uncloseai-speech/docs/MODELS.md
Claude 848c2c6cb5 Integrate Silero TTS and add infrastructure for Chatterbox/Kokoro
INTEGRATED: Silero TTS (tts-1-silero)
- Added silero_wrapper class to speech.py for PyTorch Hub integration
- CPU-friendly, no GPU required (48kHz sample rate)
- Supports 5 languages: English (117 speakers), Russian, German, Spanish, French
- Loads on-demand via torch.hub from snakers4/silero-models
- Added 6 OpenAI-compatible voice mappings (alloy, echo, fable, etc.)

PREPARED: Chatterbox & Kokoro TTS
- Added dependencies to requirements.txt:
  * git+https://github.com/resemble-ai/chatterbox.git
  * transformers>=4.35.0 (for Kokoro)
  * huggingface-hub[cli] (for model downloads)
- Created Makefile targets for downloading models
- Created test targets for all three new engines

Makefile Enhancements:
- make voices-silero: Download Silero models (en, ru, de, es, fr)
- make test-silero: Test Silero TTS endpoint
- make voices-chatterbox: Download Chatterbox models via HF CLI
- make test-chatterbox: Test Chatterbox with emotion control
- make voices-kokoro: Download Kokoro models via HF CLI
- make test-kokoro: Test Kokoro fast synthesis

speech.py Changes:
- Added silero_wrapper class with tts() method
- Added tts-1-silero model handler in generate_speech()
- Registered tts-1-silero model in app
- Added PCM media type for Silero (48000 Hz)
- Global state: silero_model, silero_speakers dict

Configuration:
- Updated voice_to_speaker.default.yaml with tts-1-silero section
- Mapped all 6 OpenAI voices to Silero speakers (en_0 through en_5)

Documentation:
- Updated docs/MODELS.md: Silero marked as  INTEGRATED
- Updated roadmap: Phase 1 task 3 completed
- Updated status footer: 3 models rescued
- Added integration examples and Makefile commands

Next Steps:
- Test Silero integration in Docker
- Implement Chatterbox emotion control engine
- Implement Kokoro fast decoder engine
2025-11-09 10:48:44 -05:00

12 KiB

TTS Models and Engines

Raccoon Mission: Rescue abandoned open-source TTS models and integrate them into UncloseAI Speech

Documentation Index

Comprehensive Research

Individual Model Documentation

Each model has detailed documentation covering technical specs, integration status, and Raccoon Mission notes:

Currently Integrated:

  • 📄 Coqui TTS (XTTS-v2) - High-quality multilingual TTS with voice cloning
  • 📄 Piper TTS - Fast, lightweight neural TTS with 100+ voices
  • 📄 Silero TTS - CPU-friendly, actively maintained, 5 languages (NEW! )

High Priority Candidates:

  • 📄 Chatterbox - Emotion control, 23 languages, zero-shot cloning
  • 📄 Kokoro TTS - Fast decoder-only architecture, Apache-2.0

Specialized Models:

  • 📄 Mimic 3 - Privacy-focused, offline, lightweight
  • 📄 eSpeak NG - 100+ languages, accessibility-focused
  • 📄 Maya1 - Indic languages, diverse accents
  • 📄 Step-Audio-EditX - LLM-based audio editing (experimental)

Historical/Archived:


Currently Integrated

1. Piper TTS

📖 See detailed documentation for comprehensive technical specs and integration guide

Status: Working with absolute paths Original Project: rhasspy/piper (abandoned) Fork: OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl v1.3.0 Current Package: PyPI piper-tts>=1.2.0

Features:

  • Fast CPU-based neural TTS
  • ~100+ high-quality voices
  • Multilingual support
  • ONNX runtime
  • Low memory footprint (~100MB per voice)

Voices Available:

  • English (US, GB, multiple accents)
  • Spanish, French, German, Italian
  • Russian, Polish, Ukrainian
  • Chinese, Japanese, Korean
  • Many more languages

Model Source:

  • HuggingFace: rhasspy/piper-voices
  • Direct download: https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices/resolve/v1.0.0/

Integration:

  • Used for tts-1 model (fast, lower quality)
  • Models stored in /app/voices/en/en_US/libritts_r/medium/
  • Configuration via absolute paths in voice_to_speaker.yaml

Example Config:

tts-1:
  alloy:
    model: /app/voices/en/en_US/libritts_r/medium/en_US-libritts_r-medium.onnx
    speaker: 79

Raccoon Notes:

  • Original rhasspy project abandoned
  • OHF-Voice fork has no PyPI package
  • Need to create our own PyPI package or vendor the code
  • Mirror all voices to prevent HuggingFace dependency

2. Coqui XTTS v2

📖 See detailed documentation for comprehensive technical specs and integration guide

Status: Integrated as tts-1-hd Original Project: coqui-ai/TTS (company shut down, archived) Current Package: PyPI coqui-tts[languages]

