Skyrim Sound Files

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Ogier Dudley

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:22:18 PM8/3/24

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Some friends and I are always talking about things we want to add to skyrim but we all suck and never put the effort into learning the Creation kit. I decided to change that and the primary thing i want to change first is some sound files.

First of all you'll want to familiarise yourself with Skyrims original sound files - so navigate to your Skyrims data folder and you should see "Skyrim - Sounds.BSA" file, this is where the sounds you want are stored. It's all in one archive file as standard as I believe Skyrim can access files within an archive quicker than if they were what's called "loose files".

Don't worry that it's Fallout and not Skyrim. Just install it and it will automatically associate .BSA files to itself. If you don't have Fallout installed it'll state that it can't find it, but ignore and close any warning messages like this.

You can select whichever files you wish take out of the archive, or better yet I'd extract all files (make a folder somewhere and store the audio for quick future access). Now that you have the audio files you can edit or replace them. You don't have to repack the changed audio back into a replacement archive file as you can leave them as loose files, that choice is obviously up to you.

This was extremely helpful, thank you. I now have all of the all of the creature sound file available under "sound --> fx --> npc" and there are lots of creatures in here, but no fox. Any idea where the 'crfoxvoice' pulls its sounds from?

Thanks for that link, there's a lot of good info there. I'm not concerned about linking new sounds to animations; I just want to replace the sound files that are there. So I would just name them back to what they already are--it would just be a different .wav file. I'm not working in the creation kit, since, as you pointed out, there's no way to edit the sounds from the creation kit. It's all tied into something called "crfoxvoice" which I think is either the same or just a different mix of the wolf sound files.

I've managed to install the entire mod so far and everything works, except for some missing sound files. Specifically, so far I am getting the error of "Sound file not found; data files\sound\TR\r\ornada moan.wav". I've gotten a similar message for the molecrab roar sound file as well. I have rextracted multiple times from both the data download and a loose files download I found from another post and still have the same issue. Since I believe that this is caused every time a the ornada and the mole crab make their sounds, this is making the mod impossible to play with as this message comes up anytime one of these creatures is within hearing range. Any ideas?

You just installed Tamriel Data incorrectly, is all. If you look at what you downloaded, open the Data Files folder and make sure everything in there gets copied over. It seems like the Sounds folder and maybe some of the others did not get copied properly.

Thank you! Just getting back on to say that I figured it out. Had the Data Files extracted one level deeper than I thought I did. I'm gonna log off and go to bed now...sleep may help for future endeavours. Really great mod, guys, cheers, and the community is awesome.

(Edit) I've seen this on some other forums so in case anyone needs to use it, what fixed it for me was ensuring that the sound files in the Sound data file for the Tamriel Rebuilt Data were extracted to the
Data Files in the Morrowind Directory. From there, the files automatically unpacked and made their way into the Sounds file under the main Morrowind Directory. If you don't have six files for sounds in your Morrowind Sounds Data files folder, check to make sure this isn't what's happening to you.

Hi,
In my quest to make all mods fit within the infamous 5 GB mod space limit on xbox, I was wondering if it is possible to downscale/compress facegen/npc textures for npc appearance overhaul mods and sound files from sound overhaul mods. If it is possible to do it while still making sure the mods work, how would I proceed?

For Audio compression tactics, I compress dialogue at a lower bitrate than music. As long as it isn't terribly low and the audio isn't terrible quality (M'rissi) in the first place you can get away with squishing it a little harder with a lower bitrate. Music isn't as tolerant before you start getting the "AM Radio" effect.

As for tools to do XWM conversion, I've used LazyAudio converter or Yakitori Audio Converter which have served me well. I think LE and SE understand the same audio format as long as they're on Windows or Xbox but hopefully someone can clarify. I've only done this for LE and SE on Windows.

If you wind up finding yourself still beyond the limit after compressing the hell out of your audio you could always use a dummy (empty) ESPFE-flagged plugin to load an additional BSA if needed. The game engine sees asset paths relative to ./Data so anything you load from a BSA is going to be seen from that vantage point, (normally) no matter what BSA you load them from*. Keep that in mind when formulating your strategy.

Since the introduction of CreationKit 64bit for Skyrim Special Edition, the in-built tool to generate sound files did no longer work within the response tab of your dialogue. Technically, you cannot directly take records during a CK session, and the result is that scenes and dialogues break and do not show up properly in-game.

place a folder with a dummy file. Use the Stock\_1.fuz from fuz roh doh download. Data\Sound\Voice\(yourmodname.esp)\(yourvoicetypename)\ the ID of the voice line you read in your response-FuzRohDoh: Fuz Ro D-oh - Silent Voice

get this dummy file automatically inserted by Fuz Roh Doh, will work for LE, SE and AE if you have the most recent SKSE. You could avoid AE by downgrading your AE to SE again. Downpatcher: Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Downgrade Patcher (Note that you can apparently now use FuzRohDoh again for AE since 09.01.2022, I did not test it yet.)

It is suggested however to use 1 or 2 for dummy files and later replace them with high-quality mastered voice records. Usually, voice actors are happy to support you, and some editing can really help to normalize the files and remove unwanted hall effects and other noise. Alternatively, you can use the voice line generator tool, which is surprisingly well working. If you are interested, have a look at the detailed tutorial for using xVASynth here: Auto-Generate Voice Lines using xVASynth

Different audio editors save WAV files in different ways. To check a sound file and see exactly how it was saved, you can use a program called Gspot[1]. Opening any audio or video file with this program will list exactly what codec or compression is used, the sampling rate, channels and more. Remember that PCM is essentially the same as uncompressed. If your wav file has something other than PCM listed, Skyrim might not be able to read it properly. You can use a program like GoldWave[2] to re-save it in a new format.

Update: All of these are now downloadable with CoH Modder! Neat new tool that makes installing/managing/finding mods way easier.
Update 2: Forgot to format the new packs in the same way as the others posted here. Also, one more new mod!

I've always found the electricity sounds in this game to be strange. That odd, swirling fizzy noise doesn't sound very electric, and powers like Charged Bolts just sound plain weird. So what I've done here is replace many electricity related power sounds with new ones, sampling sound effects from a great variety of sources and combining them into mostly original sounds.

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