Nice, but it's weird that no "language" or "English" is mentioned on the github page, and only from the "Release multilingual TTS" Roadmap item could I guess it's probably English only for now.
Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
181–190 of 201 posts
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#182[dead]
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#183I created a CLI wrapper for Kitten TTS: https://github.com/newptcai/purr BTW, it seems that kitten (the Python package) has the following chain of dependencies: kittentts → misaki[en] → spacy-curated-transformers So if you install it directly via uv, it will pull torch and NVIDIA CUDA packages (several GB), which are not needed to run kitten.
You might also like CopySpeak, a lightweight tool I've recently built for quick AI text-to-speech using the clipboard, featuring Kitten TTS and other engines.
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#184I created a demo running in the browser, on your device: https://next-voice.vercel.app
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
thanks a lot for the feedback. yes, we're working on a diy way to add custom voices and will also be releasing a model with more professional voices in the next 2-3 weeks. as of now, we're providing commercial support for custom voices, languages and deployment through the support form on our github. can you share more about your business use-case? if possible, i'd like to ensure the next release can serve that.
Right now it's outgoing calls for a small business client that checks information. Although if they call back they don't mind an automated system, on outgoing calls the person answering will often hang up if they detect AI right away, so we use a realistic custom voice with an accent. This is a mind numbing task that requires workers to make hundreds of calls each day with only minor variations, sometimes navigating…
I don't like the sound of that. Why do humans always need to spoil new advancements by finding the worst use cases?
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#186I'd love to see a monolingual Japanese model sometime in the future. Qwen3-tts works for Japanese in general, but from time to time it will mix with some Mandarin in between, making it unusable.
our next model(eta 3ish weeks) will support Japanese. would love to get your feedback then on how the quality is. can you share what usecase you want? would love to support it.
I have a pipeline of jp epub>m4b, just need to swap tts models in between :)
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm jealous. It took me far longer and much more frustration to get it to run. Had to get the right Python version and make sure it didn't break anything with the previous Python version. A friend suggested using Docker, so I started down that path until I realized I'd probably have to set the whole thing up there myself. Eventually got it to run and I think I didn't break anything else. I hate Python so much.
damnn, really sorry for the inconv, looks like some folks are having bad env issues. we're working on fixing this.
It's absolutely not your fault. It's a skill issue and compatibility issue on my end and/or python. You guys are doing amazing.
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#188Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#189To the folks and Kitten team: I'm working on TTS as a problem statement (for an application), and what is the best model at the latency/cost inference. I'm currently settling for gemini TTS, which allows for a lot of expressiveness, but a word at 150ms starts to hurt when the content is a few sentences.
my current best approach is wrapping around gemini-flash native, and the model speaking the text i send it, which allows me end to end latency under a second.
are there other models at this or better pricing i can be looking at.
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nowadays these frustrations shouldn't be a thing any more. If the author used uv, the script would be able to install its own dependencies and just work.
yeah let me add uv and conda support to make it easier.
Thanks! I asked my bot to make me a plugin for it and it one-shotted it, the resulting script was ~20 lines, very nice!