Comment 10 for bug 277532

I've had the same issue on 9.04 with my 1500 Vostro. I worked round it by disabling the HAL detect module in PulseAudio (default.pa) and only enabling an ALSA sink. ie. I didn't let PA 'know' about my built in mic.

Also updated to the latest ALSA drivers, utils, libs, plugins and tools by downloading the code from the ALSA site make/make install/etc.

The newer ALSA code fixed an issue with the mic not working well at all, stopping PA knowing about the built in mic fixed the low mic volume/recording problem.

Just to re-iterate;

1) I had a driver problem fixed but updating ALSA to >= 1.0.19 (currently got 1.0.21(a) installed). This for my mic working
2) I stopped PA finding my internal Mic, this fixed the low recording volume problem while leaving PA in place to do good stuff with sinks, etc.