[racket] RSound in ubuntu only works with diagnose-sound-playing - can't choose library?

Mostly towards John Clements:

I thought I'd take a look at RSound to make a little "do X for 30 seconds *beep* wait 10 seconds *beep* [repeat]" program. Trying (play ding) gets me the stuff before the "found 2 host APIs" with no sound. Running diagnose-sound-playing gets me a beep after the "trying api paALSA" but nothing afterwards. There isn't any documentation for setting the API to just use paALSA, so... what might be going on here? I'm running xfce 4.10 - xubuntu 12.10 64 bit.

I have all the pulseaudio modules that aptitude listed.

ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf", line 9: reading configurations from ~/.fonts.conf is deprecated.
found 2 host API(s): (paALSA paOSS)
trying each one in turn.
trying api paALSA:
trying to play at sample rate 44100.0:
...finished.
trying to play at sample rate 48000.0:
Expression 'ret' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1670
Expression 'AlsaOpen( &alsaApi->baseHostApiRep, params, streamDir, &self->pcm )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1830
Expression 'PaAlsaStreamComponent_Initialize( &self->playback, alsaApi, outParams, StreamDirection_Out, NULL != callback )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 2096
Expression 'PaAlsaStream_Initialize( stream, alsaHostApi, inputParameters, outputParameters, sampleRate, framesPerBuffer, callback, streamFlags, userData )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 2764
playing sound failed with message: "pa-open-stream: Device unavailable"
trying api paOSS:
trying to play at sample rate 44100.0:
playing sound failed with message: "stream-choose: no devices available in current API paOSS with 100.0ms latency or less."
trying to play at sample rate 48000.0:
playing sound failed with message: "stream-choose: no devices available in current API paOSS with 100.0ms latency or less."
If playback at 44100.0 failed and playback at another sample rate
succeeded using Windows 7, you probably need to manually set the 
sample rate of that playback device to 44100 Hz, by right-clicking 
on the volume icon and then digging through menus (properties, advanced).

-Ian