[HN Gopher] Coqui, a startup providing open speech tech for ever...
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       Coqui, a startup providing open speech tech for everyone
        
       Author : doener
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2021-04-14 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | andrewfromx wrote:
       | I think it's like https://www.descript.com/
        
         | jsnk wrote:
         | Descript doens't look like it's open source though.
        
           | andrewfromx wrote:
           | exactly, that's why this is exciting!
        
       | rafaeltorres wrote:
       | Just a note: the colorful frog pictured on the website
       | (https://coqui.ai/) is not a coqui. Coquis are usually brown and
       | tiny.
       | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Coqui_Fr...
        
       | explorigin wrote:
       | I'm glad to see this. I hope they can get the TTS to sound more
       | conversational and less like a newscaster...that being
       | said...free is nice.
        
         | EMM_386 wrote:
         | The sample links are impressive to me. I don't follow the space
         | closely but they sound conversational.
         | 
         | https://soundcloud.com/user-565970875/pocket-article-wavernn...
        
         | indigochill wrote:
         | The quality is also miles better than the last open source TTS
         | I've heard that wasn't just an Amazon SDK. I'll take
         | newscaster-voice over robot-from-the-early-00's.
        
       | trowngon wrote:
       | Looks like a fork of Mozilla DeepSpeech by former DeepSpeech
       | developers. What is the relation to the original project?
        
         | basaltbeach wrote:
         | tl;dr:
         | 
         | - Mozilla fired the developers and mothballed the project
         | 
         | - But wants to keep it around as a museum piece
         | 
         | All ongoing development is happening in the fork.
        
       | caddemon wrote:
       | Nothing to do with the tech, but I love your name! I'm just a
       | tourist in Puerto Rico but I've been a number of times and it
       | always warms my heart to hear the Coqui frogs at night. I even
       | play the recordings at home sometimes if I'm having trouble
       | falling asleep.
       | 
       | For anyone that hasn't heard of Coqui frogs before, they are
       | pretty cool animals. Little guys, but a single one can be
       | surprisingly loud and throw its voice pretty effectively. AFAIK
       | they're only really found in Puerto Rico - apparently they can
       | survive in other warm climates but will not sing? Maybe that's an
       | urban legend though.
       | 
       | Anyway I know the sound is a little contentious (some hotels get
       | cats to cut down on guest complaints about the Coqui) but I'd
       | recommend checking it out: https://musicofnature.com/coqui-magic-
       | nightscapes/
        
         | icedchai wrote:
         | Unfortunately, it is a bad name because, right or wrong, it
         | will be easily mispronounced. Cocky AI? Who wants that?
        
           | spoonjim wrote:
           | Kind of an Americentric perspective and also doesn't give
           | people the benefit of the doubt. I'm an American who only
           | speaks English but I think it's an awesome and interesting
           | name compared to most of the lame product names out there.
        
           | rhn_mk1 wrote:
           | The computing industry could get less sensitive and accept
           | that other languages than English exist.
        
       | resoluteteeth wrote:
       | In case it helps clarify what this is, I think the reason this is
       | getting posted is because it was discussed earlier as a
       | continuation of Mozilla's TTS work:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26790281
        
       | topicseed wrote:
       | What is open speech tech? Clicked twice (GitHub, website's
       | homepage) and didn't really get much out of it.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | I'm not sure but in any case they have a great collection of
         | papers and talks in that repository.
        
         | Miraste wrote:
         | They have text-to-speech software and speech-to-text software,
         | both of which are open source.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-14 23:01 UTC)