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Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

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Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#31

Post by echelon »

wkat4242 wrote: post #22

Hmm the quality is not so impressive. I'm looking for a really naturally sounding model. Not very happy with piper/kokoro, XTTS was a bit complex to set up. For STT whisper is really amazing. But I miss a good TTS. And I don't mind throwing GPU power at it. But anyway. this isn't it either, this sounds worse than kokoro.

> Hmm the quality is not so impressive. [...] And I don't mind throwing GPU power at it.

This isn't for you, then. You should evaluate quality here based on the fact you don't need a GPU.

Back in the pre-Tacotron2 days, I was running slim TTS and vocoder models like GlowTTS and MelGAN on Digital Ocean droplets. No GPU to speak of. It cost next to nothing to run.

Since then, the trend has been to scale up. We need more models to scale down.

In the future we'll see small models living on-device. Embedded within toys and tools that don't need or want a network connection. Deployed with Raspberry Pi.

Edge AI will be huge for robotics, toys and consumer products, and gaming (ie. world models).

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#32

Post by kenarsa »

satvikpendem wrote: post #29
kenarsa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Does an apk for Android exist for replacing its speech to text engine? I tried sherpa-onnx but it was too slow for real time usage it seemed, and especially so for audiobooks when sped up.

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#33

Post by keyle »

I don't mind so much the size in MB, the fact that it's pure CPU and the quality, what I do mind however is the latency. I hope it's fast.

Aside: Are there any models for understanding voice to text, fully offline, without training?

I will be very impressed when we will be able to have a conversation with an AI at a natural rate and not "probe, space, response"

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#34

Post by Retr0id »

blopker wrote: post #8

Web version: https://clowerweb.github.io/kitten-tts-web-demo/ It sounds ok, but impressive for the size.

I tried to replicate their demo text but it doesn't sound as good for some reason.

If anyone else wants to try:

> Kitten TTS is an open-source series of tiny and expressive text-to-speech models for on-device applications. Our smallest model is less than 25 megabytes.

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#35

Post by gary_0 »

kenarsa wrote: post #25
blopker wrote: post #8

Web version: https://clowerweb.github.io/kitten-tts-web-demo/ It sounds ok, but impressive for the size.

[flagged]

Not open source. "You will need internet connectivity to validate your AccessKey with Picovoice license servers ... If you wish to increase your limits, you can purchase a subscription plan." https://github.com/Picovoice/orca#accesskey

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#36

Post by kamranjon »

wkat4242 wrote: post #22

Hmm the quality is not so impressive. I'm looking for a really naturally sounding model. Not very happy with piper/kokoro, XTTS was a bit complex to set up. For STT whisper is really amazing. But I miss a good TTS. And I don't mind throwing GPU power at it. But anyway. this isn't it either, this sounds worse than kokoro.

The best open one I've found so far is Dia - https://github.com/nari-labs/dia - it has some limitations, but i think it's really impressive and I can run it on my laptop.

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#37

Post by wewewedxfgdf »

satvikpendem wrote: post #28
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #14

say is only 193K on MacOS ls -lah /usr/bin/say -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 193K 15 Nov 2024 /usr/bin/say Usage: M1-Mac-mini ~ % say "hello world this is the kitten TTS model speaking"

`say` sounds terrible compared to modern neural network based text to speech engines.

Sounds about the same as Kitten TTS.

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#38

Post by [deleted] »

dented42 wrote: post #18
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #14

say is only 193K on MacOS ls -lah /usr/bin/say -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 193K 15 Nov 2024 /usr/bin/say Usage: M1-Mac-mini ~ % say "hello world this is the kitten TTS model speaking"

That’s not a far comparison. Say just calls the speech synthesis APIs that have been around since at least Mac OS 8. That being said, the ‘classical’ (pre-AI) speech synthesisers are much smaller than kitten, so you’re not wrong per se, just for the wrong reason.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#39

Post by satvikpendem »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #37
satvikpendem wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`say` sounds terrible compared to modern neural network based text to speech engines.

Sounds about the same as Kitten TTS.

To me it sounds worse, especially on the construction of certain more complex sentences or words.

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#40

Post by satvikpendem »

kenarsa wrote: post #32
satvikpendem wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does an apk for Android exist for replacing its speech to text engine? I tried sherpa-onnx but it was too slow for real time usage it seemed, and especially so for audiobooks when sped up.

[flagged]

I can't test this out right now, is this just a demo or is it actually an apk for replacing the engine? Because those are two different things, the latter can be used any time you want to read something aloud on the page for example. This is the sherpa-onnx one I'm talking about.

https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/apk-engine.html

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