I have a new laptop, it is an acer aspire running windows vista. I am having 2 audio problems. mainly when I am playing mp3s there are crackling sounds, sounds like what you would hear if you were listening through a speaker with a short in the wire. I tried other mp3 programs(media monkey and winamp) and it happens in both. however I have dual boot with ubuntu, if I boot up ubuntu I have no problems with playing mp3s at all.
One other thing, if I am in a browser and have a flash video paused and loading, it “hijacks” the audio driver and I cannot play mp3s or other get sound when playing a video file like avi or wmv. while loading the flash video. this happens in both vista and ubuntu. This was not a problem when I had XP. It is a realtek card and the latest audio drivers and vista service pack 1 have already been installed.