Features:

  • High-quality multilingual TTS
  • Voice cloning from 6-second samples
  • Emotional prosody control
  • GPU accelerated (NVIDIA/ROCm)
  • ~1.8GB model size

Languages:

  • English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese
  • Polish, Turkish, Russian, Dutch, Czech
  • Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, Hungarian, Korean, Hindi

Model Source:

  • HuggingFace: coqui/XTTS-v2
  • Auto-downloaded on first use

Integration:

  • Used for tts-1-hd model (slow, high quality)
  • Voice cloning with custom WAV samples
  • Language auto-detection with langdetect

Example Config:

tts-1-hd:
  alloy:
    model: xtts
    speaker: /app/voices/alloy.wav
    language: en

Raccoon Notes:

  • Coqui company shut down in 2024
  • Repository archived but code still works
  • Community forks emerging
  • Must mirror XTTS-v2 weights before they disappear
  • Consider forking to uncloseai-xtts

High Priority Integration Targets

3. Silero TTS

📖 See detailed documentation for comprehensive technical specs (documentation pending)

Status: INTEGRATED as tts-1-silero Project: snakers4/silero-models (actively maintained!) License: Apache 2.0

Integration Benefits:

  • ACTIVELY MAINTAINED - no abandonment risk!
  • Fast, small models (~50-100MB each)
  • High quality for size
  • Easy integration via PyTorch Hub
  • Commercial-friendly license
  • CPU friendly - no GPU required

Features:

  • Multilingual: English, Russian, German, Spanish, French
  • Multiple speakers per language (English: 117 speakers!)
  • Emotion control
  • Real-time capable on CPU
  • 48kHz sample rate

Models:

  • English: 117 speakers (v4_en)
  • Russian: 8+ speakers (v4_ru)
  • German: 1 speaker (v3_de)
  • Spanish: 2 speakers (v1_es)
  • French: 1 speaker (v3_fr)

Model Source:

  • PyTorch Hub: torch.hub.load('snakers4/silero-models')
  • Models downloaded on first use
  • Cached in /app/voices/ directory

Integration:

  • Used for tts-1-silero model (fast, CPU-friendly)
  • Loaded via torch.hub on demand
  • 6 OpenAI-compatible voices mapped to Silero speakers

Example Config:

tts-1-silero:
  alloy:
    language: en
    speaker: en_0
    silero_speaker: v4_en

Makefile Targets:

make voices-silero  # Download Silero models (en, ru, de, es, fr)
make test-silero    # Test Silero TTS endpoint

Example Usage:

import torch
model, symbols, sample_rate, example_text, apply_tts = torch.hub.load(
    repo_or_dir='snakers4/silero-models',
    model='silero_tts',
    language='en',
    speaker='v4_en'
)
audio = apply_tts(text=text, speaker='en_0', sample_rate=sample_rate)

Raccoon Priority: (Active project, great quality/size ratio)


4. StyleTTS2 🎯

Status: NOT INTEGRATED - HIGH PRIORITY Project: yl4579/StyleTTS2 (research, somewhat active) License: MIT

Why Integrate:

  • State-of-the-art quality
  • Best prosody and naturalness
  • Voice cloning capability
  • Style/emotion control
  • Research-grade results

Features:

  • Human-level prosody
  • Zero-shot voice cloning
  • Style transfer
  • Emotion and speaking style control
  • LibriTTS trained models

Challenges:

  • Complex dependencies
  • Requires phonemizer
  • Slower than other engines
  • GPU recommended

Model Source:

  • HuggingFace: yl4579/StyleTTS2-LibriTTS
  • GitHub releases

Estimated Integration Effort: 6-8 hours

  • Complex dependency chain
  • Need phonemizer setup
  • Create custom engine wrapper
  • May need model quantization for production

Raccoon Priority: (Best quality, but complex)


5. Fish Speech 🎯

Status: NOT INTEGRATED - MEDIUM PRIORITY Project: fishaudio/fish-speech (active) License: Apache 2.0

Why Integrate:

  • Fast and efficient
  • Good multilingual support
  • Active development
  • Clean API

Features:

  • Fast inference
  • Multilingual (EN, ZH, JA)
  • Voice cloning
  • Streaming support
  • Modern architecture

Model Source:

  • HuggingFace: fishaudio/fish-speech-1
  • GitHub releases

Estimated Integration Effort: 4-6 hours

Raccoon Priority: (Active, good quality, but newer/less proven)


Medium Priority Targets

6. Kokoro TTS

📖 See detailed documentation for comprehensive technical specs

Status: NOT INTEGRATED Project: hexgrad/kokoro (new, active) License: Apache 2.0

Features:

  • Fast, small, quality
  • Multiple voices
  • Good English support
  • Emerging project

Raccoon Priority: (Promising but new)


