let me give you my situation, I have an aspire one netbook and the internal mic is stereo but the 2 channels are combined 180 degrees out of phase so if left and right channels are set to similar levels there is no sound recorded. The solution is to open pulse audio volume control and set one channel to zero and the other to an appropriate level. A well behaved program such as skype has the option to adjust audio settings automatically or not. (naturally not is appropriate) google voice and video plugin doesn't have this option and sets both audio input channels to the same level resulting in silence. As a consequence the input settings for skype have also been lost. It seems wrong that 2 user level programs should be interacting like this , it appears that the audio input settings are set for the system not for the application or the user. There are a number of possible ways to tackle this problem rewrite applications to play nice but one rogue application wrecks that plan. allow input settings to be set per application - better but perhaps over engineered/ allow users to set the input volume levels probably as root and then deny any changes requested by user level programs. This would appear to be near ideal certainly it makes sense for a user to be able to determine suitable levels and not be over ridden by a browser plugin. any chance that the super user can set and lock the input levels? cheers bk