NPC's with no voices?

[DsoS]

Have your NPC's lost their voices? Do they talk when you walk by, but when you talk to them directly they stop having voices?

Its a easy fix, and a stupid one at that.

After uninstalling several programs that I thought was causing a issue with Oblivion, I still hadn't fixed the issue. So I decided to check my sound settings. Sounds settings in Windows (not oblivion).

Oblivion does NOT like any sound setting over 2-channel (or Stereo)

Q) How do I know this?

A) I changed my sounds settings in Windows to 5.1 channel, and after that Oblivion NPC's lost their voices.

A.2) To make sure, I changed it several times from 2-channel to 5.1, back in to OB, npc's had no voices, changed it back to 2-channel (or Stereo), they had their voices again. Changed it to 7.1channel, back in OB npc's lost their voices once again, changed back to 2-channel (or Stereo), they had their voices again.

Q) How do you fix this?

A) Go to Sound settings, usually in Control Panel (or the sound manager that was installed with your sound card), There will be an option for Speaker Configuration (or similar), if it is set at anything higher than 2-channel (or Stereo) (such as 5.1 or 7.1) change it to 2-channel (or Stereo). Save the options and exit, then load oblivion, and talk with a NPC, and they should now have sound.

Note:

This is a general guideline, there are too many different audio managers for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. It would be impossible to list every version of windows sound settings.

If you need more help figuring out your audio manager, I would be more than happy to help. I would need some information first...

1) What windows are you using? XP, Vista, 7

2) Audio Manager (if you have one) (such as Realtek (there are others, but I've only had realtek, for ages) (there is usually a icon on the notification area of the task bar close to the clock)

IMAGE of Notification Area (Windows 7):

I hope this guide helps people out. And if you have any other suggestions, comments, concerns, etc, just post them.

EDIT:

Replaced image with larger higher quality image.