Steam cancels Skype audio and vice versa

I am using 12.3 on a 64bit system, skype version is 4.2.0.11.

Whenever I run steam and then start Skype, the audio for any steam application works, while it does not for Skype. Skype works if I boot it first, but steam is silent. Even if the skype audio is silent, I can still use my mic. I am running steam with pulse audio, and I dont know what steam is running. I assume that they are both vying for control of pulse audio, but I am not sure. I tried installing Pulse audio volume control, but that did not help. Other programs (such as amarok) work perfectly fine.

Thank you for your help.

There are still programs that latch on to the snd device directly which block pulse and any other sound. Pulse in theory is a mixer that should blind all streams.

So what do you think the problem is? I tried to find out how steam handles sound (steam’s input uses pulse), but I didn’t find out what they use for output.