Does anyone else feel the AI voices talk a bit fast?

I'm giving the AI voices a shot because they sound better than the other ones... with a couple of exceptions. Primarily: they talk too fast. There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for slowing the voices down? Does anyone have any suggestions on this?

Other problems: the old voices seemed to be able to recognize abbreviations in addresses, but the new ones are taking "st" and translating to "saint" instead of "street" and "ma" as just M-A rather than "Massachusetts". It also used to be able to recognize date of births, and phone numbers, but I've had to spell more of these out. For example it turned (603) 603-6003 into 6-3.