OK, as you all know, I run pure Debian Wheezy.
I got sick and tired of having the audio be flaky so I did the following to get rid of Pulse Audio:
in a true TTY command line as root:
apt-get update
apt-get remove pulse audio
apt-get alsa base
apt-get autoremove
reboot
apt-get upgrade
logged out of root and also in command line:
alsamixer
and set my settings.
Lots more available control now on the Mixer in the system tray area!
Yea!!!!
And no more stupid Pulse Audio tricks!!