Front Microphone port not recognised well

[mastablasta]

I am a bit confused. I know this worked well in november when i bought a new set of headphones. I tested them and they worked well. now i can't get them to work and i don't know what i am doing wrong. this are normal Genious headphones with standard jack plugs.

Audio is set to Analog stereo duplex (i tried other options but same result).

Capture devices are webcam (this one works relatively well) and Front microphone (Built in Analog stereo). I set the front mic to be preferred now.
Also in system settings the mic appears to be seen (the line is moving when i talk).

When i plug in the headphones, the mic port says "unplugged". There is no sound coming in through that mic. i tried Skype and steam chat. i would like the headphone mic to work in CS:GO. the webcam mic causes a fast forward effect in sound (as if sound was sped up multiple times) and you can't understand it there.

alsa mixer has all relevant volumes up.

Finally Audacity can normally record through headphone (front) mic.

anyone knows what is going on? in windows when you plug in the headphones you get notifications that they are plugged in and all audio is then sent through that by default. here i have to specifically set headphones for output.

[mastablasta]

i found a work around. i need to launch volume control when steam chat is active. then i can see chromium in the applications, and then i can change the input. however, why is this not done automatically? especially when sound card is set as preferred input for recording and especially if i plugged in the mic and muted the camera? normally if i plug something in (external device) i intend to use it so system should have switched to it. i also can't switch easily between inputs. say turn off one and tell system to use the other one as default. there is a default tick box in the volume control applet, but there it doesn't function (i.e. nothing happens when i click it).

is this a bug?

moreover, why are the settings not saved (e.g. for specific applications). as it is now it means i somehow need to get to volume control app while in game to be able to switch input.

normally i have camera always connected, but headphone mic is used only on occasions (e.g. during weekends).