Causes a lot of missing sound spam when the audio device is set to a non-default

I can confirm this behavior. In my testing, this was often followed by the error message as stated in MC-247421.

I'm not sure if this is the same issue, but when switching my audio device from VoiceMeeter Input to Speaker/Headphone (Realtek High Definition Audio), this is continuously shown in the game output until switching the device again:

Get attributes size<long number>: Invalid device.
Error starting SoundSystem. Turning off sounds & music
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to get OpenAL attributes
    at ebh.i(SourceFile:212)
    at ebh.a(SourceFile:168)
    at fre.h(SourceFile:113)
    at fre.a(SourceFile:103)
    at fre.a(SourceFile:235)
    at frh.a(SourceFile:266)
    at eio.q(SourceFile:1877)
    at eio.f(SourceFile:1142)
    at eio.e(SourceFile:776)
    at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.a(SourceFile:244)
    at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:51)

@@unknown, according to your description, it looks like MC-247421.

I was thinking this, but the error I was getting is slightly different, being

Failed to get OpenAL attributes

rather than

Failed to open OpenAL device

Maybe the error changed wording between updates?