Tts

Open-source TTS has gotten dramatically better, but replacing ElevenLabs is still not one simple yes-or-no question. The real answer depends on whether you care most about cloning quality, commercial licensing, multilingual support, low latency, or tiny local deployment.

Voice agents aren’t a model demo. They’re a latency + streaming systems problem. Here’s what’s current in STT/TTS (Pipecat, Parakeet MLX, modern TTS), how to evaluate it, and how to ship it without vibes.