But I think the blame here should be probably be with Skype. To me it doesn't seen to do that much but add complexity to the system. So Pulse supposedly gives you sound control per each app. Pulse is the sound server, while Alsa works w/ the hardware layer. I've seen so many people say they have removed Pulse from their system, I wonder why the devs continue with what appears to be a useless package. I can't believe it's so hard to use my usb phone with skype. How about starting from a script that does all this before starting skype, would that work? Has anyone figured out how to make this stick across reboots? I tried doing sound w/o pulse but could not find a volume control for the panel that would work. Problem is you need to do this after every reboot. Go to the Skype sound device options, where your devices should now be exposed Choose something.(May not be necessary as Skype might remember what was previously selected) Turn PulseAudio autospawn off, normally: $ echo 'autospawn = no' > ~/.pulse/nfĤ. I just did a clean install of Lucid and you solved a problem for me.

Skype can t detect sound card