Ah, that's right, it's DXi, not VSTi. So Bit Bridge is not a factor, as Scook said. This gives me something to go on. I'll check into my DX version. I have been doing security-only Windows updates, but there was a period a few months ago where I did the full roll-ups, hoping the Windows 7 update mess had been fixed.
If it's a DirectX issue, I would think that lots of folks would be having problems with TTS-1, especially since it's the default midi synth for CbB. But I don't recall a lot of posts about TTS-1 not working. So it may be something about my setup specifically. Maybe I have an older DX version, and need to update it?