How to resolve no sound from some Mac OS X (10.3, 10.4) apps

I was connecting to a webcast for work, but the company required that I go through a multimedia wizard first. During the course of checking my system the wizard failed me for not having RealPlayer or its plug-in (a buncha shite, it's right there ya big dork) and then sound to RealPlayer, QuickTime, YouTube (essentially anything fun except iTunes) broke. Not working. I could hear IM, I could hear email alerts. Yah, yah, I could hear iTunes, but it was just really frustrating. I actually RTFM'd (QuickTime Help search: sound) and found this support article which explains that my audio output frequency was set too high, and that setting it back down lower would fix the problem of me not being able to hear in some apps. For reals, yo, it worked! Woot! I love the challenge of fixing something weird like that. But, that company that effed up my settings could use a spanking.