thx so much!
I also had audio problems and occasional crashes with openarena on ubuntu karmic 9.10. this is how I fixed it:
1. Installed
libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio
2. used
in my autoexec.cfg (you can also change the value in your q3config.cfg if you don't use an autoexec)
--> fixed.
if you also have this problem of crackling sound and game-freezes on exit, but you already messed up your soundsettings, when trying to fix it, you might follow this guide, to get working sound settings back:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4928900&postcount=1sidenote: the bug seems to be, that kubuntu and xubuntu don't use pulseaudio, but only ubuntu does, so the repository has libsdl1.2debian with a standard dependency to libsdl1.2debian-alsa. this means ubuntu has broken sound some times as it misses libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio but unly has libsdl1.2debian-alsa.
if they would change the default dependency of libsdl1.2debian to libsdl1.2debian-pulsaudio istead of libsdl1.2debian-alsa, it would mean kubuntu an xubuntu would be broken instead of ubuntu ... so there's no hope of having this bug fixed anytime soon.
its less a bug, but an organizational error - having several distributions rely on different dependencies of the same package.
...can't say anything about openAL. Falkland also suggested this solution here:
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3458.msg31926#msg31926 but i did not quit understand it back then ^^