Skyrim: Here’s How To Fix Lov Volume Issues

Bugs, glitches, and various issues are standard deals for just about any game under the sun. Bethesda games just seem to have more of them and often rely on modders to fix them. We’ve covered various bugs and glitches extensively, like what to do when you can’t shout and how to fix the issue of water flickering. But today, we’re going to focus on one issue that is not caused by the game itself but rather by your audio settings. Many players report problems with audio in Skyrim. To be more specific, NPC voices sound too quiet when compared to other sound effects, music, and environmental sounds. Let’s see how to fix low volume issues in Skyrim.

Players often run into an issue where they can’t hear NPC voices at all 

Part of Skyrim’s immersive experience is its beautiful soundtrack and other environmental sounds, and for players that don’t use subtitles of any kind, NPCs’ voices are an important part of gameplay. Even if you do use subtitles, not hearing NPCs properly might mess with your orientation (during combat), and it feels overall weird for everything in the game to be louder than the NPC that is standing right in front of you. 

This is a well-known issue and one that has been solved many times over. It’s time to see why. 

Make sure that your Skyrim’s sound settings are balanced 

Before we go ahead and tamper with your audio driver, let’s take a look at the game’s settings first because, for some people, this might cause issues. Reaching your audio settings in-game is really easy. All you have to do is navigate to settings and find the audio section. Once there, you will be able to adjust several elements that comprise your Skyrim’s audio, such as master volume, effects, footsteps, and voices. 

Obviously, if your voices are too quiet, the first thing that you should be doing is raising the sound settings associated with them. Most players have unique tastes when it comes to their game’s audio. Some of the settings should be individual. However, if you’re NPCs are too quiet, make sure to lower all other audio settings while keeping the voices high.

If you’re still experiencing issues, the problem might lie somewhere else.

You can fix low volume issue in Skyrim via your audio driver 

If tampering with the game’s settings didn’t help, you’re going to have to make your way to your audio driver. The following guide is for Realtek users. It’s good for pretty much all versions of the program since all versions have the same settings.

1. Navigate to Realtek Audio Console (it might be called differently on your PC, depending on when you last updated the program) 
2. Once inside the program, navigate to “Speaker Configuration” and change the mode to 5.1 
3. Navigate to the “Sound Effects” options, and under Equalizer, set “none.” 

This should resolve all problems with other software trying to modify your game’s audio and making it worse. If you don’t use Realtek, or your issues, haven’t been resolved properly, even after you’ve followed every step, you can do the same thing in Windows settings as well, and personally, it’s what worked for me when I encountered the issues.

To resolve the issues with low volume in Skyrim via Windows audio settings, follow these steps: 

1. Navigate to your PC’s control panel.
2. Once there, locate the “Sound” settings. 
3. Click on “Manage Devices” and choose the speakers you’re using currently. 
4. Double-click on your speakers and click on the “Advanced” tab 
5. Uncheck the box “Enable audio enhancements.” 

And voila, this should, in theory, resolve your issues, and now Skyrim is in full control of you’re game’s sounds, and everything should sound according to your settings. 

Once you’ve fixed the issues of NPCs being too quiet, you can further modify the settings as you please. Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!