UPDATE 2:

Just to clarify something.  Some site are wrongfully reporting that those voices where added by Apple in Lion’s preview 3.  This is not true.  The voice samples where there with the 1st preview. I did NOT discovered the voices. Those where found way back when Preview 1 was released. What I discovered today is that that those voice samples where in fact the same voices that Nuance used to sell in their RealSpeak product.

Those voices are NOT actually usable just yet in Lion.  You get an error message when Lion is trying to install them.  They are most likely missing either from the installation package or missing from Apple’s update servers.

I hope this clarifies things up a bit.

UPDATE 1:

Apparently the RealSpeak application is now called Vocalizer.  You can find it here!  Thank you Örjan for pointing this out!  You will find a demo of the voice and I must say that they sound identical to the Apple’s voice demo in Lion!

——

Here is something I discovered while listening to the new voices sample in OSX Lion.  They are a perfect match to those that used to be part of Nuance RealSpeak Solo product…  Now, the thing is that Nuance RealSpeak Solo is no more to be found on their web sites… how strange is that.

You can still find samples of the various voices at sites like the following.

The voice samples in Lion sound a bit better than the older samples from Nuance… but one can easily link the two together.

You can also still get some live samples from Nuance by registering an account at the following link: http://212.8.184.250/tts/demo_login.jsp

I don’t know if the links above will stay up very long but have a try while it last!

This is more proof that Apple is certainly licensing Nuance products to use in the next OSX Lion. There is still a chance that they will pull it out before the GM release…

The new voices in Lion still don’t install properly (as of Preview 3)… Apple might have wanted to delay the distribution of those voices or they simply have not completed to cross all T and dot all i in the contract.