Introducing phoonnx: The Next Generation of Open Voice for OpenVoiceOS
JarbasAl
OVOS Contributor
Introducing phoonnx: The Next Generation of Open Voice for OpenVoiceOS
Today marks a significant step forward in the OpenVoiceOS journey with the official adoption of phoonnx as our primary Text-to-Speech (TTS) framework.
This new generation of voices is not just about quality; it's about consistency, efficiency, and fulfilling our mission for truly open, offline-ready voice assistants across the globe.
New Language: Introducing Basque!
Building on our previous work on Making Synthetic Voices From Scratch and our successful Arabic TTS Collaboration, we are excited to announce a new milestone in our language support: the addition of new voices for Basque (eu-ES)!
This includes both the male voice (Miro) and female voice (Dii), furthering our mission to support even low-resource languages that lack open, high-quality TTS options.
Previously only a robotic female voice was available, via the AhoTTS plugin made in collaboration with ILENIA.
Hear the results: Examples of the new Basque Open-Source Voices.
A Unified Voice for a Global Brand
As OpenVoiceOS expands to more languages and more devices, a crucial need has emerged: a cohesive brand identity conveyed through voice. We need a core set of voices, a standard male and female persona, that sounds the same, professional, and recognizable no matter where you are in the world or which language you are speaking.
This consistency is vital. Imagine installing OpenVoiceOS in Lisbon, Berlin, or Seattle, the voice should be instantly familiar. This is the power of a unified voice, creating a seamless and trustworthy user experience globally.
We are proud to share that TigreGotico has been instrumental in making this vision a reality. They are not only developing the core phoonnx engine but are also actively contributing to open datasets and training the default, multi-lingual OVOS voices. This internal collaboration accelerates development and ensures our voices are aligned with the open-source spirit of our platform.
The phoonnx Advantage: A Flexible TTS Ecosystem
phoonnx is more than just an inference tool; it is a complete training and inference framework built on the robust VITS architecture. This dual capability allows us to rapidly prototype, train, and deploy high-quality voices.
A key to this flexibility is the ability to support diverse phonemizers. A phonemizer (or G2P - Grapheme-to-Phoneme model) converts written text into the sequence of sound units (phonemes) the TTS model speaks. Different languages may require different, specialized phonemizers for accurate speech.
- eSpeak Compatibility: A core feature is that phoonnx models are fully compatible with the popular Piper TTS engine's runtime, provided they were trained using the widely available eSpeak phonemizer. This ensures easy deployment within the existing OVOS ecosystem and third party projects like Home Assistant.
- Custom Phonemizer Support: The framework is not limited to eSpeak. For example, we are excited to note that the high-quality Galician models developed by Proxecto Nós using the Cotovia phonemizer are fully compatible and can be used with the phoonnx pipeline.
This flexibility allows us to integrate and benefit from the work of other open-source projects. In fact, for inference, phoonnx can successfully use models originally trained by other projects, including Coqui, Mimic3, and Piper, solidifying its role as a universal TTS deployment tool.
Teasing the Future: Next-Gen G2P Models
Looking ahead, we are constantly working to improve G2P accuracy, especially for low-resource languages. We are currently developing and testing next-generation G2P models based on the powerful ByT5 architecture. These transformer-based models promise to deliver more accurate and robust phonemization across a wider range of languages.
You can follow their development here: G2P Models Collection.
In the near future a dedicated OVOS TTS plugin will be created for phoonnx and made the default for OpenVoiceOS, replacing the previous plugins: ovos-tts-plugin-piper and ovos-tts-plugin-nos.
In the meantime you can try the new voices via the existing plugin ovos-tts-plugin-piper
All you need to do is pass the model urls under mycroft.conf
"tts": {
"module": "ovos-tts-plugin-piper",
"ovos-tts-plugin-piper": {
"model": "https://huggingface.co/OpenVoiceOS/phoonnx_eu-ES_miro_espeak/resolve/main/miro_eu-ES.onnx",
"model_config": "https://huggingface.co/OpenVoiceOS/phoonnx_eu-ES_miro_espeak/resolve/main/miro_eu-ES.piper.json"
}
}
Progress Report: Available Languages
The collective work of the OpenVoiceOS and TigreGotico teams has resulted in a rapidly expanding library of open-source TTS models.
Currently Supported Languages:
- Arabic
- Basque
- Dutch
- English (US/GB)
- French
- German
- Italian
- Portuguese (Brazil/Portugal)
- Spanish
Get Involved and Find the Models
We invite the community to explore and utilize these new resources. Your feedback is crucial to improving voice quality and expanding language coverage.
| Resource | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Phoonnx Models | The new phoonnx-trained TTS models in ONNX format. | phoonnx-tts-models |
| Piper/Phoonnx Voices | The full collection of OpenVoiceOS voices compatible with Piper. | pipertts-voices |
| Open Datasets | Datasets used for training these voices, furthering open-data research. | tts-datasets |
Help Us Build Voice for Everyone
OpenVoiceOS is more than software, it’s a mission. If you believe voice assistants should be open, inclusive, and user-controlled, here’s how you can help:
- 💸 Donate: Help us fund development, infrastructure, and legal protection.
- 📣 Contribute Open Data: Share voice samples and transcriptions under open licenses.
- 🌍 Translate: Help make OVOS accessible in every language.
We're not building this for profit. We're building it for people. With your support, we can keep voice tech transparent, private, and community-owned.