Comment 8 for bug 310760

Thank you. It's clearly not an access permission problem then, since you could even access the sound devices without any ACL at all (because you are in the audio group).

Next theory: while hal is running, pulseaudio picks up the sound device in hal and blocks it. That is not quite obvious, though, since your fuser output shows that pulseaudio continues to use the sound card after you stopped hal. However, does it *still* use the soundcard after unplugging/replugging the web cam?

If you don't touch hal and leave it running:
 - Does the webcam microphone work with gnome-sound-recorder? (Apps -> Entertainment -> Audio recorder)
 - Does arecord work after "killall pulseaudio"?

It should be noted that pulseaudio still isn't very good in emulating ALSA, and it was probably much worse in Hardy.