live lip sync suddenly stopped working for many but not all characters in Starter

I am using Character Animator Starter 26.0 on Windows 11. After working correctly for approximately two days, live lip sync suddenly stopped working on some of the supplied Starter puppets.

Red Dog was the puppet I had been using most and had been working correctly until the problem suddenly appeared. I subsequently discovered that several other supplied puppets are also affected, including Mark, Sebastian, Rin and Tull, while others including Lacy, Leonard, Maya, Sasquatch, Wrestler, Eyva Thorne, Bandit, Sam, Fin and Robot continue to lip-sync normally.

The microphone is working correctly. Character Animator receives and records the microphone audio normally, and the same microphone input produces live lip sync with the unaffected puppets.

The affected puppets are also capable of lip syncing correctly. If I export/record the speech and use Import Recorded Speech, their mouths animate normally. It is specifically LIVE lip sync that has stopped working.

The camera is a Canon 5D connected through Canon EOS Webcam Utility. Facial tracking continues to work: Character Animator detects my face and the green tracking lines follow my facial features, and the affected puppets respond to head, eye and other facial movements. Their mouths simply do not respond to live speech.

Additional troubleshooting performed:

• Recalibrated facial tracking — no change.
• Tested both preview and actual recording — no change.
• Uninstalled and reinstalled Character Animator — no change.
• Reset Character Animator's 26.0 roaming preferences by renaming the AppData preferences folder and allowing Character Animator to create a new one — no change.
• Tested the same supplied puppets on a second computer (laptop) using its built-in camera and microphone — ALL puppets, including Red Dog, Mark, Sebastian, Rin and Tull, live-lip-sync correctly there.

Therefore the supplied puppet assets themselves appear to be functional, and the desktop installation is receiving microphone audio correctly. The problem appears to be a failure of live lip-sync processing affecting only a subset of Starter puppets on this installation.

Because Starter mode does not expose the Lip Sync behavior or its advanced controls, I have no way to inspect or reset the live Lip Sync behavior on the affected puppets.

I would appreciate confirmation as to whether this is a known Character Animator Starter 26.0 issue and whether there is a way to reset/rebuild the live Lip Sync state without access to Character Animator Pro.