Many audio glitches have been discussed, but I haven't seen this one posted yet.

When I do a one-word or two-word shout, everything sounds great.

When I do a three-word shout, there's a long pause after the first word, and then there's just a garbled mess that sounds like the second and third word are playing simultaneously.

So, e.g., I could do "FUS" or "FUS ... RO" without problems, and both are clearly enunciated and comprehensible. If I do the three-word version, it comes out sounding "FUS ... ... R~~H", with the last bit sounding badly garbled. It's not just this shout, either, it seems to be all shouts (at least all I have three words for do this).

It's not absolutely terrible because the effect happens correctly, but it's irritating. I've tried installing the much newer drivers off Realtek's site, to no avail. Any other settings I can try to play with?

Short sound files are finicky. It's buggy as heck. I have issues with shouts all the time.

Not only that, but they play a sound effect at the same time (thunder, in the case of Fus Ro Dah). In fact this is probably the bigger problem.

Basically, there are audio syncronization issues in this game.

A framerate other than desirable will exaserbate the situation. In fact as I understand it, the entire game is synced on the monitor refresh (or something to that effect). The best thing you can do... for best results, make sure your framerate is perfect.