editing speech.conf

[Michael Weaver]

I don't know if I am giving text editors the wrong path but for some
reason I can't edit speech.conf in order to adjust the volume for
Espeak in Speakup which is verry quiet compared to Espeak with Orca
which is set at a good level.
I tried Gedit which I thought might be the easiest route only it only
treats the file as a read only file. I have tried using sudo nano
speech.conf in the directory where the file is but for some reason it
is not opening it and I have also tried vi with the same results.
When I try editors like Nano and vi I am wondering if it is trying to
create new files rather than allow me to modify the existing file.