It sure is!

I forget the exact name now, but there's a plugin that goes by the name of Sound Renderer or something like that.

It allows you to set up 'speakers' and 'microphones' in 3d space. I've yet to explore it, but the really funky thing about it is that you can have multiple sources and mics. This functionality allows you to record 5.1 sound!!!!

It's just a matter of taking the 6 created sound files and joining them into 1 file, ready to be merged with the animation and burnt to DVD.

As far as having a character talk goes, that's no problem. The fun bit's just the lip synch..

Ah-hah! Managed to locate the thing on my hard-drive.
Can't post it(too big @1.2Mb), nor do I know where I downloaded it. What I do have however, are the first couple of lines out of the readme file included in the package.

SoundRenderer 1.3.1 for Maya 5-7
By Frank Firsching (frank.firsching@gmx.de)
Copyright(C) 2001-2006

Hopefully these'll be enough to locate it. If not pm me and I can email it.