Solution to Sound and Video Playback in Hardy

I've recently come across a solution to problems I have been having with sound and video playback in Hardy Heron. This annoying bug(s), most likely in pulseaudio, sometimes causes the media players like totem to not play videos properly. The videos just freeze after a few seconds or they keep playing but incredibly slowly. Strangely, the VLC media player seems to be immune to this, however even though it manages to play the videos it also doesn't produce any sounds. The solution which has been working for me now for a day and half, usually I get sound and playback problems several times a day, is to go to System>Preferences>Sound and under the Devices tab change everything to ALSA.