Comment 4 for bug 13910

(In reply to comment #3)
> The supported software provided by Ubuntu is configured to use esound by
> default, so this is only an issue when using unsupported software.
>
> esd is configured to start when the sure logs in, and stop when they log out,
> and there are good reasons for this. So far, we have not found a way to allow
> these unsupported apps to coexist peacefully with the esound-based desktop audio
> infrastructure, but we are open to suggestions for the future. Approaches which
> involve stopping esd (auto_spawn, esd -as <secs>, etc.) are undesirable for
> various reasons.

More information on what those various reasons are might point the way toward a
temporary fix -- maybe a wrapper script for some popular applications like
RealPlayer or Skype. What happens? Does the user eventually run out of memory?