Need help after updating to Windows 8.1?

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Today I updated my Windows 8 install to Windows 8.1.
For the most part it went smoothly but I'm having a weird problem with my text to speech files.

I reinstalled TextAloud to the latest version, and I reinstalled the Lucy voice, (really the only one I use).

But when I hit speak the voice is very distorted and the volume is low, it's the same for all the voices including the Microsoft ones.

I figured that I had some glitch in the software but here is the weird part, when I played one of my Lucy videos the voice in the video shows the same distortion.
so do .wav files that I had previously made and saved.

Windows normal sounds are unaffected as are music files.
Even the music in the videos is normal while the speech is distorted.

When I played one of my videos that I have on Vimeo the voice is distorted.
So something is affecting only the text to speech voices, not any of the other sounds no matter what the source.

I don't have a clue, If I can't figure this out I'll have to go back to my Windows 8 backup image.
I use TextAloud almost every day.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this, and how to fix it?

Thanks for the help.

Mike

Here is some additional information.
When I went to the Ease of Access Center in Windows and tried to activate the Narration feature I could not turn it on.
The Always read this section aloud is grayed out and when I click on Start Narrator nothing happens.

This always worked before.

Ps. I updated my sound drivers, no change.
I'm running a SB Recon3D PCle sound card.

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Just came back to say I gave up and restored my system image.
I had several problems with 8.1 and didn't see any real advantage to me.

It goes back to "If it isn't broke don't fix it" everything is back up and running normally.

Mike