Is anyone else hoping that not only graphics, but sound has been revamped as well? I'd be really excited if they implemented sound distortion so for example, there would be muffled voices behind a closed door or inaudible voices on the other side of a thick stone partition.

Your thoughts?

And inbuilt EAX capability.

Hopefully they also put in a "Better Music system" type music variation system, so one could add more music natively to more places.

whatever but Dolby Digital!!

That effect you're talking about is called occlusion and I think there's a good chance we'll get it this time around. It's becoming a common feature in "next gen" audio tools. Unreal 3 has it built in and the big 2 audio middleware platforms, Wwise and FMOD support it as well. If they truly built a new in-house toolset for Skyrim then chances are they sat down and looked at what they could to do bring their audio tools up to speed with the rest of today's games.

I hope sounds fro armor are better. I want my Iron armor to clang when I get knocked flat on my ass.

I also think that there is a need for a little more overall environmental sounds. In Oblivion it felt like you are alone in the world. The only thing you constantly hear were music and footsteps...

This would be awesome. And I want to hear outdoor weather while inside. Mods have done it but it's time it was in vanilla. It's a small thing, but increases atmosphere a [censored]load.

HELL YES! Sound is always underestimated in games SO much!
There was an EAX (2.0 or 3.0) plugin for Oblivion and it was awesome...
However, games with native EAX 5.0 HD support are really stunning just for their incredible sound
I really, REALLY hope that Skyrim will be using OpenAL as a sound engine so that EAX can be implemented natively even on Vista/Win7

It would be nice to have voices and footsteps, etc, echo in tunnels, while doors in normal houses and such would damp them doown a bit. I also hope the voices in the game are louder than normally, so that I don't have to have voice volume on 100% and the rest on 50% to be able to heard voices in the middle of other sounds :/

If there isn't real 5.1/7.1 surround, I will be kinda disapointed. Having some firm of emulated or fake surround sound never sounds as good as the real thing.

cant wait to hear STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!! with the new sound system

for those of you interested in sound I found this good video a while back by Mark Lampert who is in charge of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRm22yTBCho. It's something I'm really interested and I know that sound can make a really big difference. All i know is that it's looking promising.

Hoping for 7.1 support for my PS3.