This is well known for us on the forums, but apparently not for Bethesda. The PC version got VERY low sound for a lot of computers. Many people are forced to raise their volume to the max or make put loudness equalization on their speaker settings in order to hear things in the game.

This is such a major, general issue that as far as I know most PC players experience. As mentioned above there are workarounds, but it becomes very tedious to constantly change the volume of your computer before starting the game, and then changing it back when closing the game. If we're going to play Skyrim for a long time, it will become even more tedious.

This is why I made this thread. Bethesda are you aware of this? Why hasn't this been fixed? It doesn't sound like that hard thing to do and that much to ask for... to simply have a normal game volume, not 500% lower than everything else on your computer.

Betheda, FIX THE LOW SOUND.

Darn, wrong forum. This is supposed to be on the PC section.

I also get this, and the sound quality is very low, listening to the main menu music it is very apparent, voices are also low quality.

Not any better on xbox, at least not on my TV. I gotta either turn my side to the person to hear them or i miss what there saying. I had to put subtitles on so i know whats up

PC Player. Never experienced this problem. I did adjust the music volume in the in game audio setting because I wanted the music louder than default. No other volume issues since then...

interesting... I was pretty sure I was goin deaf

Wow, so it aint just me?
I also thought i was going deaf aswell..

I had to tweak .ini and set it to read-only to get the sound to an acceptable level.
I don't think I'm deaf quite yet...or maybe everyone's just too polite to admit they're shouting at me :wink_smile:

PC player running on XP SP3. Never had this issue.

You're lucky then. A lot of people have this problem...
What sound card do you have? I have Realtek HD

I have Realtek HD too and find the voices are too quiet even at max.

I have no problem with voices, lol, but all other sounds are really quiet... Except for spell (effect) sounds. The sound if casting a spell is 5x higher than everything else.

Loudness equalization is what works best for me (it also makes beautiful water, river, wind sounds that are otherwise quiet more audibile), but it's tedious to set it each time I play the game.

I have to turn the volume up all the way on my Toshiba to get an average-level of volume, not to mention it's running through a Line 6 USB audio device as well. Just plugging headphones into the laptop wouldn't be loud enough at all - but then it seems like that's the case with most things.

Maybe I'm lucky. I don't know...this is the first I have heard of this as an issue for anyone (though I'll admit I don't catch everything on the forums). Not saying it isn't, though, by any means.

I just use my on board (motherboard) sound. No dedicated sound card. Realtek drivers.

I thought it was just me! lol... thanks for pointing this out. It's true. Like what the heck.

Same issue here. External Creative HD soundcard.

The game's audio is way more quiet than any other sound in e.g. youtube vids, music, or even window's 'bings & boops'.

Xbox player. Never experienced any sound related problems whatsoever.

The volume is extremely low. I have a nice receiver, so I can turn it up pretty loud. It's not a problem until I open a YouTube video or something and get blown out of my chair because my volume knob is at 60.

The voices have always been quiet for me and no .ini tweaks have helped so far, music seems fine for me , it's mainly the dialogue voices

Nice tips. Thanks

It seems this is mostly a PC player problem. Something definitely wrong here, because so many people are experiencing it.

If you've got a codec pack like ffdshow installed make sure to add an exception for TESV.exe.

Hmm that would svck. Check you ini files? Since 1.2 I've been able to use 192khz, 24 bit sound output and it sounds great!

Poll added. Let's see how many really got this problem.

This problem started on my very first game. Regenerating .ini doesn't help...

To those experiencing this problem, what speaker configuration are you using (Headphones, 2.0, 2.1, 3.1, 4.0, 4.1, 5.1, etc.) and how is it attached (direct anolog from sound card, USB, S/PDIF to receiver, HDMI to receiver, etc.)



This guy right here without a question has his Xbox set to a surround sound setup but does not actually have a working center channel. If voices are low when looking straight at someone and normal when off to the side, that is guaranteed to be the answer. I suspect others may have a similar problem.

I'm using a 5.1 desktop speaker system connected via anolog to my onboard sound card and everything is fine. The default audio balance is a little bit off for my tastes, but I was able to get it exactly where I'd want it with minor adjustments in the audio menu.