sherpa-onnx-tts

name	sherpa-onnx-tts
description	Local offline text-to-speech using Sherpa ONNX with Piper voices
emoji	🗣
version	1.0.0
requires	{"bins":["sherpa-onnx-offline-tts"]}
invocation	{"userInvocable":true}

Sherpa ONNX TTS (Local Offline Text-to-Speech)

Convert text to speech audio entirely offline using the Sherpa ONNX runtime with Piper voice models. No cloud API or internet connection required.

Usage

• "Say 'Hello, welcome to the meeting' and save as audio"
• "Convert this paragraph to speech"
• "Generate an audio file of these instructions using a female voice"
• "Read this text aloud at 1.2x speed"

How it works

Runs the sherpa-onnx-offline-tts binary, which loads a Piper ONNX voice model and synthesizes speech from input text. Output is a WAV audio file.

Key flags

• --vits-model=<path> -- path to the ONNX voice model file
• --vits-tokens=<path> -- path to the tokens file for the model
• --vits-data-dir=<path> -- path to the espeak-ng-data directory (for Piper models)
• --output-filename=<path> -- output WAV file path
• --speed=<float> -- speech speed multiplier (default 1.0; higher is faster)
• --sid=<int> -- speaker ID for multi-speaker models

Example command

sherpa-onnx-offline-tts \
  --vits-model=./models/en_US-amy-medium.onnx \
  --vits-tokens=./models/tokens.txt \
  --vits-data-dir=./models/espeak-ng-data \
  --output-filename=output.wav \
  --speed=1.0 \
  "Hello, this is a test of local text to speech."

Available voices

Piper provides dozens of voices across many languages. Popular English voices include:

• en_US-amy-medium (female, US English)
• en_US-joe-medium (male, US English)
• en_GB-alan-medium (male, British English)

Voice models can be downloaded from https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx/releases/tag/tts-models

Setup

1. Install sherpa-onnx: download pre-built binaries from https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx/releases or build from source.
2. Download at least one Piper voice model (ONNX file + tokens file + espeak-ng-data).
3. Ensure sherpa-onnx-offline-tts is on your PATH.