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I have the game installed via Steam on my PC running 32 bit Windows XP and the game runs great, except for one problem. The game is just too dang quiet! The differences between sounds in the game are fine, closer things are louder than further things and such. But I have every setting I can possibly find turned to max and the sound is still about 25% of the rest of my applications at medium settings.
I had to alt tab out of the game and actually change the games volume from outside the game to get its volume higher, not sure why the games volume defaulted to such a low level, would love to be able to adjust the volume INGAME. I don't know what sound card you're using but I had very low sound using my XFI-Extreme Gamer card. What solved the issue for me was to enable Smart Volume Management (SVM) in the sound cards console. I think all the sound is driven with mp3 files and SVM boosted and smoothed out the sound where ever it was needed.
Suddenly my center channel audio drops out and only the left and right channels work, which is strange since I don't have any surround sound set up. Just two speakers and a sub. This doesn't happen in any other game or audio application. Just Skyrim. In order to hear what people are saying I have to turn my character to the left or right, put the speaking person at my side and suddenly I can hear them talk.
I switched to playing with a head set, getting the audio out of my headphones only and strangely enough that fixed it. But what I realized is that certain environments in the game have an echo effect to the sounds. Like temples and halls. When you talk to characters their voices are all echoey. In my two-speaker set up, the center channel drops out in these locations and only while playing Skyrim. It's an audio bug for echoey locations. The work around until Beth fixes it? Use a head set? It worked for me. Not sure why it works with headphones but not with speakers. I assume it's a software glitch. Beth is accessing the direct sound wrong somehow maybe, but only in locations with high echo.
Not sure if it's a Realtek HD onboard audio specific problem, but the best workaround I found (first posted elsewhere on these forums I believe) is to use the Realtek HD Audio Manager via Windows Control Panel (installed when installing driver from the Realtek site). In the Speakers tab, Speaker Configuration sub-tab, I selected "5.1 Speaker" from the dropdown (I only have a 2.1 setup), then unchecked Center & Rear Pair from the Optional Speakers section, and unchecked Surround speakers from the Full-range Speakers section. This seems to deliver sound at normal volume from my speaker setup.
Same issue here on Win 7 x64. I have an X-Fi Fatality sound card. I haven't tried the SVM thing yet, so I will do that tonight when I get home. I've just been turning up my speaker volume to compensate. Normally my volume knob sits at about 25%, but to hear the game comfortably I've had to turn the volume up to 50%. Thankfully I have yet to forget to turn the volume back down after I exit the game.