[linux-audio-user] Animatronic parrot solution?

Hello all, I've been asked by an animatronics technician for suggestions as how they might go about solving a particular problem with a robot parrot at a local theme park. The robot's voice feature was designed around a PC/Windows platform using Cool Edit Pro and scripted in Visual Basic. The idea is that you say something to the parrot, it pitch shifts your voice then repeats what you said two seconds later. If no-one talks to the parrot for a while, it says "hello, my name is Sancho, talk to me". Needless to say, they are having severe reliability problems with Windows as it is being used day in, day out. Can anyone suggest a suitable Linux solution for this parrot? I was thinking about ecasound combined with a pitch shift plugin, if one exists. If the solution could run entirely in RAM (CD booting, perhaps?) then that would solve the problem of hard disk reliability. Thanks Daniel