There are efforts to provide a virtual software Master control, and much of that (ongoing) work is present in 8.10 alpha 6. Please try an 8.10 alpha 6 desktop image to attempt to reproduce the symptom.
Note also that with the inclusion of PulseAudio in 8.04, this symptom's severity is considerably lessened.
@Miguel Please file a separate bug for the nondeterministic hotkey behaviour.
There are efforts to provide a virtual software Master control, and much of that (ongoing) work is present in 8.10 alpha 6. Please try an 8.10 alpha 6 desktop image to attempt to reproduce the symptom.
Note also that with the inclusion of PulseAudio in 8.04, this symptom's severity is considerably lessened.
@Miguel Please file a separate bug for the nondeterministic hotkey behaviour.