Piper - Dutch Language, what's the most normal one?

Hi there, as I am trying to switch from english tts (alexa) to local speech with piper I face some issues.

But first let me say, it’s impressive it’s even possible to do so locally, I can’t even imagine how much work it has cost to create these addons/integrations. I am an enthusiastic “year of the voice” user :+1:.

Most nl languages have a Belgian pronunciation. And all languages I have tested are pretty hard to understand, the don’t seem to speak like “real” Dutch. It’s that I know what I type and let them say but others do not directly hear it. Others only can laugh all the time :smirk:.

Am I missing some setting? Is there options to tune?

Another issue I face is that when I have set a specific word or sentence with a voice it keeps using the original voice, even after changing the voice on piper and even by disabling the caching option. Even days later it still uses the old voice while a new one was selected. Changing 1 letter, symbol solves this, but going back to the original one: old/wrong voice.

May I start a little discussion around here about the quality of the voices? Is this being worked on? Is it something I can change or tweak myself?

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I’m curious too, tracking this topic

i’ve heard it too. the nl_NL voices are not in Dutch. i’m not sure what language it is, but it’s definitely not dutch.
maybe Paulus or Frenck can listen to it and verify that it’s incorrect?..

does the STT speech to text (whisper) work in Dutch for you guyes, or only in English?

I noticed the same, the nl_NL voices are simply not usable. However, the nl_BE voices are. Both “Nathalie” and “rdh” are pretty good, even when using the x_low variant. So that’s my work around for now.

yeah, i used those too, but how did the NL STT works out for you?
the only reply i get is “sorry, ik snap het niet”
if i switch to English i do get recognized voice commands… after ~30 seconds.
also tried the small-int8 instead of tiny-int8, but it takes aroud the same time and still no recognition in Dutch.
using a pi4 btw…

Hi @JazekerXX,

It took me a whole lot of experimenting and lots of “Sorry, ik snap het niet,” but I figured out a solution that works, be it on the slow side. See my reaction in this other topic.

For me Whisper and Piper both are unusable. Whisper hardly recognizes what i say. Also i’m unable to understand what Piper says in Dutch.

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