punctuation spoken with a pause and echo

[Andre Nuno Soares]

Hello all,

When I switch Orca from gnome-speech to speech-dispatcher the
punctuation gets spoken with a noticeable pause before and after and an
echoing sound.

This happens in most applications, but not in Firefox.

I'm using SD with PulseAudio, starting SD and PA in Gnome.


The pause is a real problem, as it makes everything sluggish. 
Is there a way to avoid this? Is it a pulseaudio problem? 

I'm using Ubuntu 8.10, Gnome and Orca 2.24.1, PulseAudio 0.9.10 and
Speech-Dispatcher 0.6.7


Thanks in advance,
Andr?
PS: I've also noticed that, although I use espeak with both speech
systems, the names for the punctuation change.
Example: / is "slash" with gnome-speech and "stroke" with SD, @ is "at"
with the first, and "at sign" with the later, etc, etc.