Crackling/substandard sound in flash videos (YouTube etc) regardless of video quality setting.

Hi all,

I hope you can help! Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, I'm struggling to find the best place to put this.

1. a summary of your issue

Crackling/substandard sound in flash videos (YouTube etc) regardless of video quality setting.

2. the type of computer you use—Mac or PC?

Desktop PC.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, all updates installed.

3. steps you've already taken to troubleshoot

The problem occurs after installing Adobe Flash Player 15 Plugin to any browser (I mainly use FireFox). It's listed as Adobe Flash Player 15 ActiveX when I installed it for Internet Explorer.

Before installing it, I can hear the videos fine but I am limited to a maximum of 720p quality on YouTube.

I removed my sound and graphics drivers, after restart Windows 7 decides it will install them again but as the generic/universal ones. No change.

I've heard that because I have the Windows Aero theme activated, I need to disable hardware acceleration - tried this in various ways:

a) Generic PnP monitor Troubleshoot tab - Change Settings button is greyed out (whether or not I have the real/generic/universal graphics drivers installed). Can't find a way through nVidia control panel to do this either.

b) Disabled hardware acceleration in FireFox - no change.

c) Found on your forum here that I can go to a page which will check my Flash version, in theory I could right-click it, hit Settings and disable hardware acceleration there - no "Settings" option in right-click menu. Seems the page has changed.

I can't seem to find a way to interface with Flash directly to disable hardware accelerattion - if this is indeed the solution.

Regardless of Windows Aero theme, I've got it on basic theme now and still the same problem.

I recently reformatted and re-installed my PC, it was working fine before I did this (maybe I had an old Flash release installed?).

I'm at my wit's end... please help!