Comment 2 for bug 683689

So the problem here is that, on a nontrivial portion of hardware, having the input unmuted alongside the output results in pretty disastrous feedback, which is arguably a nastier user experience than an unintuitive capture-enabled-by-default mechanism. This bit of hardware nastiness is not limited to any subset of codecs (or revisions of codecs, even) or controllers either, unfortunately. The question, therefore, becomes, "Should Ubuntu choose brokenness A by default over brokenness B?"

Now, I empathize with your frustration, but at a distro choice level, it's very difficult to judge whether brokenness A is worthwhile over brokenness B.

I think in this case that we should evaluate unmuting the microphone once a pulse client connects a source-output. Any opinions?