Why is only one channel of audio being played in Delphi app?

I have a delphi app in which I direct the sound from a text2speech SAPI component so that one channel is driving a LED and the other is driving a coil. My point is that normally, I do not hear the sound output.

Yesterday on doing some testing with the app, I had headphones on instead of using the LED and Coil arrangement (normally, when testing I just mute the application via the sound mixer), and I noticed that the sound was only coming from the right channel.

I tested the headphones, media player and all worked fine. I confirmed that the L/R channels had a balanced output in the Windows sound properties area.

I used a simple PlaySound API call in the mainform create event and that, too, played just the right channel. I moved the PlaySound call to the top of the DPR file and that, too, played only the right channel right after the start of the app.

I tried creating a simple app in Delphi with this same PlaySound call and that sent sound to both channels just fine.

I tried the app on two other systems, another win7 system and a win8.1 system, the sound worked fine on the other win7 system, but played again, only the right channel on the Win8.1 system. I checked with another user and he too, only got the right channel output.

What is going on here? How can I get the left channel back working in the app. It does not appear to be code related, nor Delphi related, perhaps a Windows App specific registry setting that Windows has made (I certainly didn't!)? Thank you for any suggestions!

Chuck Belanger