description:"How a frank-tts voice pack is built on Dankclaw: the three files every pack must carry, the 10-second source-material gate scripts/build-voice-pack.sh enforces, how to add a fourth voice, and what to do when a pinned engine bump changes the extractor's output sizes."
tags:
- dankclaw
- frank-tts
- voices
- tts
timestamp:2026-10-18
---
# Voice Packs
A **voice pack** is the unit of identity for **frank-tts**: one directory under
`/home/dank/voices`, named by the voice, carrying the reference audio that makes
the name real plus the pinned engine's own speaker artifacts and a provenance
record. `voice=narrator1` on `POST /v1/audio/speech` resolves to
`/home/dank/voices/narrator1/reference.wav` and to nothing else — a name without
that file is a 400 that lists the names that do exist, because a silent fallback
voice is how a wrong-voice endpoint stays wrong for weeks.
arm A `qwentts.cpp`, decided in [[Local TTS and Voice Cloning]].
Packs are **world-readable on purpose** (`drwxr-xr-x`, owner `dank`): the façade
container runs as uid 10000 and reads the mount from outside its own uid map.
## The required files
| File | What it is | Who reads it |
|------|------------|--------------|
| `reference.wav` | the crop: 24 kHz mono `pcm_s16le`, **18–25 s** of clean single-speaker audio | the façade (it is the existence gate for the name) and the engine's boot warmer, which base64s it and registers the voice with no transcript |
| `reference.spk` | the engine's x-vector: **8,192 B** = `enc_dim` 2048 × f32 | the engine, for the ICL/`--ref-spk` path |
| `reference.rvq` | the engine's RVQ code stream: **5,456–6,864 B**, 16 codebooks × T frames packed at 11 bits = 22 B per 12.5 Hz frame | the engine, for the ICL/`--ref-rvq` path |
| `manifest.json` | provenance: source path and sha256, crop start/end offsets, sample rate, duration, the tool and engine commit that made the artifacts, and the `voice` name | humans, and the builder itself on its second gate assertion |
`qwen-codec.log` rides along with the extractor's own record of the run; the
façade ignores anything it does not name and never deletes anything.
Division of enforcement, which is deliberate and not a gap: the **façade** gates
on `reference.wav` because that is the only engine-agnostic term (see the
voice-pack law in `scripts/frank-tts.env`); the **builder** is what refuses to
emit a pack without its engine artifacts; the **engine** registers a voice from
the WAV alone because its own `POST /v1/audio/voices` refuses a lone embedding —
it wants `wav_b64` or **both**`spk_b64` and `rvq_b64`. So the artifacts are in
the pack to make ICL a per-voice opt-in, not to boot it.
## How a pack is built
```bash
# everything except the extractor: gate, crop, probe, plan, the manifest it would write
@@ -82,6 +82,7 @@ macOS mini) as quadlets inside its podman machine — not on Dankserver.
- [[Open Notebook]] — podcast generator (scripts by frank-zealot, voices by frank-tts); repo-owned config, not deployed
- [[Frank TTS Engine]] — the arm A TTS engine (`qwentts.cpp` resident `tts-server`, 1.7 B talker) behind frank-tts on a private bridge; repo-owned config, not deployed
- [[Frank TTS]] — the 7772 cloned-voice endpoint consumers address: voice naming, pack layout, why the upstream is a container name; repo-owned config, not deployed
- [[Voice Packs]] — how a frank-tts voice is built: reference.wav + the pinned engine's speaker artifacts, cut past the 10-second source-material gate
with an optional `--device`, has **no `-o`** and names both artifacts next to
the input with the extension swapped. So the WAV is staged under its final stem
and `reference.wav` — the file the façade gates on — is moved into place
**last**, after the artifacts and the manifest: a failed extractor leaves a
directory that is not a voice. `--force` retires an existing pack whole to
`.AGENTTRASH/` instead of touching bytes; nothing in this script deletes.
- Sizes are arithmetic, so they are checked: 16 codebooks × 11 bits = 22 B per
12.5 Hz frame (`22 × floor(samples/1920)`) and `enc_dim 2048 × f32` = 8,192 B.
That makes the **effective crop window 19.84–25 s**, narrower than the WAV
law's 18–25 s, and a too-short crop is refused before the extractor runs. An
engine bump that changes either number fails the build by design; the bump
procedure is in [[Voice Packs]].
- Verified against reality, not against the model: the pinned `narrator1` crop
(98.739–118.636 s of `audiosample.mp3`, sha256 `2299510…`) comes out of a
`--dry-run` at 955,378 B / 19.897 s with 5,456 B of `.rvq` planned — byte-for-byte
the trial's hand-cut numbers — and all three pinned source digests match the
files on disk.
- Seam: `tests/voice_pack_unit.bats` (13 tests) — refusal inside the forbidden
region creates nothing, a legal crop builds the whole pack, `ffprobe` on the
generated reference, manifest round-trip through `jq` with a sha that matches
the source, re-run-without-`--force` leaves every byte alone, `--force` retires
rather than deletes, `--dry-run` needs no extractor, a wrong-sized artifact
from a bumped engine cannot publish a voice, and every crop in the tracked pack
list clears the invariant. `qwen-codec` is stood in by a stub with the real
tool's I/O shape, so no engine, no GPU, no network, no fleet host. Suite green:
**416/416** (`./tests/run.sh`, wall 77 s) — 403 before this branch.
- Deliberately NOT done: no transcript in the manifest (ICL wants a curated
`ref_text`; the trial's machine transcripts were wrong, and the engine
registers WAV-only voices anyway), no 16 kHz variant (arm A is native 24 kHz),
no loudness pass (not in the pack law), and no pack built on the host — the
three sources still live on the workstation and the engine GGUFs have not been
fetched to `/home/dank/models/Qwen3-TTS-GGUF` yet, so the first real run is a
host step.
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