Windows 8 Problems with speech files after updating to 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.

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

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

I updated my sound drivers, no change!
SB Recon3D PCle sound card

 

[Trouble]

Just a guess Mike and not even a particularly good one but is it possible that there is a codec that you previously used that may be missing or corrupt and needs to be reinstalled. I've been reading that some codec packs have been causing some issues with Windows 8.1

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi Trouble

That could be hard to track down, but I asked the same questions at TextAloud too.
They've always been good about support so maybe if that's the problem they will know what to install.

But I probably won't hear from them until Monday.

It's so weird that music and voice on the same video come out with the music fine and the voice distorted from the same sound file.

Mike

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Right now I'm downloading SAPI5 and I'm going to install that and see if it helps.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Well, I haven't been able to solve this so far, it isn't related to the speech software itself as far as I can figure.
Even if I play one of my videos that's on Vimeo the voice comes out distorted while the music on the same file is unaffected.

The same video played fine before the upgrade.

Very weird but it has to have something to do with the way that speech interpreter is working in Windows 8.1 on my computer.

I can't turn on narration which worked fine until I updated to 8.1 so something is missing someplace.

I've done everything I can think of, uninstalled my sound card, reinstalled it, installed the latest software for it, installed SAPI5, and 4. but nothing seems to have any effect.

When I started checking I found some distortion in some of the speech in computer games like Skyrim as well.

Some of this speech is computer generated too, at least in the user made stuff.

I'm glad I took the time to back everything up, I may need to restore my disk image.

So far I haven't seen any reason to stick with 8.1 anyway.
I haven't tried everything but I'm finding it to be slower on my computer then 8.

It takes literally forever to boot up, in 8 it only took about 45 seconds to get to the desktop.
And some other things don't seem to work as well either.

The interface is a little better but there are still things that bug me.

Why when you fill up an area on the start screen does it insist on making 2 new columns for 2 items?

I just want it to make one more row, I don't need 2 new columns to add 2 items.

If I can't find any performance improvements I'll go back to regular 8 and get my fast boot times and speedy operation back.

I probably should have done a clean install, maybe I wouldn't be having the sound and performance issues if I had started from scratch.

I just didn't want to spend a week reinstalling and setting everything up all over again.

On another note: Why can't I get Google spell checker to recognise the word, reinstalling, even if I tell it to add it to the dictionary it still keeps telling me it's misspelled.

What am I supposed to say, "putting all my software back where is was. before it wasn't there anymore", reinstalling is easier.

Now I'm starting to sound like Andy Rooney, well he's dead, maybe there room for another one.

Mike

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Just came back to say I restored to my system image and everything is back up and running.

A shoutout to Paragon Backup and Recovery, which works better then my paid for software which failed my several times, by not being able to read it's own backup files.

Mike

 

[badrobot]

Hi

Just came back to say I restored to my system image and everything is back up and running.

A shoutout to Paragon Backup and Recovery, which works better then my paid for software which failed my several times, by not being able to read it's own backup files.

Mike

I am doing the same right now... going back to 8 with the image backup. I'm having issues too with the hardware and software that runs smoothly with 8.




...

 

[Medico]

Sorry you guys are having the problems you are. My 2 upgrades worked smooth as silk. No problems at all. Had to reinstall Classic Shell on Wife's PC and uncheck MS Compatibility View MS Compatibility Lists to get Google search to work. That's it so far.

 

[Andrea Borman]

I have got Windows 8 Pro 32 bit. When I install Windows 8.1, which is not right now. I am going to buy the full installation DVD and do a clean install from scratch. I think that's better.

 

[badrobot]

Sorry you guys are having the problems you are. My 2 upgrades worked smooth as silk. No problems at all. Had to reinstall Classic Shell on Wife's PC and uncheck MS Compatibility View MS Compatibility Lists to get Google search to work. That's it so far.

It's working fine. I got it to run and the transition was smooth. But there are hiccups with some hardware and software that I already have running flawlessly with Win 8 that Win 8.1 messed up. I'm sure it will work 100% ok with laptops which are mostly non-modified or no hardware upgrades but not with my system on my sig below. I may try again maybe a year from now when MS fixed these issues. Or I might jump directly to Win 9 if it is any good.

 

[badrobot]

I have got Windows 8 Pro 32 bit. When I install Windows 8.1, which is not right now. I am going to buy the full installation DVD and do a clean install from scratch. I think that's better.

I don't think it matters how you install it. Win 8.1 is a re-written OS and missed a lot of important details with hardware drivers and compatibility. But no harm doing it. And then come back to tell us if it is indeed better doing it that way.

Cheers!

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Same here, at first I thought that everything went great.

Only after I started messing around did I find things that didn't work.
Especially my sound, it worked but a lot of things were distorted, especially any computer generated speech, which is something I use a lot.

I spent all day trying to get it sorted, but even reinstalling everything connected with sound and speech didn't fix it, so I finally gave up and went back to 8.

That wasn't the only reason though.

I found the performance to be slower on a lot of things and my boot time went way up, even though I checked to see if I was starting anything extra.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the interface but I didn't see anything that helped me in anyway, it still doesn't have a simple start menu that I can pin just the things I want onto, that's what I could really use, a Windows 8 built in version of Rocket Dock, or just a regular start menu like Windows XP had .

I didn't like the start menu in Windows 7 had either because you had to scroll through it, that's when I started using RocketDock.

So "If it ain't broke don't fix it" back to Windows 8, Classic Shell and RocketDock.

