I've always had this problems with skype and pulseaudio on ubuntu. Whenever i start up skype, i have to call someone, then hang up 4-5 times, before the other person can hear my voice.
When i, or the other person hang up, skype tends to lock up. I can't kill it with "killall skype" or a logout, so i have to restart my computer.
Have anyone else encountered this problem, and if so solved this? I'm using 10.10 btw.
This may be unrelated, but i had all sorts of problems with ubuntu skype, until i went into skype configuration an unchecked, allow skype to manage sound settings.
I encountered this problem. It happen less time if I install skype using the Canonical partner repository Software Tab.
Else, to kill skype, you can go to system => Administration => System Monitor, and then you right click on the Skype process, and you kill it. It seems to be more powerfull than killall. It works for me.
This makes no sense, but I fixed this for myself but uninstalling a gmail checker. No kidding. I don't know if it was messing up pulse when it alerted me, but now both Skype and Rhythmbox work fine.
Your microphone volume could be too "high". Open "Sound Preferences" and try reducing it in the "Input" tab. Test it with the Sound Recorder application.
I had a similar problem sometime ago and I found the solution in this RH bug (comment 27).
Commenting the line load-module module-suspend-on-idle out in the /etc/pulse/default.pa file solved my latency problem.
For me launching Skype from the command line like this fixed it:
PULSE_SERVER=127.0.0.1 skype