Ever since I installed Skype on my 64-bit Debian laptop, skype has behaved erratically, crashing like hell. I finally found the solution in the Linux Mint Community:

1) Install the 32-bit pulseaudio libraries

sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386

2) Edit the skype.desktop file to set the latency:

sudo sed -i 's/^Exec=.*/Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype %U/' /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

Tada! No more crashes or distorted sound.