I have been fighting with PulseAudio for 3 days, harassing people in the forums trying to cure the "crackle" noise on my Nvidia HDA sound card. Well I think I found a solution and can't believe it was so simple!

Go into System - Preferences - Main Menu for the menu editor. Inside the editor go to System - Preferences and un-hide Multimedia Systems Selector. In there you can change your default sound systems to ALSA!