OpenSUSE Multimedia :: Sound Crashes Unexpectedly In Firefox Flash

flash version 10.0 r45 in firefox plays video, graphics, and sound just fine. however, while i'm playing a video on videos, or listening to pandora, the sound could unexpectedly crash. when this happens, sound doesn't just stop playing. it keeps playing but loops the sound every second or so - it's kind of strange to describe; the sentence, "hello, how are you?" could sound like "he-he-he-he ar-ar you-you-you". has anyone experienced this? i say it happens 'unexpectedly' because i can't replicate the crash on demand, but it happens in every firefox session. it seems that it does not matter what i'm doing - i've tried crashing it by making a flash video full screen and exiting continuously etc. because sometimes it happens when i'm going to full screen or changing tabs.

however, most of the time it happens when i'm not even touching the computer - i'm not sure if some background process can cause flash's buffer to overflow, or whatever. other times, it doesn't even need me to play anything for it to crash the sound in flash - it could loop sound from the first time i tried playing it in flash in that ff session. even when i exit firefox or pause the sound it takes a few second for the loops to stop. however, when i restart firefox the sound is fine until it crashes again and i have to restart, again! i tried removing libflashsupport as i read in other threads that it causes sound issues - no luck there. i uninstalled, installed and all that jazz. tried strace - doesn't report any flash errors for some reason, or as far as i can understand.

i also installed the flash debugger for use with the firebug extension, flashbug addon in firefox, but i'm not getting anything there either - i think it can't locate the flash debugger, although it lists the right version. i haven't had this problem with chromium yet, but i mostly use it when flash sound in firefox crashed and i don't want to reload ff; i think they use the same 'libflashplayer.so'? also, just to clarify, sound from the mplayer plugin works fine, and when the sound crashes in flash it does not cause ff to crash and quit. firefox continues to run normally but when i play sound in flash it starts looping. i've had sound problems in the past and i'm thinking there is something i messed up in the packages i have installed. i uninstalled pulseaudio because it was the only way i could find to get my skype working. how would i know if there are conflicting elements?

here's what i get from 'lsof | grep snd':
code:
firefox 956 angelos mem chr 116,4 3850 /dev/snd/pcmc0d0p
firefox 956 angelos 120r chr 116,2 0t0 3751 /dev/snd/timer
firefox 956 angelos 122u chr 116,4 0t0 3850 /dev/snd/pcmc0d0p
firefox 956 angelos 123u chr 116,8 0t0 3874 /dev/snd/controlc0
keytouchd 4518 angelos 4u chr 116,8 0t0 3874 /dev/snd/controlc0
knotify4 4683 angelos 12u chr 116,8 0t0 3874 /dev/snd/controlc0
kmix 4690 angelos 10u chr 116,8 0t0 3874 /dev/snd/controlc0
keytouchd 8563 angelos 4u chr 116,8 0t0 3874 /dev/snd/controlc0

it seems to me like there should be a conflict between all those using the same sound control? however, why would it just happen unexpectedly? also, is there a way that i could dissociate sound from firefox without having to reload a whole session with many tabs?