It happens consistently, whenever a NPC says one of their lines it's like they miss a word. There is a pause of silence where the word should be, they just don't say it.

Like, "I was an adventurer like you, then I took an ....... in the knee." The pause is the length the word should be.

I also have a second issue, unrelated (I think). The strong box has no sound fx when it opens or closes, but all the other containers do. Is the open/close sound defined in the NIF file? I've looked at the various containers in the CK, and none of them have the open/close sounds defined. If I remember correctly, the sound for some objects were specified in the NIF file in Fallout3.

My first thought is it has something to do with software vs. hardware acceleration, but I don't see a setting to disable/enable acceleration in either the skyrim.ini file, or skyrimprefs.ini. file.

For the sound you could try that out:

Go to your Control panel -> Sound -> double click on speakers -> Enchantments -> Under the "enhancements" tab, click "Virtual Surround." apply - OK.

Restart, and see if that makes any difference !!!!!

You must be running Win7 (?).

I'm running Vista.

In the Control Panel, I have "Sound", from there I have a tab for Speakers, and an option to configure my speakers. From that config dialog, I have a couple tabs, but none with a "Virtual Sound" option setting on them. Nor is there a "Virtual Sound" setting in my Sound Blaster dialog. I have a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional sound card with the latest drivers.