7. Bark (Suno AI)

Status: NOT INTEGRATED Project: suno-ai/bark (archived, company pivoted to music) License: MIT

Why Consider:

  • Can generate music and sound effects
  • Non-verbal sounds (laughs, sighs)
  • Multiple languages
  • Background audio

Why Low Priority:

  • Very slow generation
  • Large models (~10GB)
  • Company abandoned it
  • Quality inconsistent

Raccoon Priority: (Unique features, but slow and abandoned)


Low Priority / Archived

8. Tortoise TTS

📖 See detailed documentation for comprehensive technical specs

Status: NOT INTEGRATED Project: neonbjb/tortoise-tts (low activity) License: Apache 2.0

Features:

  • Very high quality
  • Voice cloning

Why Low Priority:

  • Extremely slow (minutes per sentence)
  • Not practical for API use
  • Better alternatives exist now

Raccoon Priority: (Too slow for production)


9. MetaVoice

Status: NOT INTEGRATED Project: metavoiceio/metavoice-src (partially abandoned) License: Apache 2.0

Features:

  • Long-form TTS
  • Emotional control
  • Voice cloning

Why Low Priority:

  • Unclear maintenance status
  • Complex setup
  • Alternatives are better

Raccoon Priority: (Uncertain future)


10. Mozilla TTS

📖 See detailed documentation for historical context and relationship to Coqui

Status: NOT INTEGRATED Project: mozilla/TTS (archived, became Coqui) License: MPL 2.0

Why Skip:

  • Fully superseded by Coqui
  • No unique capabilities
  • Outdated architecture

Raccoon Priority: (Skip - use Coqui instead)


Integration Roadmap

Phase 1: Quick Wins (Next 1-2 weeks)

  1. Fix Piper absolute paths
  2. Audit repository
  3. Integrate Silero TTS (COMPLETED!)
  4. Set up model mirror on ai.foxhop.net
  5. Integrate Chatterbox (emotion control)
  6. Integrate Kokoro (fast decoder)

Phase 2: High Quality (2-4 weeks)

  1. Integrate StyleTTS2
  2. Create engine abstraction layer
  3. Refactor speech.py to use engines
  4. Add Fish Speech support

Phase 3: Resilience (1-2 months)

  1. Implement binary mirror system
  2. Create fallback download logic
  3. Archive critical models to Archive.org
  4. Document all model sources

Phase 4: Advanced Features (2+ months)

  1. Voice cloning API endpoint
  2. Emotion/style control
  3. Streaming TTS
  4. Multi-speaker conversations

Model Storage Requirements

Current:

  • Piper voices: ~2GB (all languages)
  • XTTS v2: ~1.8GB

With all planned engines:

  • Silero models: ~500MB (all languages)
  • StyleTTS2: ~2GB (base model)
  • Fish Speech: ~1.5GB
  • Total: ~8GB for complete coverage

Mirror storage needed: ~20GB (with redundancy and archives)

Performance Targets

Engine Speed (RTF) Quality Use Case
Piper 0.05x Good Fast API responses
Silero 0.1x Good Balanced speed/quality
XTTS 0.3x Excellent Voice cloning
StyleTTS2 0.5x Best Premium quality
Fish Speech 0.15x Very Good Multilingual

RTF = Real-time factor (lower is faster, 1.0 = real-time)


Additional Models Under Research

The following models have detailed documentation but are not yet integrated or prioritized:

Chatterbox

Priority: High - Emotion control features 📄 Full Documentation

  • Multilingual zero-shot TTS from Resemble AI
  • 23 languages with emotion exaggeration control
  • Production-grade, actively maintained
  • License: Apache-2.0

Mimic 3

Priority: Medium - Privacy/embedded use cases 📄 Full Documentation

  • Lightweight offline TTS from Mycroft AI
  • 20-50MB models, SSML support
  • Privacy-focused, embeddable
  • License: Apache-2.0

eSpeak NG

Priority: Low - Niche accessibility use 📄 Full Documentation

  • Formant-based synthesis for 100+ languages
  • Extremely portable (<10MB)
  • Actively maintained by accessibility community
  • License: GPL-3.0

Step-Audio-EditX

Priority: Research - Experimental 📄 Full Documentation

  • New LLM-based audio editing (November 2025)
  • Post-generation emotion/style editing
  • Cutting-edge but experimental
  • License: Apache-2.0

Maya1

Priority: Research - Emerging 📄 Full Documentation

  • India-based multilingual voice model
  • Strong Indic language support (Hindi, Tamil, etc.)
  • High benchmark rankings
  • License: MIT

Last Updated: 2025-11-09 Raccoon Status: 🦝 3 models rescued! Silero TTS integrated successfully Integration Status: Piper, XTTS, Silero | 🎯 Next: Chatterbox, Kokoro Documentation Status: 📚 10 models fully documented, 1 comprehensive research overview