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Palash Debnath 5cab8e0149 feat: rename the product to VoiceStudio (previously OmniVoice-Studio)

Renames what users see. The app, the installers, the window title, the
docs and all 21 locales now say VoiceStudio, with "(previously
OmniVoice-Studio)" noted near the title of each doc surface so people
recognise it.

Deliberately NOT renamed, because renaming any of them silently breaks
an existing install — there is no legacy-path fallback anywhere in this
codebase:

  - bundle identifier com.debpalash.omnivoice-studio (MSI UpgradeCode,
    macOS TCC grants, managed venv, WebView localStorage, the
    single-instance lock)
  - data directories OmniVoice / .omnivoice and omnivoice.db
  - the ~150 OMNIVOICE_* environment variables
  - the X-OmniVoice-* HTTP headers (a wire protocol)
  - the published Docker image paths
  - the OmniVoice ENGINE, which is a model name and not this product

tests/test_identity_paths_survive_the_rename.py pins every one of those
so a future well-meaning sweep cannot orphan a user's library.

Linux .deb users install a new package name and should apt remove
omnivoice-studio; that note is in the changelog.

2026-08-07 01:30:58 +05:30

3.8 KiB

Raw Blame History

TTS Engine Selection — Decision Tree

When to pick VoiceStudio vs other engines available in this workspace. Match the user's constraint to the right column.

Decision tree

Is voice cloning required?
├─ yes → VoiceStudio (3-sec ref clip, zero-shot, 646 langs)
└─ no →
   Is the language non-English?
   ├─ yes → VoiceStudio (646 langs) or Edge TTS (subset, cloud)
   └─ no (English) →
      Is privacy required (no cloud)?
      ├─ yes →
      │  Is GPU available?
      │  ├─ yes (CUDA/MPS) → VoiceStudio (best quality) or Voicebox
      │  └─ no (CPU only) → kokoro-tts (2× realtime CPU) or VoiceStudio on CPU (slow)
      └─ no (cloud OK) →
         Is cost-no-object?
         ├─ yes → ElevenLabs (best polish), then OpenAI TTS
         └─ no → Edge TTS (free, unofficial, MS Azure neural)

Full comparison

Engine	Quality	Clone	Multilingual	Cost	Privacy	Setup	Best for
VoiceStudio	8-9/10	✅ 3-sec ref	646 langs	Free	Local	Bun + uv install	Multilingual, cloning, privacy-critical
ElevenLabs	9-10/10	✅ 3-sec ref	32 langs	$5-330/mo	Cloud	API key	Best English polish, fastest cloud TTS
Voicebox (Qwen3-TTS)	8-9/10	✅	Multi	Free	Local	Docker	Self-hosted alternative to VoiceStudio
Voicebox (LuxTTS)	7/10	❌	Multi	Free	Local	Docker	CPU at 150× realtime
kokoro-tts	7-8/10	❌	Multi (limited)	Free	Local	pip	Fast English narration on CPU
mlx-audio	7-8/10	varies	Multi	Free	Local	pip	Apple Silicon native, 14+ sub-engines
Edge TTS	7-8/10	❌	50+	Free*	Cloud	pip	Zero-friction one-off
OpenAI TTS	8/10	❌	Multi	$0.015/1k chars	Cloud	API key	Convenient, cheap-ish, good quality
Google Cloud TTS	8/10	❌	Multi	$4/1M chars (WaveNet)	Cloud	GCP project	Large free tier (1M chars/mo)

*Edge TTS is unofficial. Microsoft could block it at any time.

When VoiceStudio wins decisively

Voice cloning — 3-sec reference clip, zero-shot, no fine-tuning. ElevenLabs is the only competitor; VoiceStudio is free and local.
Long-tail languages — 646 supported. ElevenLabs covers 32; everything else fewer.
Privacy / regulatory — Nothing leaves the machine. ElevenLabs and OpenAI ship audio to their servers.
No-API-key constraint — Local-first. No accounts.
Bulk generation without metered cost — ElevenLabs bills per character. VoiceStudio is free at any volume.

When VoiceStudio loses

Lowest-friction one-off TTS — Backend install + ~3 GB model + uvicorn boot. Edge TTS or OpenAI TTS is one command.
Fast English narration on weak hardware — kokoro-tts is ~30 MB vs VoiceStudio's 2.4 GB and runs 2× realtime on CPU. Use kokoro for blog-narration batch jobs unless you need cloning.
Streaming real-time TTS — VoiceStudio is diffusion-based and not streaming. Use Edge TTS or cloud APIs for true streaming.
Apple Silicon-only specialized voices — mlx-audio ships 14 engines (Kokoro, CSM, Dia, Qwen3-TTS, etc.) that may match a specific voice better.

Composition with content pipelines

VoiceStudio fits between visual asset generation and video assembly:

research → narrative → visual assets → AUDIO (VoiceStudio) → video assembly → distribution

Default for blog-post audio narration:

English, no cloning needed, fast → kokoro-tts (cheap CPU)
English, want a specific cloned voice → VoiceStudio with a saved profile
Non-English → VoiceStudio
One-time, no install → Edge TTS

For Remotion-based video pipelines that previously required ElevenLabs, VoiceStudio closes the last cloud dependency — pair it with any local image/video generator for a fully self-hosted multimedia stack.

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