Orca orca new speech on fiesty disk

[Cody Hurst <churst35 verizon net>]

Hey al,

  I'm trying out the beta alfa version of fiesty. I do not like the
speech mostly because its in british english and I don't see any option
in the person list for american english. also, the speech is kind of
like a knife in the ear can I change the pitch and so on? It didn't seem
to let me, so does the speech still use festival or espeak now.. Also
how is the work on ttsynth and can viavoice be installed on ubuntu?
Thanks..

Cody