Those who have been playing the newly-released Skyrim Special Edition with headphones on the PC may have noticed some sound effects seem more janky than usual. After multiple users confirmed on Reddit they had the same problem, user LasurArkinshade looked into the code and found that, for an unknown reason, the sound files in the Special Edition are heavily compressed. (The original Skyrim used no sound compression.)
If the Special Edition is obviously far larger in size than the original, why has the sound been compressed? More bizarre still, there is no report of the Playstation 4 edition of Skyrim having this issue. Only the PC version, where storage space can be as big as your imagination, has shrunken sound files.
There’s no answer out of Bethesda yet as to why this happened, but they are aware of the problem. Another Reddit user named gstaff — who we believe to be Matt Grandstaff, Bethesda’s community manager — told the board “We’re currently testing a fix and hope to have an update out next week.” Good to know.