So I've seen a couple of other people with this problem around on the Internet, but none of the fixes in their threads have worked for me. When I listen to cutscenes that I know have voice acting (due to watching other people play them or because they worked for me at another time), the voices always sound extremely distant, muffled, and echo-y. Sometimes they're so quiet as to be inaudible.

For reasons I don't understand, the voices have worked for me exactly three times over the course of two months, but seemingly at random; I simply start up my computer/the game and the cutscenes work for some reason. But this is unreliable and purposefully restarting my computer, my headset, and/or the game in order to try and get it to work doesn't yield any results.

I've tried using three different headsets as well as my laptop speakers. I've tried going into the sound control panel and ticking/unticking every box that I can find in different combinations. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the most commonly proposed fix, switching from 5.1 to Stereo or 7.1 (it was already on Stereo, but doesn't work on 5.1 or 7.1 either). None of my friends have this problem.

I'm also fairly sure it's unrelated to the game's sound settings since I've tried adjusting all of those, including listening position.

Needless to say I'm kind of frustrated and would appreciate advice on anything else I could try.