This is not a bug report for Skype or Google Voice and Video Chat; please don't treat it as such and close it out of hand. A number of users will be experiencing this issue; I'm filing this to give us a jumping-off point for investigation of the problem.

 o http://www.google.com/chat/video/
 o http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-computer/linux/downloading.fedora

The above widely-used proprietary software worked with no problems on F15 (Skype requires a bunch of i686 dependencies before it will start the first time, Google's plugin has a proper x86_64 build). 

Under F16 Beta, both of them are unusable.

All notification sounds played by Skype play through a continuous fog of hissing static. The static stops when the notification sound ends. All voice conversations in Skype are slightly garbled and full of hissing static. The glitchiness can be heard at both ends of the call.

The same static is heard in Google Voice and Video chat. You can test this by installing the plugin from the URL above and making a phone call from your Gmail account (in your browser).

Video and text chat work fine in both applications. Neither crashes.

For comparison, SIP calls with Empathy 3.2 are clear as a bell.