metadata

title: NotebookLM-Kokoro TTS Project
sdk: docker
app_file: gradio_app.py
pinned: true

NotebookLM-Kokoro TTS Project

This project uses Kokoro – a lightweight, open-weight TTS model with 82 million parameters – to create a Google NotebookLM style Text-to-Speech application.

Why Kokoro?

Non-Proprietary & Open-Source: Kokoro is best in its class as a non-proprietary model, giving you full flexibility to deploy in production environments or personal projects.
High Efficiency: Despite its lightweight architecture, Kokoro delivers comparable quality to larger models while being faster and more cost-efficient.
Benchmarks: According to benchmarks available on the TTS-Arena page, Kokoro outperforms many closed-source models, making it the ideal choice for open deployments.
Easy Integration: With simple pip and Homebrew installation for dependencies like espeak-ng, integration into Python projects is straightforward.

Setup Instructions

Environment Setup

This project uses the uv Python package manager. Follow these steps:

Install uv:
```
pip install uv
```
Create a new environment named notebooklm:
```
uv venv
```
Activate the environment:
```
source .venv/bin/activate
```

Install Python dependencies:

pip install "kokoro>=0.9.2" soundfile torch

Install espeak-ng (Mac users):
```
brew install espeak-ng
```

Running the Application

Once the environment is set up, run the main TTS script as follows:

python notebook_lm_kokoro.py

This will process the transcript text using Kokoro and output audio segments as WAV files.

Conclusion

Kokoro’s combination of efficiency, quality, and open-access makes it the best non-proprietary TTS model available, as confirmed by recent benchmarks. Enjoy exploring and extending this project!