Ive put in about 2 hours into Skyrim and every NPC i encounter has the same issue.

When facing any NPC i cant hear a word they are saying, but when i turn to the left or the right i can hear them perfectly only in that certain ear. When i have dialog options i cant hear anything the person is talking to me about because i cant move left or right, im stuck facing him.

This is becoming extremely irritating and ive had to resort to turning on subtitles just to hear with my 5.1 surround on. Figured this is the best place to report the problem.

Anyone having this same problem? Or know how to fix it?

Otherwise this is GOTY!

I'm having the same issue! Audio has been fine with every other game for years, however I get this strange distorted noise when talking with NPCs. I have a creative Xfi Titanium pcie sound card. Divers are up to date, so I'm fairly certain is this a bug. So far I love the game!!!! Just wish I knew what was going on, most of the conversations so far are garbbled. Please fix this soon!!

I'm having a similar issue, I'm getting corrupted sounding garbled/static sounding speech from the NPC's every now and then. I also get a static peeking kind of sound when there is a constant rumbling like in the first dungeon of the game..

I have an external Sound Blaster thx 5.1 sound card and have no problems with it in any other games..

This is happening to me have a 5.1 setup Sound Blaster connected also.

I'm having this exact problem too. Reading around I read you might fix it by going in control panel > sound > speaker's properties > advanced and changing it to 24bit 96000 hz? or maybe it was 24bit 44100 hz. Neither of those fixed it for me though.

Hopefully someone at Bethesda will see this soon!

same problem, none of that fixed it for me. My computer is pretty loud, so speakers aren't really an option while I'm gaming.

Ok so I hooked up my USB headphones and I'm not having any of corruption problems, so if you have headphones this is a work around for now, would still like to play they game on my speakers...

I am also getting this problem, I thought it was my headphones so after getting frustrated I turned on the speakers and it was still happening

I have onboard 5.1, motherboard is an ASUS P5N-E SLI, beleive the audio is Realtek ALC883

Will be tweaking any and all settings I can find, just thought I would voice my concerns, see how many people are having the same issue

I have the same audio chipset but on a GigaByte board. Should never have paid for this game...

I had the same issues with x-fi titanium hd, however I switched the default format to 24bit 48000 hz down from 24bit 96000 hz and the sound issues went away.

This typically happens when a game attempts to use your 5.1 sound and you only have side speakers installed. The game is attempting to play the NPCs voice through your non-existent center speaker. You can change this by setting your soundcard to stereo or headphone mode. Where you do this often depends on your sound card drivers.

I get this problem and have to switch back and forth between these settings on many different games when I switch between my speakers and my headphones.

Sorry, completely untrue. I have 5.1 speakers, the sound is coming from all speakers appropriately, but is sometimes full of static.

The static is a completely separate issue. This issue is when you are directly facing an NPC you get no or very little sound, but when you are offset to them you get sound out of one of the speakers.

Worked for me, thx dude!

How do I do this on vista please?

This sound issue is still happening for me, i have 5.1 headphones and speakers and im noticing the issue on both setups. The sound is fine on the xbox version. Really hope that this will be fixed in the next patch.

Change your windows sounds settings. You have it set to 2.1 or 5.1 and it is missing a speaker. Change it to 2.0 this will fix it.

Edit: If you actually have a .1 setup I think skyrim can't use it. Was having the same problem with my turtle beaches. With my headset, I have windows sound set to quadraphonic.

on the 360 NPC's don't have any audio what so ever even after selecting chat options.

I have no problems running 5.1 with my game, but this is caused by incorrect speaker configurations.

Right click your audio icon down by your clock in windows, then choose to config your default speakers. Set this to stereo, and your sound will be okay.

As for the guy using headphones: If you get sound from your center (test using the same instructions as above) while having headphones connected, then the game should work properly as well.

Slightly off topic, but I figured I may as well correct this slight misunderstanding on your part: The .1 refers to the subwoofer channel, while the number before the point is the number of directional speakers.
Some surround sound setups pretty much ignore this separate channel and split any sounds of low enough frequency to the subwoofer through its own hardware.

Check the Swap Center / Sub woofer box.

I also couldn't hear the conversations when they were directly in front of me...although it worked fine when I first started the game.

I have 5.1 sound and speakers..