Comment 2 for bug 433055

same thing here, I guess:
1) pulseaudio's volume meter (recording) works fine, displaying a healthy microphone input level variation up to almost 100% when I speak.
2) the corresponding microphone input level in pulseaudio's volume control does not display any input level, total silence, even with the mic volume sliders at max. If I tap the microphone with force, I can see a tiny bit of input level; but this causes the volume meter (recording) in (1) to explode and oversaturate, so there's a weird discrepancy somewhere inside pulseaudio.
3) gnome sound recorder works (mic is fine)
4) skype does not work (mic is silent)
5) arecord does not work (mic is silent, even though it says 'playback/recording through the pulseaudio sound server')

if I go in pulseaudio manager and increase on the devices tab the alsa_input...analog-stereo volume properties to any values between 100% and 480%, then (1) saturates, (2) shows a good activity in the mic input level, but gnome-record, arecord and skype only record noise and static, probably because the mic input is being clipped. So, for skype and arecord the choice right now is either no mic sound or noise.