Bought a soundcard, the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio (PCI version). The simple OEM version of 40 Euro (that's around 48 US dollars).
Used my onboard sound (VIA chip) before and also had the low volume bug. I did put in the soundcard, disabled all onboard sound stuff (both in BIOS as in Windows), installed drivers and so on. Also did set the main volume of Skyrim to 1 again in skyrimprefs.ini.

And what a difference this makes: all of a sudden I hear all kind of things in Skyrim. Normal footsteps, sound of far away rushing water, insects in the night making sounds, and so on, and so on. And most important: I can clearly hear everything that is said now This all with normal good quality 2-way speakers.

Of course it's still a bug in Skyrim that volume is just way and way to low with onboard sound. But I am glad I did took the step to buy a separate soundcard. Did buy it mostly to see if it could solve the Skyrim sound problems but my music now also sounds a bit better, it's more "there".
I don't know it's a overall advise, but for where I am standing: when you have a bit older motherboard (I have the Asus M4A785TD-V EVO) and using onboard audio? If you can spare the money, just go for a simple (or not ) soundcard and good change you'll notice the difference

Man, yah it really does sound like Skyrim has terrible support for the realtek series of onboards. I've got a few soundblasters but can't physically fit any on my board at this point (the vcards use up all the darn space ). Boo!

I use both an onboard and a dedicated card from time to time. HT Omega Striker as the dedicated. They both seem to run the game fine.

Mmm sadly enough it's not only Realtek onboard. I mean, I have VIA onboard sound and had the same issues.
But then again, others (like Starforce9) do not have issues with it. But that's the whole Skyrim story isn't it? It's like it's made for a certain kind of PC configuration and if it's off a bit, then you have sounds issues, graphical issues, stutters, and so on. Great game, badly made IMFHO

Besides the initial bug regarding sample rates (immediate crash upon mousing over any of the main menu options), I've not had any problems with onboard sound either.

I'm running 5.1 speakers (via anologue outputs), and surround sound is definitely working as it should.

This is on a Dell Studio XPS motherboard (AMD 785G chipset) with Realtek chipset (driver 6.0.1.6392) in Windows 7 x64.

I use the same card. Simply can't fault it

Thanks for the proof of Bugthesda living up to its name once more OP.

My onboard should work absolutely fine though, so I'm not buying a soundcard just because Bethesda can't do their job properly.

It doesn't matter the game (or any other audio related application). Dedicated almost always sounds better than onboard. Nothing new there.

Meh. Onboard sound is not strictly bad. Just as discrete audio cards it is of different quality. OP should have done more research, while buying the mainboard. Realtek ALC889A comes pretty damn close to high level Creative cards in sound quality, and blows "simple cards" out of the water, and is on the market for a long time already. Plus, getting a mainboard which actually has is well implemented is important too. I can only say do research before getting a product.

In the past onboard was bad for audio quality, and gaming. These days not so much on modern boards.

Even so, dedicated cards take a little load off the CPU so it can only be beneficial, there are no downsides.

Never use onboard crap "sound cards".

But only if you're using your monster cables to go between your dedicated soundcard and your speakers, right?

That's totally true ... but was getting sick and tired of that totally crappy sound in Skyrim, so I did buy.
Maybe I should send the receipt to Bethesa eh?

Now try using your new Soundblaster with games or software that actually makes use of the features that soundcard is capable of (EAX). The first time I started Call of Duty 1 I was totally blown away. Same goes for nowadays Unreal Tournament and Battlefield BC2 and 3. Not sure of other games from nowadays.

I hope this is a joke. 108 db SNR DAC of almost free chip with crappy sound vs 122 db SNR state of the art DAC of X-fi Titanium HD, not to mention high-quality headphone amp, etc. You won't hear the difference tho on crappy multimedia speakers and headphones with cost of <300$, so ALC889A is fine with cheap multimedia.

ASUS Xonar cards are great and a good price is much better sound quality then on-board.

I hope you're joking about using db SNR as a measure of DAC quality

Higher SNR - more details. Of course overall quality of soundcard depends on its components, low interference. etc. But I don't think you would be happy with 90s soundcards with 90 db snr these days, if you have good acoustics, and not that crappy headset which comes with xense one.

Go look at the DACs in high end audio equipment and look at the SNR figures...

(hint: I've just bought a fab ARCAM DAC.. far better sound than you can expect from any PC sound card.. what is the SNR? 90db)

SNR is one measure, but it's not a terribly good one.

It depends on what onboard audio you have. My motherboard has Realtek ALC889 and it's fine. I don't have audio issues with Skyrim or any other game.

It's still not quite as good as I want, but considering it's quality it's fine for now. Later on I'll maybe buy a soundcard, problem is I don't know which one. Used to be Creative or nothing for me, but directsound is phased out and EAX doesn't seem as prominent as it used to be.

My Audigy 4 seemed to have slightly better sound quality than this ALC889, but it's an old card now, no longer supported.

Some one @ asus must be a real audiophile, they seem to relish releasing top hardware on the cheap. Check out the DAC they just released, the value of that think has to be higher than the Rrp.

120 db snr trough usb and balanced outputs! Thats awesome! I want it.
http://www.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Cards/Xonar_Essence_One/#overview

￡350 for that is a steal. I would pick it up, if I had the money for a pair of high impedance cans.

I use the driver package from daniel_k at the Creative Forums. The actually driver may be from April 2010, but it still works fine and the install package this guy puts together is flawless. He just released the latest "massaging" of them a few days ago.


http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=697079

Could be to gain market over Creative Labs. I never touched a Creative Labs card after I found their drivers were so poor. I'm happy with My ASUS anyway.