For (non empeg) text to speech, I've always loved the sound of the AT&T Natural Voices ( http://www.naturalvoices.att.com ). I could never figure out how to just buy them directly, however, if you buy the cheapest product that http://www.nextup.com has (StocksAloud) you can buy the upgrade which gets you a male and a female AT&T Natural Voice @ 16khz. These things are pretty awesome ... One full CD for each voice (we're talking literally full -- like 650M of voice data), but if you dig TTS, it's worth it.

ms