But at the same time... I liked my stealth horse.. Not hearing him running was nice.

Osi wrote: »

Instead of complaining, try and determine what is causing the sound cut out and report it as a bug. I have also experienced a sound cut off for footsteps and I wasn't able to determine what caused it, but the next time it does I will be paying more attention to find it.

Dying in Cyrodiil and respawning at a transitus shrine will sometimes cause footstep sounds to drop out.

One diagnostic I can suggest - does this happen ONLY in game? I'm assuming that it does, but if you haven't checked it, try playing a piece of music and seeing if the sound cuts in and out. I had this happen while playing a game once and was convinced it was the game until I started playing MP3's - then I realized my speakers were going bad. The wires had gotten crimped over time and were starting to break so they only got occasional contact with each other.

The other thing that comes to mind is possibly a gaming control program? I have one that sets sound, lights, processors etc. settings depending on the game I play.

The reason I'm suggesting those two things is honestly, if it's completely random and you can absolutely rule out anything but ESO having issues, it's likely something the programmers will have to patch. Frustrating, but I would assume the game got shipped with all the sounds/VA intact, and bugs are making it glitch out. I've occasionally gotten the VA cut off mid-speech and I just submit a bug report and move on.

Sorry I can't offer better advice than that, I hope they fix it soon for you and others having this issue. Even if it seems utterly random, I'd just compile a list of what you were doing/where you were at when it happens and submit it to the bug people every few errors. The more data they have, hopefully the easier they can fix it. Frustrating to constantly feel like a bug tester though.

I doubt it's lag related. My wife has never had the problem, where I experience it very often. I've done quite some tests already trying to pinpoint the cause, but so far without any luck.

I'll probably copy her install over to my machine and give that a go, as well as trying the same sound card she's using. I'm using a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS and she's using an Asus Xonar D1.

I hope they get this problem sorted soon.

One thing I noticed with this issue, if you take your horse, sprint, and jump several times (with a couple of seconds between each jumps), this seems to get the sound back for some reason. Skipping dialogues, cancelling the dialogue then going back to the dialogue a couple of times also seems to get the sound back.

I'm suspecting some "sound event" get stuck in a waiting loop, and that generating other actions triggers whatever is needed for said event to happen.

Since the game itself still has sounds, I'm suspecting there are some shared stuff between voices, animal noises (including walking). Jumping however can still be heard during those un-noisy times.

It is mildly annoying, but sometimes, when you are watching npc's interacting/talking to each others, it's a bit over annoying, as you are watching a silent movie . Adding npc's to the chat room solves this issue in a way, as a workaround.

Happens quite often to me. Most of the time it's when I'm talking to quest NPC's. I just alt tab and restart the conversation.

Huh, I just recently encountered this twice about half an hour ago for the first time.

I honestly thought it was just my Borrowers and Lenders addon blocking something else while the quest NPC was talking to me.