Well, I had sound problems myself, but I'm a complete newbie. Since you said that ANY help would be appreciated I am posting my fixes.
1. Install and activate pulseaudio (from
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio)
nstallation
Warning /!\ This section only applies to old, unsupported versions of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 8.04 and higher installs PulseAudio by default and no extra configuration is needed.
Here's how to install it, as of Dec-08-2007, on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, with PulseAudio 0.9.6
Installing PulseAudio
Open a Terminal window.
Type the following:
sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins "pulseaudio-*" paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter
ALSA Configuration
Now, type the following:
gksudo gedit /etc/asound.conf
This will open /etc/asound.conf in a Text Editor as the root user.
Normally on Ubuntu 7.10, this file will not exist, so we're creating it.
Paste in the following:
pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}
The top two will create new output and input definitions for PulseAudio, and the bottom two will set PulseAudio as the default audio device for programs using the ALSA interface.
2. Tweak pulseaudio (from
http://pc-freak.net/blog/how-to-fix-pul ... gnu-linux/)
Fix problems with Glitches, voice skips and crackling In file /etc/pulse/default.pa its necessery to substitute the line;
load-module module-udev-detect
with
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
2. Resolve Choppy sound in (Pulseaudio) -> Skype
In /etc/pulse/daemon.conf two lines has to be also substituted:
; default-sample-rate = 44100
Should become;
default-sample-rate = 48000
3. Change /etc/default/pulseaudio to allow dynamic module loading
It is a good idea to the default settings from DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=1 to DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=0 .This step is not required and I'm not sure if it has some influence on solving sound in / out problems with Skype but I believe it can be helpful in some cases..
So in /etc/default/pulseaudio Substitute:
DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=1
to;
DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=0
Restart computer
3. Install missing python libraries(?)
Install these
python-tksnack
python-txosc
libsnack2-alsa
python-liblo
libasound2-python
python-pyalsa
python-alsaaudio
That pretty much worked for me, see if any of this helps...
Thanks.