Free Python Text To Speech (With Coqui TTS)

(1) INSTALLATION

A local TTS, installed on your own server! I am using Windows. Some things may be different for Mac/Linux, but here is what you need:

• As on Coqui TTS Github, Python 3.8 to 3.10 should work.
  • If you have an incompatible version, do the usual "use different Python version with virtualenv".
• Install Microsoft C++ build tools.
  • Pick “Visual Studio Community, Desktop Environment For C++”.
  • Not sure if .NET is required. Just install if you want to be safe.
• espeak. Linux users, apt-get install espeak.

(2) PROJECT SETUP

• Create project folder. E.G. D:\COQUI.
• Create virtual environment.
  • virtualenv venv
  • For Windows venv\Scripts\activate
  • For Linux/Mac venv/bin/activate
• Download Coqui – pip install tts

(3) 3 WAYS TO RUN COQUI TTS

(3A) COMMAND LINE

• tts --text "YOUR TEXT" --out_path PATH/SPEECH.WAV
• Run tts -h for the full list of commands.

(3B) IN THE BROWSER

• Run tts-server in the command line.
• After some setup, will show something like Running on http://[::1]:5002.
• Open browser and access http://localhost:5002.

(3C) SIMPLE PYTHON SCRIPT

from TTS.api import TTS
tts = TTS(model_name="tts_models/en/ljspeech/vits", progress_bar=True, gpu=True)
tts.tts_to_file("YES! Text to speech works like magic.", file_path="OUTPUT.wav")

Pretty much ripped from the GitHub page.

(4) INSTALLATION PAINS

(4A) NUMPY NUMBA

• If you get Failed to initialize NumPy: module compiled against API version, it's a “version mismatch” issue.
• A pip install --upgrade numpy numba should do the magic.

(4B) NVIDIA DRIVERS

• Not sure if AMD cards are supported. Nvidia users, try updating your Nvidia driver.
• Rebuild your PyTorch, with CUDA support - pip install --upgrade torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu118.
• Worst case, run with gpu=False... Slow, but it works.

EXTRAS

That's all for this super compressed guide. Here are a couple of useful links.

• On my gist, I have shared a simple script that converts a text file to narration.
• Coqui TTS Documentation
• Bark Another interesting project... But it kind of suffers from hallucinations.
• Tortoise TTS Another TTS project capable of voice cloning... But slow as a Tortoise. Get it?
• Python Text To Speech - Code Boxx