I'm quite new to linux so I'm not sure how the sound drivers operate, but I get the impression that they are at war with each other. Particularly in the case of VLC.

11.04 Natty
Audio driver is alsa supposedly, I only confirmed this with alsamixer in terminal.

Whenever I start playing music with VLC (and this does not happen in the case of ordinary movie player), I get much static sound littering the music (typically at the bass levels). I accidentally came across a temporary solution which remains in force for the rest of the session: bring up terminal, wait for @etc. to come up and static is gone. Why does this problem occur?

Another more serious problem is system crashes whenever VLC is on. I thought this was in relation to RAM (only got 1GB for the moment) but it has happened with little running (maybe the ram piled up but I didn't have indicators running).

Hopefully these two problems have the same source.

Cheers, will supply error logs if needed (will need commands etc!)

Try to adjust your pulseaudio default settings in the file change the line to then log-out and back in and test.