Whether audio is handled by a userspace daemon or not is just a technical detail. It shouldn't have any influence on the user interface.
You learned to accept that X11 runs in userspace. PA does for audio was X does for displays. So why is it so difficult to accept PA for audio too?
Also, MS is proud of Vista's userspace sound system. And Apple about CoreAudio. So, we now do something similar on Linux, for similar reasons. That's all.