docs(frank-tts): retire the 5.5 s cold-voice claim everywhere it still lived

PR #15 corrected the engine's page, the research brief's law bullet and the
warmer's header, but the retired ladder had six more homes: both quadlet files
("6.2-8.0 s… 0.5 ms", "~6-8 s each", "paying the 5.5 s cold decode"),
`scripts/frank-tts-engine.env` (the whole law paragraph and the WARM_TEXT note),
`scripts/frank-tts.env`, the [[Frank TTS]] troubleshooting row that told an
operator to expect ~5.5 s, the research brief's consequences paragraph, and one
test comment.

All re-keyed to what was measured on the deployed container 2026-10-18: the
first synthesis of a freshly registered voice costs 1,883 ms against 1,226-1,283
ms afterwards, so the warm pass buys about 0.6 s — and the reason it exists at
all, which the pages never led with, is that the registry is memory-only: without
the hook every voice name is a 400 until somebody synthesizes. The trial's dated
worklog entry stays as written; the correction points at it.

No behavior change: comments, unit lore and docs only, so no cfhash move and no
image rebuild.
This commit is contained in:
Frank
2026-10-18 18:52:50 -07:00
parent 0315a62d84
commit 2dc31ff09c
8 changed files with 44 additions and 30 deletions
+13 -14
View File
@@ -27,18 +27,17 @@
# below stop describing the process you are running. Nothing in this fleet
# pins this container; that is a decision, not an oversight.
#
# THE COLD-VOICE LAW (why the unit has an ExecStartPost at all). The first
# speech request for a registered voice decodes the ENTIRE reference clip to
# snapshot its codec state: 6.2-8.0 s total, first audio byte at 5,530 ms. Every
# later request for that voice restores the snapshot in 0.5 ms. Registrations
# live in memory only, so a restart loses them and re-registration alone does
# NOT warm the voice — the warm pass has to synthesize something. So
# dankclaw/voiceservice/tts-engine-warm.sh (in the image at
# /app/warm-voices.sh) runs on every start and speaks one short sentence per
# voice. Skip it and the first person to ask for audio that day waits 5.5 s in
# silence. It runs INSIDE this container — `podman exec`, from the unit's
# ExecStartPost — so it reads /voices here and the keys at the bottom of this
# file are its knobs too.
# THE REGISTRY LAW (why the unit has an ExecStartPost at all). Registrations live
# in memory only, so a restart loses them, and re-registration alone does NOT warm
# a voice — the warm pass has to synthesize something. Without it the façade
# answers 400 for every name until somebody asks for audio. So
# dankclaw/voiceservice/tts-engine-warm.sh (in the image at /app/warm-voices.sh)
# runs on every start and speaks a short sentence twice per voice. The penalty it
# removes is about 0.6 s, NOT the trial's 6.2-8.0 s: measured on the built
# container 2026-10-18 against an empty registry, the first synthesis cost
# 1,883 ms and the requests after it 1,226-1,283 ms. The hook runs INSIDE this
# container — `podman exec`, from the unit's ExecStartPost — so it reads /voices
# here and the keys at the bottom of this file are its knobs too.
#
# STREAMING IS NOT BUFFERED. The same seed gives audio that differs in 92.2 %
# of samples (-41.6 dB RMS) between `response_format=pcm` (the streaming path,
@@ -125,8 +124,8 @@ HEALTH_WAIT=300
# The sentence each voice speaks to snapshot its codec state, and the text the
# second (warm-timing) pass repeats. Fixed on purpose: the cold=/warm= numbers in
# the journal are comparable across boots only if the input is the same. Kept
# short because warming a library is serial — one cold decode per voice, 6-8 s
# each, inside the unit's start deadline.
# short because warming a library is serial — two syntheses per voice, ~5 s each,
# inside the unit's start deadline.
# QUOTED, and the quoting means two different things to the two readers of this
# file, which is the trap here:
# * bash (`set -a; source`, how the repo's seams and any human read it) needs
+3 -2
View File
@@ -35,8 +35,9 @@
# shim resolves the voice and re-encodes to mp3 when asked. The
# shipped engine (frank-tts-engine) speaks a voice it has
# REGISTERED on itself, from the same /home/dank/voices packs,
# and warms them at boot — see [[Frank TTS Engine]] for why an
# unwarmed voice costs the first caller 5.5 s.
# and warms them at boot — see [[Frank TTS Engine]] for what that
# boot warm is for (a memory-only registry: without it every name
# is a 400) and what it saves (~0.6 s).
# llama-tts-cli run LLAMA_TTS_BIN once per request with
# --tts-speaker-file <reference.wav>, nice 19 so a narration
# never starves the text endpoints on this box. Needs