It's been said that both Fedora and Ubuntu pushed PA too early. I admit, given how bad Hardy has been, this is a compelling point of view. However, if the distros had not pushed early, the great number of audio bugs that have been fixed in the past six months would probably still exist. I bet the distros could wait 3 more years before pushing and it would still be a horrible experience. Software integration sucks, the only way to shake out the bugs is to integrate and see what breaks.
So, between Phonon and PulseAudio, hopefully audio will work decently in FC10 and Intrepid.