Veena - Text to Speech for Indian Languages
Veena is a state-of-the-art neural text-to-speech (TTS) model specifically designed for Indian languages, developed by Maya Research. Built on a Llama architecture backbone, Veena generates natural, expressive speech in Hindi and English with remarkable quality and ultra-low latency.
Model Overview
Veena is a 3B parameter autoregressive transformer model based on the Llama architecture. It is designed to synthesize high-quality speech from text in Hindi and English, including code-mixed scenarios. The model outputs audio at a 24kHz sampling rate using the SNAC neural codec.
- Model type: Autoregressive Transformer
- Base Architecture: Llama (3B parameters)
- Languages: Hindi, English
- Audio Codec: SNAC @ 24kHz
- License: Apache 2.0
- Developed by: Maya Research
- Model URL: https://huggingface.co/maya-research/veena
Key Features
- 4 Distinct Voices:
kavya
,agastya
,maitri
, andvinaya
- each with unique vocal characteristics. - Multilingual Support: Native Hindi and English capabilities with code-mixed support.
- Ultra-Fast Inference: Sub-80ms latency on H100-80GB GPUs.
- High-Quality Audio: 24kHz output with the SNAC neural codec.
- Production-Ready: Optimized for real-world deployment with 4-bit quantization support.
How to Get Started with the Model
Installation
To use Veena, you need to install the transformers
, torch
, torchaudio
, snac
, and bitsandbytes
libraries.
pip install transformers torch torchaudio
pip install snac bitsandbytes # For audio decoding and quantization
Basic Usage
The following Python code demonstrates how to generate speech from text using Veena with 4-bit quantization for efficient inference.
Uses
Veena is ideal for a wide range of applications requiring high-quality, low-latency speech synthesis for Indian languages, including:
- Accessibility: Screen readers and voice-enabled assistance for visually impaired users.
- Customer Service: IVR systems, voice bots, and automated announcements.
- Content Creation: Dubbing for videos, e-learning materials, and audiobooks.
- Automotive: In-car navigation and infotainment systems.
- Edge Devices: Voice-enabled smart devices and IoT applications.
Technical Specifications
Architecture
Veena leverages a 3B parameter transformer-based architecture with several key innovations:
- Base Architecture: Llama-style autoregressive transformer (3B parameters)
- Audio Codec: SNAC (24kHz) for high-quality audio token generation
- Speaker Conditioning: Special speaker tokens (
<spk_kavya>
,<spk_agastya>
,<spk_maitri>
,<spk_vinaya>
) - Parameter-Efficient Training: LoRA adaptation with differentiated ranks for attention and FFN modules.
- Context Length: 2048 tokens
Training
Training Infrastructure
- Hardware: 8ร NVIDIA H100 80GB GPUs
- Distributed Training: DDP with optimized communication
- Precision: BF16 mixed precision training with gradient checkpointing
- Memory Optimization: 4-bit quantization with NF4 + double quantization
Training Configuration
- LoRA Configuration:
lora_rank_attention
: 192lora_rank_ffn
: 96lora_alpha
: 2ร rank (384 for attention, 192 for FFN)lora_dropout
: 0.05target_modules
:["q_proj", "k_proj", "v_proj", "o_proj", "gate_proj", "up_proj", "down_proj"]
modules_to_save
:["embed_tokens"]
- Optimizer Configuration:
optimizer
: AdamW (8-bit)optimizer_betas
: (0.9, 0.98)optimizer_eps
: 1e-5learning_rate_peak
: 1e-4lr_scheduler
: cosinewarmup_ratio
: 0.02
- Batch Configuration:
micro_batch_size
: 8gradient_accumulation_steps
: 4effective_batch_size
: 256
Training Data
Veena was trained on proprietary, high-quality datasets specifically curated for Indian language TTS.
- Data Volume: 15,000+ utterances per speaker (60,000+ total)
- Languages: Native Hindi and English utterances with code-mixed support
- Speaker Diversity: 4 professional voice artists with distinct characteristics
- Audio Quality: Studio-grade recordings at 24kHz sampling rate
- Content Diversity: Conversational, narrative, expressive, and informational styles
Note: The training datasets are proprietary and not publicly available.
Performance Benchmarks
Metric | Value |
---|---|
Latency (H100-80GB) | <80ms |
Latency (A100-40GB) | ~120ms |
Latency (RTX 4090) | ~200ms |
Real-time Factor | 0.05x |
Throughput | ~170k tokens/s (8รH100) |
Audio Quality (MOS) | 4.2/5.0 |
Speaker Similarity | 92% |
Intelligibility | 98% |
Risks, Limitations and Biases
- Language Support: Currently supports only Hindi and English. Performance on other Indian languages is not guaranteed.
- Speaker Diversity: Limited to 4 speaker voices, which may not represent the full diversity of Indian accents and dialects.
- Hardware Requirements: Requires a GPU for real-time or near-real-time inference. CPU performance will be significantly slower.
- Input Length: The model is limited to a maximum input length of 2048 tokens.
- Bias: The model's performance and voice characteristics are a reflection of the proprietary training data. It may exhibit biases present in the data.
Future Updates
We are actively working on expanding Veena's capabilities:
- Support for Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and other Indian languages.
- Additional speaker voices with regional accents.
- Emotion and prosody control tokens.
- Streaming inference support.
- CPU optimization for edge deployment.
Citing
If you use Veena in your research or applications, please cite:
@misc{veena2025,
title={Veena: Open Source Text-to-Speech for Indian Languages},
author={Maya Research Team},
year={2025},
publisher={HuggingFace},
url={[https://huggingface.co/maya-research/veena-tts](https://huggingface.co/maya-research/veena-tts)}
}
Acknowledgments
We thank the open-source community and all contributors who made this project possible. Special thanks to the voice artists who provided high-quality recordings for training.
Model tree for Prince-1/Veena-Onnx-Int4
Base model
maya-research/Veena