Media Server :: Microphone Activity Level At -1 Even Though Microphone.getMicrophone() Is Called, Why?

I'm setting up an application where I need to record users' voice every so often during the course of the users' interaction with the application.  Recording is fine, and the quality is fine, but now my issue is understandng how Flash handles the microphone when it gets attached to a stream for publishing.Basically, the problem is that when I "publish" my stream, the voice gets cut off (clipped) at the beginning.  So, I initially thought this may have to do with buffer settings on the FMS server side, but it wasn't. Then I investigated client side stuff.  For some reason, my internal mic .activityLevel property is -1 even though I have called Microphone.getMicrophone().  According to Flash's documentation, this shouldn't be the case:
 
activityLevel    propertyactivityLevel:Number  [read-only]Language Version :     ActionScript 3.0Player Version :     Flash Player 9The amount of sound the microphone is detecting. Values range from 0 (no sound is detected) to 100 (very loud sound is detected). The value of this property can help you determine a good value to pass to the Microphone.setSilenceLevel() method.If the microphone is available but is not yet being used because Microphone.getMicrophone() has not been called, this property is set to -1.I am using a timer to investigate the microphone .activityLevel property every 50 milliseconds:
 
package
{
import fl.controls.Button;
import fl.controls.TextInput;[code].....