How to fix a almost completely broken sound in Vista? All conversiations are only rustle.

Haven't heard or seen anyone have this issue before, so I'm afraid I can only give you 'generic advice'.

• Ensure your game on Steam is fully validated - it's possible that your sound files are corrupted. Right click the game in Steam, click "Properties", go to the "Local Files" tab in the top of the window that pops up and click the "Verify integrity of game cach" button.
  
• Make sure your speakers/headphones are working properly and are connected to the PC at a comfortable sound volume.
  
• Ensure your sound card drivers are up-to-date

Maybe you'll also need to tell us about your PC. If the CPU is being overloaded with jobs, sound is likely to suffer in the game. I observed the same symptoms if I set the game "Unreal Tournament 3" to only use a single CPU core.

i would say try to adjust the bit rate in vista , go to : Control Panel\Hardware and Sound select your speakers then press the properties tab then advanced try different bit rates starting from studio down to cd quality i have had this issue in red faction changing to a lower bit rate fixed it for me in that game .

p.s im on vista home pre 64bit.