OS X Mavericks has lots of cool new features, among my favorites are the new text-to-speech voices. Yes, Siri (aka Samantha) is still in there, but so are some new and even better ones — here is how to get ’em.

The Fairer Platform first brought you news of the new voices in Mavericks back in July, when OS X 10.9 was still in beta. These new voices, however, they aren’t installed by default — you need to download them:

1.) Go to System Preferences > Speech & Dictation > Text to Speech. Click the System Voice drop down and click “Customize” (shown above).

2.) Therein, you see the voices installed by default and a long list of (mostly foreign) accented voices available for download. To preview a voice, select it and then click the play button (below). I suggest getting Samantha (aka Siri), as well as Ava and Allison, which are new in Mavericks — hear Ava and Samantha read an excerpt from Moby Dick.

3.) Click OK and your new voices will download. Whereas all of these voices are free, some are quite large and can take awhile to download.

Still not enough voices? CereProc sells a variety of US and foreign accent voices for £25.99 each.

Related Posts:
— OS X Mavericks Adoption Stalls as Users Await Updates
— OS X Mavericks on an Original Mac Pro
— OS X Mavericks SMB2 Troubles? Here’s a Workaround
— Mavericks Wallpapers: Apple Has an Easter Egg for You
— OS X Mavericks Screensavers: More than 10 Plus Over 200 More