I want a keyboard shortcut to mute my system microphones unless I'm on a conference call or something and WANT it to be on. It wouldn't be ideal - I wish it were system wide with an indicator with a clear icon of whether that hardware is in use (webcams too!), but this keyboard shortcut is an immediate measure.
Unfortunately, this keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Audio Mute) seems to have no effect. If I run the command from terminal, it works but just not as a keyboard shortcut. If I change the keystroke to something more standard (Ctrl+M) it also doesn't work (my keyboard has an Audio Mute key that this control panel did detect itself). There's no error shown.
In my particular case, I'm using LiveMeeting inside a VirtualBox windows machine. I'm using the basic audio settings, not some special vm-dedicated usb mic - just the standard built in mic.
Whatever the solution, I hope it will take into account all the various microphones! My external webcam has a mic, but I don't use it ever - instead I have a usb mic that I like, and then there's the built-in mic. I want to know that none of them are listening!
Thanks!
UPDATE
Also, if I try to map Ctrl+Audio Mute or Ctrl+M to gnome-calculator
it does not work. So for me this appears to be a problem with the keyboard shortcuts generally.
I also notice that my built-in keybindings are not always reliable. Especially scary when I'm in VirtualBox and either the VirtualBox hostkey functionality doesn't work OR the Ctrl+Shift+[arrow] doesn't work to switch workspaces. Haven't made a guess as to which yet - this one seems to happen when I've left the computer idle for some time.
Futher, I've noticed that Alt+Ctrl+T for the Terminal is unreliable (regardless of VirtualBox). Sometimes it works, sometimes nothing happens.
If this normal? Is this just the state of linux/ubuntu/unity at this time and I need to be prepared for these annoyances?
FYI I'm running a System76 machine so all the core hardware is as compatible as it can be, right?
I also tried using Compiz instead but that didn't work either.