Have you ever experienced the static sound on Ubuntu when you should have been hearing something (perhaps the start up sound or something) from your speakers? Well, you might think that your sound card has stopped working or something, but as it turns out.. there's a quick way to get your audio back to normal.
It's not that your sound isn't working... it's just "muted" (although I wonder why it makes the static sound instead of being completely quiet...).
To get your sound back here's what you need to do:
- Double click on the speaker icon in the menubar
- Alternatively, you can press Alt+F2 and type in: gnome-volume-control and click 'Run'

Then on the volume control window, choose the appropriate device where it says "Device:" and just turn your "PCM" volume all the way up... if this slider is all the way at the bottom you'll just get static from the speakers instead of sound.

Hope this helps others out there who experience the same audio "stuttering" problem.