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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

#321

Post by spookie »

willwade wrote: post #234
Aachen wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive technical achievement, but in terms of whether I'd use it: oof, that male voice is like one of these fake-excited newsreaders. Like they're always at the edge of their breath. The female one is better but still someone reading out an advertisement for a product they were told they must act extra excited for. I assume this is what the majority of training data was like and not an intentional setting for the…

anyone else wants to try sherpaOnnx you can try this.. https://github.com/willwade/tts-wrapper we recently added in the kokoro models which should sound a lot better. There are a LOT of models to choose from. I have a feeling the Droid app isnt handling cold starts very well.

If anyone wants to test ready to install android apks: https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/apk.html

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

#322

Post by 77pt77 »

antisol wrote: post #103

System Requirements Works literally everywhere Haha, on one of my machines my python version is too old, and the package/dependencies don't want to install. On another machie the python version is too new, and the package/dependencies don't want to install.

I had the too new.

This package is the epitome of dependency hell.

Seriously, stick with piper-tts.

Easy to install, 50MB gives you excellent results and 100MB gives you good results with hundreds of voices.

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

#323

Post by Narishma »

MutedEstate45 wrote: post #52

The headline feature isn’t the 25 MB footprint alone. It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0. That combo means you can embed a fully offline voice in Pi Zero-class hardware or even battery-powered toys without worrying about GPUs, cloud calls, or restrictive licenses. In one stroke it turns voice everywhere from a hardware/licensing problem into a packaging problem. Quality tweaks can come later; unlocking that deployment…

But Pi Zero has a GPU, so why not make use of it?

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

#324

Post by 77pt77 »

dlcarrier wrote: post #295
pjc50 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fixing python packaging" is somewhat harder than AGI.

I was commiserating with my brother over how difficult it is to set up an environment to run one LLM or diffusion model, let alone multiple or a combination. It's 5 percent CUDA/ROCm difficulties and 95% Python difficulties. We have a theory that Lanyone working with generative AI has to tolerate output that is only 90% right, and is totaly fine working with a language and environment that only 90% works. Why is Pyth…

This is a generic problem.

JS/TS/npm is just as bad with probably more build tools/frameworks.

Rust is a mess.

Go, well.

Even perl was quite complicated.

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

#325

Post by 77pt77 »

superkuh wrote: post #253
flanked-evergl wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just point people to uv/uvx.

A tool that was only released, what, a year or two ago? It simply won't be present in nearly all OS/distros. Only modern or rolling will have it (maybe). It's funny when the recommended python dependency manager managers are just as hard to install and use as the script themselves. Very python.

[flagged]

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

#326

Post by 77pt77 »

lynx97 wrote: post #155
sigmoid10 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still people who use machine wide python installs instead of environments? Python dependency hell was already bad years ago, but today it's completely impractical to do it this way. Even on raspberries.

Debian pretty much "solved" this by making pip refuse to install packages if you are not in an venv.

Well, with my python 3.13.5 not even that works!

Pretty impressive but this seems to be a staple of most AI/ML projects.

"Works on my machine" or "just use docker", although here the later doesn't even seem to be an option.

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

#327

Post by 77pt77 »

turnsout wrote: post #271
antisol wrote: post #103

System Requirements Works literally everywhere Haha, on one of my machines my python version is too old, and the package/dependencies don't want to install. On another machie the python version is too new, and the package/dependencies don't want to install.

You're getting a lot of comments along the lines of "Why don't you just ____," which only shows how Stockholmed the entire Python community is. With no other language are you expected to maintain several entirely different versions of the language, each of which is a relatively large installation. Can you imagine if we all had five different llvms or gccs just to compile five different modern C projects? I'm going to…

> Can you imagine if we all had five different llvms or gccs just to compile five different modern C projects?

Yes, because all I have to do is look at the real world.

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

#328

Post by superkuh »

77pt77 wrote: post #325
superkuh wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tool that was only released, what, a year or two ago? It simply won't be present in nearly all OS/distros. Only modern or rolling will have it (maybe). It's funny when the recommended python dependency manager managers are just as hard to install and use as the script themselves. Very python.

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#329

Post by tracker1 »

seligman99 wrote: post #283
mlboss wrote: post #9

Reddit post with generated audio sample: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1mhyzp7/kitten_...

And a quick video with all of the different voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Dy3zKBGQg

Cool, thanks... aside: the last male voice sounds high/drunk.

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

#330

Post by dlcarrier »

77pt77 wrote: post #324
dlcarrier wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was commiserating with my brother over how difficult it is to set up an environment to run one LLM or diffusion model, let alone multiple or a combination. It's 5 percent CUDA/ROCm difficulties and 95% Python difficulties. We have a theory that Lanyone working with generative AI has to tolerate output that is only 90% right, and is totaly fine working with a language and environment that only 90% works. Why is Pyth…

This is a generic problem. JS/TS/npm is just as bad with probably more build tools/frameworks. Rust is a mess. Go, well. Even perl was quite complicated.

Yeah, but it's easily solved, with directives, headers, or make files that specify which language standard it follows. Better yet, you can use different syntax with different language standards, so it's clear which to follow. If a compiler can automatically figure whether I'm compiling C or C++, why can't a Python interpreter figure out if I'm running version two or three, of the same language?
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