I completely agree. Although I haven't gone to school for sound design, audio quality has always been very important to me in games. And something about Halo 4 was just, off.
It's hard for me to describe but everything just sounds wrong. Not the the sound itself, but the quality of it. And you nailed it. The CG cutscenes sound great but any cutscenes running in engine sound wrong.
I couldn't explain it until you did. And it makes sense. Halo 4's engine is putting so much effort into making it look great (and it does look amazing) that the quality of any sound running through it has to be severely diminished. It only seems to be noticeably wrong during the in engine cutscenes. Playing the game, the multiplayer, and spartan ops have always been fine. That's when you can tell how much effort went into getting realistic sounds. But the cutscenes during the campaign are very annoying to listen through.
I know this is a little late but this is something that has always bothered me and it makes it difficult for me to replay the campaign.
