# OpenVoice — Instant Voice Cloning with Tone and Style Control

> OpenVoice is an open-source voice cloning framework from MyShell AI that reproduces a speaker's voice from a short audio sample while giving independent control over emotion, accent, rhythm, and language.

## Install

Save in your project root:

## Quick Use
```bash
pip install myshell-openvoice
python demo.py --text "Hello world" --reference speaker.wav --output output.wav
```

## Introduction
OpenVoice is a voice cloning library developed by MyShell AI and researchers from MIT and Tsinghua University. It can replicate a target speaker's voice from a brief reference clip and synthesize speech in multiple languages, while allowing fine-grained control over style parameters like emotion, accent, and speaking pace.

## What OpenVoice Does
- Clones a voice from a short reference audio clip (as little as a few seconds)
- Synthesizes speech in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, and more
- Provides independent control over emotion, rhythm, pauses, and intonation
- Supports cross-lingual voice cloning where the reference and output languages differ
- Runs locally without sending audio data to external services

## Architecture Overview
OpenVoice uses a two-stage pipeline. The first stage is a base TTS model that generates speech with controllable style parameters (emotion, speed, pitch). The second stage is a tone color converter that transfers the target speaker's voice characteristics onto the base output. This decoupled design allows flexible style manipulation without retraining the voice cloning component.

## Self-Hosting & Configuration
- Install via pip or clone the repository and install dependencies
- Download pre-trained checkpoints for the base speaker and tone color converter
- Requires Python 3.9+ and PyTorch; GPU recommended for real-time synthesis
- Reference audio should be clean speech without background music or noise
- Adjust emotion, speed, and pitch parameters in the generation call

## Key Features
- Near-instant voice cloning from a few seconds of reference audio
- Decoupled style and timbre control for creative flexibility
- Cross-lingual synthesis without language-specific voice samples
- Fully local inference with no cloud dependency
- MIT-licensed for both research and commercial applications

## Comparison with Similar Tools
- **Coqui TTS** — broader TTS toolkit; voice cloning requires more reference data
- **Bark** — generates speech, music, and sound effects; less precise voice cloning
- **XTTS** — Coqui's cloning model; similar quality but different architecture
- **Fish Speech** — multilingual TTS; focuses on naturalness over cloning fidelity
- **F5-TTS** — flow-matching approach; strong zero-shot but fewer style controls

## FAQ
**Q: How much reference audio is needed?**
A: A clean clip of 5-30 seconds works well. Longer clips can improve timbre accuracy but are not required.

**Q: Can I use OpenVoice for real-time applications?**
A: On a modern GPU, synthesis is faster than real-time. CPU inference is possible but significantly slower.

**Q: Does it handle singing or non-speech audio?**
A: OpenVoice is designed for speech synthesis. For singing, consider dedicated singing voice synthesis tools.

**Q: Is the output watermarked?**
A: The model does not embed watermarks. Users are responsible for ethical use and local regulations.

## Sources
- https://github.com/myshell-ai/OpenVoice
- https://research.myshell.ai/open-voice

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Source: https://tokrepo.com/en/workflows/ae7169ee-42b9-11f1-9bc6-00163e2b0d79
Author: AI Open Source