grar, sound on linux still sucks

The microphone input on my desktop computer mysteriously stopped accepting input a couple weeks ago, which is really inconvenient since I rely on VoIP for work-related phone calls. Normally when this happens the problem is ALSA has changed which of its many, many volume control sliders I need to have unmuted. Again. So I spent half an hour playing with them to no effect.

Turns out this time the problem is with GStreamer: of the two choices it gives me for sound input device, "Default" does not work, "STAC92xx Analog" does. This leaves me wondering what the hell is it defaulting to, if not the one and only analog input that exists?

Also frustrating that there appears to be no physical jack on this computer that corresponds to either the "headphones" or "speaker 1" output channels in ALSA, so I still have to crawl behind the computer and change cables for phone calls, but that's a hardware problem and if I really minded I could go buy a cheap A/B switch.