I spent quite a bit of time researching my problem and found the solution at http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/msg549082.html Let me copy the relevant bits:
cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.16rc2.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf alsa-driver-1.0.16rc2.tar.bz2
cd alsa-driver-1.0.16rc2/
./configure --with-cards=hda-intel && make
sudo make install
sudo cp ./modules/snd-hda-intel.ko /lib/modules/$( uname -r )/ubuntu/media/snd-hda-intel/
sudo depmod -a
sudo reboot
Make sure that you check the ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver directory to see if a new version has been released.