Latest Audacity broken in Ubuntu?

[Dave M G]

Ubuntu List,

The latest version of Audacity is marked as being "beta", yet that's the 
version that is in the Ubuntu repositories.

This beta version does not work on my system. Any attempt to play back 
audio using any audio device says "Audio device can not be found".

I uninstalled it and got the last stable version off the Audacity web 
site, and that seems to work fine.

But now the update manager keeps telling me to upgrade to the beta.

I'm a little confused. I thought the repositories only had stable 
working versions.

I don't think I'm the only one having troubles with the latest Audacity 
in Ubuntu. Some Google searching has come up with many people reporting 
some troubles.

Did Ubuntu or Audacity make some change that makes the latest version 
incompatible? Can it be fixed?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

-- 
Dave M G