I am running Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise SP 1 and Visual Studio 2013 Express. I have the Windows SDK, Kinect 1.8 SDK and the Microsoft Speech SDK installed.
I only have a problem with Speak when trying to use it in a Win32 Project that has the include and lib directories specified for C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SDKs\Speech\v11.0\. I noticed the problem when trying to modify the SpeechBasics-D2D Kinect sample to include speech. That sample requires C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SDKs\Speech\v11.0\ include and lib directories to be specified. I have created a C# x86 WPF application that uses speech successfully and if I create a new Win32 Project and don't specify C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SDKs\Speech\v11.0\ then Speak works (although the voice sounds more tinny then C# app. I am at a loss for what to check. I read an article about someone having problems with WOW64 redirection here that sounded similar to my problem but am not sure what to check:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/b56c8dab-8f4d-4f84-bc6f-2b9ab4e9f914/sapi-loaddictation
I can provided more config information or sample code if needed. Any help appreciated.