A lot of these models struggle with small text strings, like "next button" that screen readers are going to speak a lot.
Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
21–30 of 201 posts
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#22One of the core features I look for is expressive control. Either in the form of the api via pitch/speed/volume controls, for more deterministic controls. Or in expressive tags such as [coughs], [urgently], or [laughs in melodic ascending and descending arpeggiated gibberish babbles]. the 25MB model is amazingly good for being 25MB. How does it handle expressive tags?
thank you so much. Right now, it cannot handle expressive tags. what kind of tags would be most helpful according to you?
Emotion based tagging control would be the most helpful narrowing it down. Tags like [sarcastically] [happily] [joyfully] [fearfully]: so a subsection of adverbs.
A stretch goal is 'arbitrary tags' from [singing] [sung to the tune of {x}] [pausing for emphasis] [slowly decreasing speed for emphasis] [emphasizing the object of this sentence] [clapping] [car crash in the distance] [laser's pew pew].
But yeah: instruction/control via [tags] is the deciding feature for me, provided prompt adherence is strong enough.
Also: a thought...
Everyone is using [] for different kinds of tags in this space: which is very simple. Maybe it makes sense to differentiate kinds of tags? I.E. [tags for modifying how text is spoken] vs {tags for creating sounds not specifically speech: not modifying anything... but instead it's own 'sound/word'}
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#23A lot of these models struggle with small text strings, like "next button" that screen readers are going to speak a lot.
I think I tried on my Android everything I could try and 1. outside webpage reading, not many options; 2. as browser extensions, also not many (I don't like to copy URLs in your app) 3. they all insist reading every little shit, not only buttons but also "wave arrow pointing directly right" which some people use in their texts. So basically reading text aloud is a bunch of shitty options. Anyone jumping in this market opening?
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#24A lot of good small TTS models in recent times. Most seem to struggle hard on prosody though. Kokoro TTS for example has a very good Norwegian voice but the rhythm and emphasizing is often so out of whack the generated speech is almost incomprehensible. Haven't had time to check this model out yet, how does it fare here? What's needed to improve the models in this area now that the voice part is more or less solved?
That, and also using English words in the middle of another language phrase confuses them a lot.
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#25This would be great as a js package - 25mb is small enough that I think it'd be worth it (in-browser tts is still pretty bad and varies by browser)
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#26[flagged]
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#27[dead]
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#28A lot of good small TTS models in recent times. Most seem to struggle hard on prosody though. Kokoro TTS for example has a very good Norwegian voice but the rhythm and emphasizing is often so out of whack the generated speech is almost incomprehensible. Haven't had time to check this model out yet, how does it fare here? What's needed to improve the models in this area now that the voice part is more or less solved?
small models struggle with prosody due to limited capacity. this version does much better than the precious one and is the best among other <25MB models. Kokoro is a really good model for its size, its competitive on artificial analysis too.
i think by the next release we should have something kokoro quality but a fifth of the size. Adding control for rhythm seems to be quite important too, and we should start looking at that for other languages.
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#29[flagged]
80M model is the highest quality while also being quite efficient. it is superior in terms of pronunciation accuracy for less common words, and also is more stable in terms of speed. its my fav model. i think the 40M is quite similar to 80M for most usecases. 15M is for resource cpus, loading onto a browser etc.
The new 15M is way better than the previous 80M model(v0.1). So we're able to predictably improve the quality which is very encouraging.
Re: Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
#30A lot of good small TTS models in recent times. Most seem to struggle hard on prosody though. Kokoro TTS for example has a very good Norwegian voice but the rhythm and emphasizing is often so out of whack the generated speech is almost incomprehensible. Haven't had time to check this model out yet, how does it fare here? What's needed to improve the models in this area now that the voice part is more or less solved?
That, and also using English words in the middle of another language phrase confuses them a lot.
yes. the current release of our model is english-only. so other languages are not expected to perform well. we'll try to look out for this in our multilingual release.