Comment 5 for bug 387473

Gareth,
This is a good guide to fixing sound problems:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

It has worked for me on Hardy as well as Jaunty

To get a regular update of openoffice.org, you could use this PPA repository:
https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive/ppa

Details are on the page on how to add the repository