Ubuntu – ny way to cancel background noise from being recorded into the microphone? Globally

On Windows I used to take advantage of acoustic echo cancellation and noise suppression but no such features exist in PulseAudio and haven't since I can remember. My system is a laptop, Acer Aspire V3-571G and you can guess it ran Realtek drivers as usual.

Ubuntu 13.04, 13.10, 12.10, I don't mind which version a fix applies too, as long as it's one of those three.