Sound Settings Headache!

[Doughy]

I'm trying control the sound settings on my computer. Specifically, I am just trying to set the level of the microphone for both recording and the instantaneous playback.

I'm continually frustrated by all the options in my "sound settings." ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio. Then, in my volume control there is a bunch of difficult-to-read options in the dropdown... "Device: Realtek ALC850 rev 0 (OSS Mixer)..." Stuff like that.

Very confusing! Can someone set me straight? Why does Ubuntu have all this crap?

[dtoronto]

i had a similar issue with a Bose USB sound card that felt like I was jumping through hoops just to get it to work at all. Finally ended up messing around with all the sound settings to get it to kind of work. Not sure why it isn't more clean cut myself, but would love to see things in a more uniform order.