Audio Issue with Flash File - Only Plays after Scrubbing?

I've received a project source file to clean up (long story), and am having issues with the audio on one of the slides.

The slide in question has an SWF embedded that drives a series of rollovers; it uses an external XML file to pick up the data for said rollovers.

The audio on that slide seems to not play.

However, if I scrub the audio, it does play. Perfectly.

Additionally, the audio plays perfectly when the XML file is not loaded (i.e., if I remove the XML file from the course folder, so that the Flash piece cannot find/load it, Articulate plays well with the slide audio).

For background, the audio file is attached through Articulate, not flash, and appears to be set to play independently...though, as I do not have a copy of the SWF I've yet to be able to dump the Flash file and re-import to be certain.

I've checked the properties, and everything seems fine; it appears that the issue is centered on the XML.

Any help or ideas would be spectacular.