Ubuntu :: 9.10 - Rhythmbox Stops Playing - Track Progress Speeds Up

I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 yesterday. When I opened rhythmbox music player, I dragged over some mp3 files to play. It asked me if I wanted to install mp3 support. Naturally I selected yes, as I have several times before. Everything appeared to install correctly and music started playing. The first track finished fine. The second track made it roughly 20 seconds and then the sound stopped. I switched back to the desktop that rhythmbox was on (I had been browsing firefox on the other desktop) and noticed that the progress bar for the song was moving very fast and would continue doing so on every song. The progress bar would cycle through the length of a 3:40 song in about 6-8 seconds. But there was no sound.

I should also note that the reason I used rhythmbox (RB) was because I tried to install Amarok 2.2, which did install, but I couldn't get the program to work when I opened it. So I decided to settle for rhythmbox. So the first time I encountered this error on RB was the first time I used the program, and the first time I used RB was after I had installed Amarok 2.2 and couldn't get it to work. Idk if this is relevant or not, but I figured I would include it anyway.

Anyway, I have tried a number of potential solutions:

1) Changing the hardware profile for my multimedia.
2) Making sure my bios is set up properly. I have a soundcard, so I disabled onboard audio.
3) I thought maybe Pulseaudio was the problem, but didn't try to resolve it because this thread from he Ubuntu forums appears to be outdated for Karmic Koala, so I didn't take my chances using it.
4) Uninstalling Amarok, however, I couldn't locate all the dependencies to uninstall them
5) Installing "libxine1-ffmpeg" manually since another forum on ubuntuforums had recommended that. However the deb-installer failed with this output

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libavcodec1d (>= 0.cvs20070307)

6) Booting to the LiveCD for Kubuntu (Kx) 8.04-2, Kubuntu 9.10, and Ubuntu (Ux) 9.10. I went through the process of opening RB, loading music, installing mp3 support. For Kx 8.04-2, I got an error telling me I needed to install "libxine1-ffmpeg" manually, which I did via deb-installer. Everything worked great. For Kx 9.10 and Ux 9.10, I got the already mentioned error about the unsatisfiable dependency. So I could go back to Kx 8.04-02 (which many of my friends here at LFO know this has been my favorite distro+version for almost two years now). However, I can't be stuck with it just because of some minor issues.

I should also note that video on firefox (e.g.; ......com) is very slow and usually greys out firefox until it stops working. Yes, I have installed flash player and jre 6.0 via synaptec. :D So this is apparently an overall multimedia problem, which doesn't surprise me because it seems that both Ubuntu AND Kubuntu have been having more multimedia problems since fall of 2009 (at least based on what I have gathered from forums while searching out my current problem). Whether that is related to the 9.10 releases and later, or not, I don't know.

Another option I have is to try Mint, which I have had very good experiences with in the past. But I don't want to leave the *buntu family as I am very partial to it and really enjoy the time-saving convenience of the deb-installer.

Other info:

Hardware:

ATI Radeon 4670, 2 GB RAM Crucial Balistix, 80 GB hardrive, 3.2 Quadcore, SIIG DP Soundwave 4 Channel PCI soundcard

Screenshots of Hardware Profile:

dmesg output: