I like the Idea behind the new "pronunciation" field; I have found minimal use for an audio file however a simple text field where a pronunciation can be phonetically spelled and then pushed into a list is incredibly helpful.
so I have kind of ignored the hard coded pronunciation field in favor of a simple custom field that accepts text input allowing me to produce lists with pronunciation guides in the spreadsheet.
Before the recording became available, we created custom fields on the user profile in General Information and added them to our back-to-school update forms for students and employees. They were able to type in the phonetic spelling of their names.