My major struggle in Linux (Ubuntu) is with audio. 1. I have an external USB microphone. Works fine (most of the time, see below), except it's always a default

My major struggle in Linux (Ubuntu) is with audio. 1. I have an external USB microphone. Works fine (most of the time, see below), except it's always a default device for both input and output. I don't understand why. I expect my extrnal speakers to be the output source if nothing else is plugged in. I have to often manually change the output source. 2. Sometimes I want to use headphones. And sometimes when I plug them in, the output doesn't switch to the headphones. So I have to do it manually. Occasionally it still doesn't work and the sound continues playing through the speakers. 3. Happened to me a few times - my USB microphone disappears completely from the device list. Even though the light is on. Unplugging and replugging doesn't work either; only a complete reboot does. I even have a custom bash command that restarts pulseaudio. I'm using it more often than I should.