Fuzzy, Garbled audio with slight echo

Now I'm sure it's this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/speech-dispatcher/+bug/1736222

My workaround was to uninstall the speech-dispatcher package:

sudo apt remove speech-dispatcher

This also worked on Fedora (with dnf instead of apt).

I get symptoms similar to yours - scratchy sound. A possible fix is to restart pulseaudio. Open terminal and do the following:

$ pulseaudio --check
$ pulseaudio --k
$ pulseaudio --D

The audio issue continues to arise on the same laptop sporadically, however I can quickly fix it by using the terminal to run alsamixer. In alsamixer, press f6, then simply click on a master volume control. The audio immediately returns to normal.