OpenAL - What space is it in? AL_POSITION

What are the actual 'units' of OpenAL? For sounds in my world, I assign them a certain position, alSource3f( source, AL_POSITION, pos.x, pos.y, pos.z ). Ok, so that's well and good. But, to 'visualize' this position, I want to put a small sphere there. Now, my world can be translated/scaled/rotated, so the axis are messed up - I account for this, though. I am using a scene graph structure for my rendering, so I add the sphere model to represent the sound to the topmost node (i.e. no transformations / rotations / scales are applied to it). Now, I would assume that the OpenAL coordinates for AL_POSITION and these model coordinates are in the same space, as neither has any apparent transformations applied to them. Yet, for some reason, OpenAL seems to be in it's own funky space. The model lines up perfectly at the origin (0,0,0), but other positions, the sound does not sound like it is coming from the spot of the model. I've been stuck on this for a while. Any ideas? Thanks!