I think that shows why Gnome 3 is good. They won't add another knob if that needs tweaking. Somebody needs to fix the actual problem. Sounds to me like there is an issue with the settings of some sound cards. If you sound card can make your amp cut out a 6% then I don't think that is a software problem. Like Network manager before it I think a lot of the sound problems point back to drivers or hardware not reporting back correctly. This probably needs to be tackled there.