Horrible soundt

[Ertial]

The sound is horrible and has already been ugly for a while now, but since the latest update the game hangs at the splash and it takes a while for it to continue. It seems this is caused by a sound problem, since the NGD tune is played in a few seconds when the game picks up again and the following lines are printed to the console:
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)

Could it be that it has something to do with PulseAudio or the fact that OpenAL isn't a very well maintained standard?

I'm running the amd64 version of Ubuntu Karmic beta on a computer with an Nvidia chipset and onboard Nvidia HDA sound card.