You're right that sound is important to the experience of playing the game, but that is exactly why projects like these don't tend to work. Straying from the original sound design means also straying from the original games identity.
Considering that most of Duke3D's audio is based on clips from sound libraries (much like Doom) I would prefer to see something more along the lines of this:
http://www.perkristi..._doom-sfx.shtml. What that guy did was essentially finding the high quality elements of the game's sound effects and remixing and remastering them, creating high quality versions of the originals. The WAD I linked makes Doom sound a hell of a lot better, though of course some sound effects can't be remade in any satisfactory way (Duke's voice for example, unless you convinced Jon St John to re-record or sourced the untouched originals somehow) the vast majority can.