brianclarke said

However as with Internet Explorer, Firefox will not allow the sound to be heard on some internet radio stations where I have to use google chrome instead, so that is still an issue.

Does the page display some kind of controls that indicate the audio should be playing?

Does Firefox display a little speaker icon on the page's tab up on the tab bar indicating that Firefox is detecting audio playing in the page?

If Firefox displays the audio icon, does clicking it make any difference? It operates as a mute/unmute button.

If Firefox thinks it is sending audio to Windows, could you check the mixer? On the Windows Taskbar, in the "notification area" at the lower right (sometimes called the system tray), right-click the speaker icon and choose Open Volume Mixer. Here you can see whether Firefox shows any volume or is muted at the system level. Anything unusual?

Also, if the site uses Flash, check for a muted Flash player in the mixer. When Protected Mode is enabled, the mixer usually would show that Firefox is NOT sending audio, that the audio is coming from an external Flash process.

Thanks for the response. As my update shows, the issue of firefox not working at all was resolved by 'reset settings'. The issue of the audio is not peculiar to firefox (same with internet explorer, in fact the internet radio station of particular interest even state it may not work with explorer). Audio will work for some stations, so it is something to do with apparently different ways of broadcasting. Where it does not work on audio, either the site icon to 'play' is not available in the first place, or it sounds like a distant rumble and volume control makes no difference. I stress this is not for all audio just some internet radio and some youtube audio. Will still check your suggestions however, but google chrome works for all, however chrome can be painfully slow for searches, hence using explorer and firefox as much quicker.