Do you have a RealTek integrated soundchip, bought (or upgraded) Mass Effect recently, and have stumbled accross a huge problem, namely that there's no sound in the game? Have you browsed online forums for posts by people with the same problem, and which have solutions which just won't work (such as editing an ini file of the game)? Well, try this:
From the Windows Control Panel, in hardware settings, edit the hardware properties of your soundchip and lower the audio hardware acceleration to "basic".
That trick fixed all the sound problems with Mass Effect for me. (In fact, the same trick has worked for many other games with sound problems as well, which is why I tried it in the first place. Remember this trick for the next time you get sound problems with some game; it might help there too.)
If some other game starts presenting some performance issues because of that change, just change it back to full acceleration before starting that game. (This should be rather rare, though.)
(The reason I'm writing a web page like this is that I really want to help the myriad of people having this same problem, and I'm hoping I'll get some google visibility for search terms like "mass effect no sound", so people will find this solution. I'm not motivated enough to sign up in the couple of dozens of web forums just to make a post suggesting this fix. I hope this helps you.)