It has been perfectly stable so why mess with it.

If they had really addressed some of my concerns I might have stuck with it but it's just not worth the effort unless it just loads and runs without a lot of hassle.

I'm sure that a lot of the problem is that I run a lot of really complex non mainstream software.
3D animation software, speech creation software, video editing, screen capture, converters for everything to everything etc.

Most people can probably upgrade and have no problems.

But why my sound didn't work right is a mystery, even in games the voices were messed up?

Very weird.

The fact that it doesn't pick up your user profile is part of the problem I think.
And I don't want to have to sign in to Microsoft to run my computer either.

Mike

 

[badrobot]

Yup I am officially back on Win 8. But I can still boot up to 8.1 from time to time as I am running a cloned Win 8 on SSD and I kept the original OS installation on the original 1TB (on a separate partition) hard drive which I left updated to Win 8.1
I can easily switch between Win 8 and Win 8.1 thanks to Boot Menu options (F12 keys) on my UEFI motherboard.

I sent messages to the manufacturers of my unsupported hardwares about Win 8.1 drivers.

...

 

[MikeHawthorne]

I thought about installing Windows 8.1 along with Windows 8, I wish I had then I would have had more time to mess with it.
When I originally installed Windows 8 on my old computer it did it that way and then eventually just removed Widows 7 when I was sure I didn't need it anymore.

 

[badrobot]

You can still do so by cloning your win 8 on another hard drive and then update it to 8.1. But make sure only one drive is connected when doing the 8.1 update.

Sent from my HTC One X using WindowsForum mobile app

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Maybe I'll do that in a while.

I would never have thought that I would have to worry about disk space with 2 1 terabyte internal drives but I'm going to have to look at moving some of my stuff off it to my external drives.

But I have 2 disk images of C:\ and they take up a lot of my space on one of my partitions.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

@Mike--good thread here. Good to know that Paragon imaging backup worked for you. I haven't yet tried that; I've had very good luck with Clonezilla, but none of them are perfect. One of the guys recently mentioned Macrium Reflect, and he really liked it. I downloaded but haven't yet tried on my 8.1 install. A good snow-day project for sure! Another month or so. I am planning on posting the result of that test on my Dell Studio and letting everyone know how it worked. I have like 2.5 TB of total storage with all my external usb hdd's and they ate up all my storage with playing around with customer backups and hdd image files. I could easily fill up a Pedabyte drive. <grin>. I spend hours every week backing up customer backups to dvd to make free space on my external libraries. sheesh!

@badrobot: I see you are running your Win8 on a SSD bootdrive! How is that working for you..I know I keep dissing that configuration for Posters here, so am curious. Pauli I think has said he's had good luck with his. What do you think?

Cheers!
BIGBEARJEDI

 

[badrobot]

@Mike--good thread here. Good to know that Paragon imaging backup worked for you. I haven't yet tried that; I've had very good luck with Clonezilla, but none of them are perfect. One of the guys recently mentioned Macrium Reflect, and he really liked it. I downloaded but haven't yet tried on my 8.1 install. A good snow-day project for sure! Another month or so. I am planning on posting the result of that test on my Dell Studio and letting everyone know how it worked. I have like 2.5 TB of total storage with all my external usb hdd's and they ate up all my storage with playing around with customer backups and hdd image files. I could easily fill up a Pedabyte drive. <grin>. I spend hours every week backing up customer backups to dvd to make free space on my external libraries. sheesh!

@badrobot: I see you are running your Win8 on a SSD bootdrive! How is that working for you..I know I keep dissing that configuration for Posters here, so am curious. Pauli I think has said he's had good luck with his. What do you think?

Cheers!
BIGBEARJEDI

Hi BBJ,
Regarding Macrium Reflect, for me that's the best cloning and imaging tool for Win 8 and 8.1. It clones GPT disks (which is normally the disk type for Win 8 systems) without any issues. Other free cloning software will not let you do it unless you pay for the premium version.
I've been running Win 8 on SSD for quite a while. I have both my PCs running on SSDs. I mapped all my library folders to another internal hard drive and and it is working without any hiccups.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Paragon works well, but as with all of the backup software I've used, (I've used Pay Software like Acronis as well) I wish I could design the interface.

You have to be very careful setting up and recovering the backup to make sure you do it right.

I wish someone would make one that simply asks "What do you want to back up?" and "Where do you want to save it".
Just Point at, C:\ Windows and direct it to E:\ My Backups.

It should have enough sense to backup everything connected with you OS, (supporting partitions boot sector etc.) and will put it back in the same place it came from if you need to restore, automatically, unless you tell it otherwise.

I once backed up my whole C:\ drive only to find out later that I had backed up my Data Drive not my OS drive because the drive letters weren't shown the same in the software.

I now clearly name all my drives, C:\Windows 8, D:\Games, E:\Graphics and Video, F:\Data and Backups.
And I look at the discription not the drive letter when I'm backing up.

But it could be made very simple, if he software was designed better.

My interface would look like this...

Link Removed

Mike

 

[Andrea Borman]

Well unfortunately I cannot install Windows 8.1 not though the Apps store. As the registry edit to make my screen resolution higher does not solve the issue. Every time I run the Apps store or any Metro app my screen goes back and my system crashes and restarts. So the only way I can get Windows 8.1 is to install it by DVD,but they don't have Windows 8.1 in the stores in England. So I never got the chance to try Windows 8.1.