Voice Recording/Play back with a microprocessor

This project is for an Electronic Engineer and a Circuit Designer. I require speech of 8KHz sampling 8 Bit will do, for 32 messages of differing lengths. The messages will be recorded via a simple Microphone, and uploaded digitally for some pre-recorded messages. A PIC micro should be used and some easily obtainable memory to store the data should also be used. If improved quality of speech can be made by increasing sampling rate or bit count or any filters etc.. these should be considered; but must be low cost.