I've identified an issue with Skyrim. If you have your sound card set to output audio at anything greater than 44.1 khz in the Windows Sound Properties, you will experience severe skipping and crackling problems in-game when characters speak, as well as with some ambient environmental effects. To fix this, I changed my audio output from 96 khz down to 44.1 khz again.

The state of this game right now is inexcusable. Bethesda games are known for being buggy, but this complete and utter lack of even basic compatibility, interface functionality, and appalling performance is disgusting. ZeniMax had no right to release the game in this state, and it's no wonder that none of the previews or reviews focused on the PC version - it's outright terrible. I honestly would have preferred they not release the game on PC at all - it'd at least be more honest than putting out such a broken piece of trash.

So yeah, hopefully someone who's having problems reads this... or a Bethesda support representative, if such a thing even exists.

Setting it to 44.1 Hz doesn't even fix it for me. I have NO audio, except for the Bethesda logo. I've tried even lower settings and nothing has worked. This game is so broken.

I'm experiencing crackling in the audio too, very annoying. I haven't tried using 44khz yet, but even if that works it should still be fixed as soon as possible.