Comment 27 for bug 194919

Just so you know, this is being worked on in Debian. I'm waiting for someone to upload the openal-soft packages to the archive. You can try them out yourself.
- dget http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openal-soft/openal-soft_1.3.253-1~experimental0.dsc

Since the openal SI upstream are considering the SI deprecated in favor of OpenAL Soft, the openal-soft packages will probably end up in Debian unstable soon afterwards.
http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal-devel/2007-December/004977.html
http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal/2008-February/010981.html
http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal/2008-March/011019.html
http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal/2008-April/011073.html

Either way, Ubuntu could sync from experimental or unstable.

Here's a few threads which have discussions about the openal-soft packages.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2008/04/msg00158.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2008/05/msg00020.html