Voicebox Voice Synthesis Studio

Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

Voicebox is a local-first, open-source voice cloning and TTS studio — a self-hosted alternative to ElevenLabs. It runs entirely on your machine (macOS MLX/Metal, Windows/Linux CUDA, CPU fallback), exposes a REST API on localhost:17493, and ships with 5 TTS engines, 23 languages, post-processing effects, and a multi-track Stories editor.

Installation

Pre-built Binaries (Recommended)

Linux requires building from source: https://voicebox.sh/linux-install

Build from Source

Prerequisites: Bun, Rust, Python 3.11+, Tauri prerequisites

git clone https://github.com/jamiepine/voicebox.git
cd voicebox

# Install just task runner
brew install just        # macOS
cargo install just       # any platform

# Set up Python venv + all dependencies
just setup

# Start backend + desktop app in dev mode
just dev

# List all available commands
just --list

Architecture

The Python FastAPI backend handles all ML inference. The Tauri Rust shell wraps the frontend and manages the backend process lifecycle. The API is accessible directly at http://localhost:17493 even when using the desktop app.

REST API Reference

Base URL: http://localhost:17493
Interactive docs: http://localhost:17493/docs

Generate Speech

# Basic generation
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/generate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "text": "Hello world, this is a voice clone.",
    "profile_id": "abc123",
    "language": "en"
  }'

# With engine selection
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/generate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "text": "Speak slowly and with gravitas.",
    "profile_id": "abc123",
    "language": "en",
    "engine": "qwen3-tts"
  }'

# With paralinguistic tags (Chatterbox Turbo only)
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/generate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "text": "That is absolutely hilarious! [laugh] I cannot believe it.",
    "profile_id": "abc123",
    "engine": "chatterbox-turbo",
    "language": "en"
  }'

Voice Profiles

# List all profiles
curl http://localhost:17493/profiles

# Create a new profile
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/profiles \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Narrator",
    "language": "en",
    "description": "Deep narrative voice"
  }'

# Upload audio sample to a profile
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/profiles/{profile_id}/samples \
  -F "file=@/path/to/voice-sample.wav"

# Export a profile
curl http://localhost:17493/profiles/{profile_id}/export \
  --output narrator-profile.zip

# Import a profile
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/profiles/import \
  -F "[email protected]"

Generation Queue & Status

# Get generation status (SSE stream)
curl -N http://localhost:17493/generate/{generation_id}/status

# List recent generations
curl http://localhost:17493/generations

# Retry a failed generation
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/generations/{generation_id}/retry

# Download generated audio
curl http://localhost:17493/generations/{generation_id}/audio \
  --output output.wav

Models

# List available models and download status
curl http://localhost:17493/models

# Unload a model from GPU memory (without deleting)
curl -X POST http://localhost:17493/models/{model_id}/unload

TypeScript/JavaScript Integration

Basic TTS Client

const VOICEBOX_URL = process.env.VOICEBOX_API_URL ?? "http://localhost:17493";

interface GenerateRequest {
  text: string;
  profile_id: string;
  language?: string;
  engine?: "qwen3-tts" | "luxtts" | "chatterbox" | "chatterbox-turbo" | "tada";
}

interface GenerateResponse {
  generation_id: string;
  status: "queued" | "processing" | "complete" | "failed";
  audio_url?: string;
}

async function generateSpeech(req: GenerateRequest): Promise<GenerateResponse> {
  const response = await fetch(`${VOICEBOX_URL}/generate`, {
    method: "POST",
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
    body: JSON.stringify(req),
  });

  if (!response.ok) {
    throw new Error(`Voicebox API error: ${response.status} ${await response.text()}`);
  }

  return response.json();
}

// Usage
const result = await generateSpeech({
  text: "Welcome to our application.",
  profile_id: "abc123",
  language: "en",
  engine: "qwen3-tts",
});

console.log("Generation ID:", result.generation_id);

Poll for Completion

async function waitForGeneration(
  generationId: string,
  timeoutMs = 60_000
): Promise<string> {
  const start = Date.now();

  while (Date.now() - start < timeoutMs) {
    const res = await fetch(`${VOICEBOX_URL}/generations/${generationId