xlsior: Yeah I get a greater delay between ticks too. Actually with flip I get this weird consistent rhythem, and with flip off I get the greater delay. As for the speaker problem, that's weird too but maybe it's due to settings on on your sound card because OpenAL is by Creative Labs and I bet they're trying to be clever.
I don't see any setting in my sound card config that allow me to specify preferred speakers or something... I don't have a creative labs soundcard.