Nuance voice samples provide a taste of Lion text-to-speech

The Australian voices are awesome. Love it.

Funny, they categorize Dutch as Scandinavian. (It's Germanic. Although, I'm sure a linguist might have a more precise categorization.)

I, too, like Lee the best. And I'm a United Statesean.

Yick - they all sound like robots to me. Perhaps I need to go back and see just how bad computer voices can be but I can't say that I'd ever appreciate having text read to me by one of these voices as opposed to reading it myself directly. As Peter Garner already noted, I don't see/hear these voices to be any better than the Alex voice already in place. That said, I'm sure the ability to speak non-English languages will be appreciated and I can happily report that the Monica voice speaks at the hundred miles an hour that I associate with real Spanish speakers.

If I had to pick a favourite, I'd go with Paolo. That said, I suspect that real Italian speakers probably think it sounds as much like a robot as I do the English voices to my ears.

Sangeeta is actually my favorite! And no, I'm not Indian myself.

I do agree with the commenter above who said that a non-familiar accent helps mask imperfect pronunciation and timing.

J'aime a Felix!

These aren't bad, but none of them are as good as the current system voice, Alex.

I want HAL.

Fiona is my pick. Overall though, they need to work on making the female voices sound sexier... ;)

I want Yoda, Homer Simpson, and Batman (aka Adam West).

My favourite is by far the Male Australian voice, Lee.
In general, out of these voices, the male ones seem to sound better. That's actually probably the opposite of my experience on Windows in the past, but the same as what Mac seems to have at the moment.