ovos-audio

The "mouth" of the OVOS assistant!

Handles TTS generation and sounds playback

---

Install

pip install ovos-audio[extras] to install this package and the default plugins.

Without extras, you will also need to manually install, and possibly configure TTS modules as described below.

---

Configuration

under mycroft.conf

{

  // Text to Speech parameters
  "tts": {
    "module": "ovos-tts-plugin-server",
    "fallback_module": "ovos-tts-plugin-mimic",
    "ovos-tts-plugin-mimic": {
        "voice": "ap"
    }
  },

  // File locations of sounds to play for system events
  "sounds": {
    "start_listening": "snd/start_listening.wav",
    "end_listening": "snd/end_listening.wav",
    "acknowledge": "snd/acknowledge.mp3",
    "error": "snd/error.mp3"
  },

  // Mechanism used to play WAV audio files
  "play_wav_cmdline": "paplay %1 --stream-name=mycroft-voice",

  // Mechanism used to play MP3 audio files
  "play_mp3_cmdline": "mpg123 %1",

  // Mechanism used to play OGG audio files
  "play_ogg_cmdline": "ogg123 -q %1"
}

---

🤖 Persona Support

This project supports dialog-transformer plugins to customize the style or tone of the generated speech.

By using OpenAI Persona Plugin, you can rewrite text dynamically based on specific personas, such as simplifying explanations or mimicking a specific tone.

Example Usage:

• Persona: "rewrite the text as if you were explaining it to a 5-year-old"
• Input: "Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics that describes the behavior of particles at the smallest scales."
• Output: "Quantum mechanics is like a special kind of science that helps us understand really tiny things."

Examples of persona Values:

• "rewrite the text as if it was an angry old man speaking"
• "Add more 'dude'ness to it"
• "Explain it like you're teaching a child"

To enable the OpenAI Persona Plugin, add the following to your mycroft.conf:

"dialog_transformers": {
    "ovos-dialog-transformer-openai-plugin": {
        "rewrite_prompt": "rewrite the text as if you were explaining it to a 5-year-old"
    }
}

---

Using Legacy AudioService

The legacy audio service supports audio playback via the old mycroft api (@mycroft @ovos)

by default OCP delegates to the legacy audio service when necessary and no action is needed, but if you want to disable ocp this api can be used as the sole media playback provider

NOTE: once ovos-media is released OCP and this api will be disabled by default and deprecated!

{
    "enable_old_audioservice": true,
    "disable_ocp": true,
    "Audio": {
        "default-backend": "vlc",
        "backends": {
          "simple": {
            "type": "ovos_audio_simple",
            "active": true
          },
          "vlc": {
            "type": "ovos_vlc",
            "active": true
          }
        }
    }
  },
}

legacy plugins:

• vlc
• simple (no https support)
• mpv <- recommended default
• chromecast
• spotify

OCP technical details:

• OCP was developed for mycroft-core under the legacy audio service system
• OCP is always the default audio plugin, unless you set "disable_ocp": true in config
• OCP uses the legacy api internally, to delegate playback when GUI is not available (or when configured to do so)
• does NOT bring support for old Mycroft CommonPlay skills, that is achieved by using the "ocp_legacy" pipeline with ovos-core
• ovos-media will fully replace OCP in ovos-audio 1.0.0