d7fc0236bc
Specification change. Two different rules, and they need different
mechanisms.
Narrator: accent = translation language. Its reference was generated by
VoiceDesign from a description that hardcoded '{accent} English', baking an
American-English timbre into the WAV; cloning that into German gives German
phonology from an American voice. Ten per-language references now exist
(narrator_EN.wav ... narrator_ZH.wav), each designed from the narrator's
timbre plus 'Speaking {language} as a native {language} speaker'.
Characters: keep the accent on the speaker page. Their accents were already
encoded in their existing refs - what destroyed them was the language
parameter forced onto every utterance, which made every voice adopt the
target language's prosody. That is why Deal Hunter came out French-native.
Phonology and accent are now separate controls: language carries phonology,
an explicit voice_description carries accent character. Deal Hunter gets
'with a strong Australian accent' in every language.
Measured A/B, French line from Deal Hunter: with and without the Australian
instruction the waveforms differ by 152% of signal amplitude and duration
moves 4.24s -> 4.08s, so the instruction is reaching the model. Whether it is
convincingly Australian is an ear test, not something measurable here.
Re-rendered all 120 clips under the new spec, 0 failures. The previous
render is kept in Lang_test_preSpec for A/B. 24 speakers carry a non-default
accent; the narrator is deliberately excluded from that set.
Suite: 721 passed, 8 pre-existing.
UmbraAudio Specifications
Index of all specification documents for the UmbraAudio audiobook generation system.
Specifications
| File | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 00-project-overview.md | Architecture | Pipeline overview, tech stack, data layout |
| 01-parsing.md | Pass 1a | EPUB, PDF, TXT, MD manuscript parsing |
| 02-analysis.md | Pass 1b | BookNLP, character profiling, pronunciation |
| 03-voice-design.md | Pass 2 | Per-character voice reference generation |
| 04-mapping.md | Pass 3 | Text segmentation, speaker attribution, manifests |
| 05-generation.md | Pass 5 | Audio generation, caching, retry, CUDA management |
| 06-normalization-watermarking.md | Post-gen | Audio normalization, ACX compliance, Perth watermark |
| 07-assembly-export.md | Export | M4B, MP3, WAV export via FFmpeg |
| 08-database.md | Database | SQLite schema, entity relationships, CRUD API |
| 09-web-review-ui.md | Web UI | FastAPI + HTMX review interface |
| 10-cli-orchestrator.md | CLI | Click commands, full pipeline orchestration |
| 11-configuration-dependencies.md | Config | Pydantic settings, dependencies, build system |
| 12-quality.md | Quality | MOS, WER, consistency, ACX compliance |
| 18-UmbraTrans.md | Multilingual | Meaning-preserving translation, target voices, and multilingual audiobook production |
| 19-enterprise-control-plane.md | Enterprise | Multi-tenant projects, access control, artifact lineage, and commercial voice library |
| 20-enterprise-database-integration.md | Enterprise DB | Shared-PostgreSQL contract, blockers, cutover phases P1-P4 |
| 21-umbra-system-nodes-tasks-and-changes.md | System | Worker nodes, task assignment, cross-product change management, UI topology |
| 22-releases-and-the-publish-flag.md | Release | The publish flag, pinned artifact sets, post-publication change, and the Deal Hunter lesson |
| 23-speaker-duplicate-detection.md | Speakers | Duplicate-speaker scan, approval-safe merging, and the crowd veto |
| 24-analysis-quality-plan.md | Analysis | Why the ch6 speakers were missed, and a ranked plan to improve attribution |
Quick Reference
Pipeline Passes
1a: Parse → chapters table
1b: Analyze → characters, pronunciation_guide
2: Voices → voice_ref WAVs
3: Map → manifests/*.json
4: Test → sample audio (optional)
5: Generate → audio/*.wav, audio_normalized/*.wav
Export → export/*.m4b, *.mp3
Key Entry Points
| Component | File | Class/Function |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | cli.py |
main Click group |
| Pipeline | orchestrator.py |
run_pipeline() |
| TTS | voices/chatterbox.py |
ChatterboxEngine |
| Segmenter | mapping/segmenter.py |
Segmenter |
| Generator | generation/chapter.py |
ChapterGenerator |
| Normalizer | assembly/normalize.py |
AudioNormalizer |
| Web UI | web/__init__.py |
create_app() |
| Database | database.py |
Database |