I've had Fallout 3 ever since it came out. I used to run it under Windows XP and now under Windows 7.

I started having problems when I installed a Creative Audigy SE sound card (Which I've heard has problems)

I initially had the stuttering issues with the radio and tried to fix it with alchemy only to find that crashes the game, so I disabled FFDShow for Fallout 3 and downloaded AC3 filter and set it to wave output and got it working good again. I also re-enabled my onboard sound (Realtek HD Audio) to use with fallout and headphones, whilst disabling my Audigy, since I had frequent crashes in Energy weapon battles and I have a sneaking suspicion it was due to the Audigy.

I usually play with the music slider in volume control turned down (Not the radio, the ambient music) -- the loud overlapping music ruins the mood for me -- only now when I turn down the music it turns everything else. In fact all the other volume sliders, even Master seem to do nothing. It's like the music slider is the only slider available. Eventually I went into the data folder and renamed the music folder "music1" so fallout 3 doesn't even detect the music files at all and therefore doesn't play them. I'm fine with this, but it wold be nice to have the music in a soft undertone.

Today, I decided to see if I could get the audio issues sorted out and though maybe they were related to the AC3 filter, since I didn't have that before and never had the problems before. So I opened it up and messed around, eventually giving up and uninstalling it all together. Everything is still exactly the same with fallout 3. The music slider seems to control everything. And now when I rename the music folder in the Data folder, no sound plays at all, it's totally silent.

I am running a few mods, including E.V.E., which changes the sound of energy weapons fire, Fellout, and the Galaxy News Radio 100 songs addition [and the unofficial patch], but I disabled them independently and still had the issues.

So I'm totally not sure what's causing the audio issues at this point.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas, or if anyone else has had this problem?