Is Piper currently the best open source TTS model? I occasionally review open models to see if they match elevenlabs and have been disappointed. However, Piper sounds better than the last time I listened around.
Listening to the piper demos [1] and comparing to coqui [2], I'd say coqui sounds better to me, but I'd love to hear others' opinions.
Looks like Piper's latest commits were 3 months ago [3] while Coqui's were 8 months ago [4], so they both seem similar in recency.
In terms of ease of use though, especially with this project, personally Piper seems way less overwhelming.
For anyone who is interested, CoquiTTS (formerly, MozillaTTS) was great, but the project isn't maintained anymore (athough there's been some confusion about whether or not it's active. See: https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS/issues/4022).
