iTerm2. This is a problem and solution similar to the one for Audacity on Catalina. I'm not sure what the exact cause is though.