I'm not merely passionate about sound, I eat, sleep, shit and breath the stuff and would love to be able do do the sound design for a game end to end that would stand everyone on their ear; and I know I could do it with just a little support from a programmer; even just some basic documentation would let me get there albeit with a lot of stupid soakey-toy-fubldy-fucking around work that wouldn't be necessary in any other sound design venue.
I have the tools, toys, resources, and most importantly the know how and experience -- and am not just a hobby 'wannabe' that downloaded a few audio applications or thinks he's some kind of "DJ"... Summarily I'd really like to be able to demonstrate what can be done in games that hasn't been done, or done right.
OpenAL, while it isn't quite as mature as OpenGL does have some good design aspirations, and appears to be headed in the right direction. You can read more about OpenAL here, peruse the OpenAL Specification and Reference, and download the source. The project looks like it is/was headed in the right direction but as I'm not a programmer and have never had the opportunity to work on an OpenAL game, I really have no idea how useful the source is to a game Programmer, and the specifications are far from complete for a Sound Designer though I think with the help of a Programmer one could ferret out all the DSP and mixing effects specifications and levels in a specific implementation.
Anything with some documentation would be a better place then where we are now.
.