When testing my microphone on my laptop for use with skype and google hangouts, I need a way to route the output to the speakers.
Eventually I found this bug on launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/483812
To sum it up:
pactl load-module module-loopback latency_msec=10
(default is 200)
this command will give you a number as output, for example 27. to stop the loopback execute:
pactl unload-module 27
(replace 27 with the output of the previous command)