Having issues with Text to Speech Engine

I use the text-to-speech often with the Alex voice. I use it on macbook Pro

Basically I just select a page or paragraph of text and then use my chosen hotkey to read back the selected text.

But often it does not work. I'm really not sure what causes the issues but what happens is instead of it reading back the selected text, I hear the first word in the selected text completely garbled, and then it abruptly stops.

After a fresh reboot it works perfectly of course. Maybe it is after I put the computer to sleep and wake it up again that the issue starts. I'm really not sure what causes it.

The only way I can fix it without a reboot is by quitting the Speech Synthesis Server in the activity monitor...then I relaunch it by opening up speech and deselecting and reelecting the options for "speak selected text when key is pressed". I don't have to force quit the process.

If anybody has an idea as to what might be causing this issue and how to address it I'd appreciate it.

Thanks