http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50109

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKd-wiOfuhw

The footstep sound playback in Skyrim is a gutted mess. At first I found myself annoyed by how illogical it behaved and seldom played the right type of footstep sound, wether it be based on the terrain type or the type of armor you're wearing. Once I started looking into how things worked in the Creation Kit, it became very apparent to me just how bad it was. It appears to me that Bethesda has had to make severe concessions in order to fit the game into the lackluster specs of the console versions.

There are several mods out there that edit the footstep sounds. But as far as I've seen none of them truly go all the way in fixing all of the problems and caveats presents. Thus, this mod is my attempt at making the most thorough overhaul of not only Skyrim's footstep sounds in themselves, but also how they behave in the game. Given my very iterative process of creating the sounds, testing ingame, tweaking them accordingly, rinse and repeat... this project was a pain in the ass with literally hundreds of sounds to deal with, but the payoff was worth it.

Sounds Overhaul - Almost every single footstep sound has been redone, save for a handful of unarmored and barefoot sounds. Literally hundreds upon hundreds of files have been replaced and brand new ones added.

Bang! And the dirt is gone - Skyrim has generic, dirt-based footsteps and landing sounds pre-loaded into memory which play every time you move onto a different surface from the last one, before the game loads in the appropriate surface (and armor type) sounds. In cases where you're traversing lots of different terrain quickly, like in the outdoors wilderness, you'll effectively be listening to unarmored dirt sounds half of the time no matter what terrain it is or what armor you're wearing.

This mod rectifies the problem by having single movement sounds for each terrain and armor type pre-loaded into memory. Yes, this will permanently increase your RAM usage but given the small size of the individual sounds (they are about 50kb each on average) the amount should be negligible.

Customizable - by default, the heavy armor sounds use a combination of chainmail and plate foley. If you don't like it, there is an alternative version available with the chainmail sound muted. Refer to the video demonstration to hear the difference.

More variety - There are now unique sounds for walking with heavy armor. There are also jumping and landing sounds for both heavy and light armor. In addition there are now unique footstep sounds for metal surfaces.

Pick either the Chainmail + Plate version, or the Plate Only version (make sure to watch the video if you are undecided on which one you want). Both of them come with the rest of the light armor and unarmored sounds and the .esp so you only need to download one of them.

This mod uses its own unique folder structure packed within a BSA archive and thus will not overwrite any existing loose footstep sounds you have in your Data folder. Disabling it is as easy as unchecking the .esp. If you use AOS then just place it after AOS in the Load Order. Regarding the Footprints mod I have seen no conflicts appear when comparing the mods in Tes5Edit.

Thanks to Second Face's Waveknife for making my life a whole lot easier. Sounds were also used from several authors from http://www.freesound.org. Read the credits tab for a full list.