LightBlue TTS 🇮🇱

Model Description

LightBlue is a state-of-the-art, lightning-fast Text-to-Speech (TTS) model built from scratch specifically for Hebrew (with English support). It is designed to produce 100% native Israeli-sounding speech with perfect handling of Nikud (vowels) and complex homographs, without compromising on inference speed.

It is fast enough to generate an entire 1-hour audiobook in just 3 seconds on a modern GPU.

• Developer: LightBlue TTS
• Language(s): Hebrew (Primary), English
• Model Type: Text-to-Speech (TTS)
• Demo & Website: https://lightbluetts.com/
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/maxmelichov/Light-BlueTTS

Key Features

• Blazing Fast Inference:
  • 1260x real-time on an NVIDIA RTX 3090 (21 minutes of audio generated per second).
  • 35x real-time on standard CPUs.
  • 20x real-time on Apple M1 chips.
• Native Hebrew Quality: Features a real Israeli accent, correct stress placements, and native-level flow.
• Advanced Contextual Understanding: Passes the "Homograph Test" (e.g., correctly distinguishing between צפה as "watched" vs "floated", or תרד as "spinach" vs "go down").
• Multiple Voices: Includes high-quality voices like Yonatan (Hebrew only) and Rotem.

Uses

Direct Use

• Generating high-quality Hebrew audio from text.
• Real-time TTS applications running on standard CPUs or edge devices.
• Audiobooks, accessibility tools, virtual assistants, and automated broadcasting.

Speed Benchmarks

LightBlue is optimized for extreme speed without sacrificing naturalness:

Hardware	Speed	Time for 1 Hour of Audio
NVIDIA RTX 3090	1260x real-time	~3 seconds
Standard CPU	35x real-time	~1.7 minutes
Apple M1	20x real-time	~3 minutes

How to Get Started

To use this model, you can clone the official GitHub repository and install the requirements: