svox pico

Hi,
anyone got svox pico text to speech working on linux? i've tried it with 
sonar, a arch based distro, but the svox pico does not support 
rate/pitch changes. the version of svox pico that is preinstalled on 
vinux does support the changing of rate and pitch, but after i update 
vinux, sudo apt-get upgrade, the svox pico did not work and if i install 
the libttspico-utils package into vinux, i got   the same pico that i 
got in arch, meaning no pitch or rate changes. any one know the fix for 
this?