I remember in the quake-con live demo the sound effects seemed very unfinished and... well to put it bluntly pretty bad. Does anyone know if these were just placeholder or perhaps just an error in the video's audio?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWXjzLEGV9U

You have to realise that event was being streamed and recorded so the audio is going to sound a little off of course, a lot of people picked up on it too so I think it's a non issue that they'll improve it if they havn't already.

i figure as much, but I haven't heard any real audio other than that yet so I can't form a good opinion.

They've announced more footage in the coming weeks so hopefully we'll hear some then

Yep, being broadcast over them huge auditorium speakers didn't do them any favours, but they couldn't really get around that. Audio is fine.

If I say anything I'll be breaking the NDA, but I'll give you this: The Quakecon footage looks and sounds like garbage compared to the actual game.

Like some have pointed out the audio from the Quakecon video was due to the sound coming from speakers in the large auditorium has nothing to do with the actual games audio.