Thenryb

I am having the same issue. It is not so much the distance that appears to be a factor, but whether my character is facing in the direction of the NPC. I tried googling the issue without much success. Most of the complaints are about NPCs being silent when the character is facing them. Sort of the opposite of what I have experienced. I did find a post from a few years ago about this issue. It suggested a workaround that I have tried and it sort of "works". Open Control Panel/Sound. Select the Speakers that are checked in green, choose properties, then "enhancement" and select "loudness equalization".

Are you enabling all of those style options in XPMSE? If so, you might try disabling those. Doing that in my game greatly reduced the time it takes to save. Also, do not allow saves to be overwritten. This may not help that much in an existing game, but it is a cheap fix if it works. If you have all those styles enabled for your character and all npcs, I suspect you co-save file is quite large.

The alpha wolf on the way to Riverwood is probably from the Cutting Room Floor mod.

Ah. Now I remember reading about that drama some time ago.

Who or what is LH?

I just accessed it. Did not download or post in the thread.

Here is one which has a lot but not all of the features you want. It is old and no longer supported. It has a wall blocking a smelter in the basement which needs to be disabled if you want to use the smelter. I use it in Special Edition, opening it in the CK to convert to Form44. It has all the storage chests you would ever want and automated sorting if you want to use that feature and a small room to display dragon claws and dragon priest masks. There are three mannequins that you could disable if you want. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16766/?tab=posts

Your solution did nothing for the size of my cosaves. I guess the cause and solution will remain a mystery for now.

I see you posted an inquiry on the XPMSE mod page. I hope that mod is not the cause or that it can be fixed.

I am not sure this is the right place to ask my question, but I can't figure out where to ask it. I do not have any problem with orphaned co-saves. I also use NMM as a mod manager and have no profiles, so all of my characters play with the same load order. I use an early version of the NamedQuicksaves Mod and have a hotkey set to create manual saves which I do periodically. I have all autosaves disabled (although I still get them when entering Apocchapha or when first entering Solstheim and the stupid one before you encounter the Caller which I delete). When I am playing some characters, I notice that the save takes a lot longer than when playing other characters, even when they are at the same level. The characters that have fast save times have much smaller SKSE cosave files. The larger the SKSE cosave file, the longer it takes to do a save. Why are some of the cosave files so much larger than others? As an example, I have one character whose ESS file is 6600 kb and his skse cosave is 504KB. His saves are fast. I have another character whose save file is 6000 KB whose cosave file is 2848 Kb, and another with a save file of 7200KB and a cosave file of 3600. Saves with those characters are slow (several seconds). My question is what is causing this difference?

I am not sure this is the right place to ask my question, but I can't figure out where to ask it. I do not have any problem with orphaned co-saves. I also use NMM as a mod manager and have no profiles, so all of my characters play with the same load order. I use an early version of the NamedQuicksaves Mod and have a hotkey set to create manual saves which I do periodically. I have all autosaves disabled (although I still get them when entering Apocchapha or when first entering Solstheim and the stupid one before you encounter the Caller which I delete). When I am playing some characters, I notice that the save takes a lot longer than when playing other characters, even when they are at the same level. The characters that have fast save times have much smaller SKSE cosave files. The larger the SKSE cosave file, the longer it takes to do a save. Why are some of the cosave files so much larger than others? As an example, I have one character whose ESS file is 6600 kb and his skse cosave is 504KB. His saves are fast. I have another character whose save file is 6000 KB whose cosave file is 2848 Kb, and another with a save file of 7200KB and a cosave file of 3600. Saves with those characters are slow (several seconds). My question is what is causing this difference?

If you get a good explanation of what those NMM options do and which ones to use when, I will be interested.

I had never heard of this mod-sounds interesting although I would prefer one that would shut them up or allow you to scroll through their dialogues (esp Hermaeus Mora)

This is the one I like and have used it forever. It is a small home but accommodates followers, has ample space to store all of your gear. It also has sorting features which I have not seen in any other mods. DantheGeek made the mod and he is long gone from the modding scene but the mod is still eminently functional. It's only flaw is that the smelter in the basement is blocked by a wall, so you need to open the console, click on the wall and disable it. Here is the link: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16766/

I agree with most of what you say about the Wolf armor, except that I do not even like the look of it.