Orpheus 3B 0.1 FT
LLaMA-architecture 3B model fine-tuned as a TTS that emits SNAC audio tokens. Designed for highly expressive, emotion-controllable speech with laughter, sighs, and other paralinguistic markers via inline tags. Apache-2.0 with multiple voice presets.
The most interesting open TTS architecture of 2025 — LLM-as-TTS unlocks emotion control that Kokoro/Piper can't match. Worth the 3B footprint if expressivity is the requirement.
Overview
LLaMA-architecture 3B model fine-tuned as a TTS that emits SNAC audio tokens. Designed for highly expressive, emotion-controllable speech with laughter, sighs, and other paralinguistic markers via inline tags. Apache-2.0 with multiple voice presets.
Strengths
- Best-in-class expressivity — laughter, sighs, emotion tags supported natively
- Apache-2.0 license, fully commercial
- Reuses standard LLM inference stack (vLLM, llama.cpp branches) for serving
- Streamable token-by-token like a text LLM
Weaknesses
- 3B params — GPU effectively required; CPU is too slow for realtime
- English-only base checkpoint
- Requires SNAC audio decoder as a second model in the pipeline
- Newer project — tooling and benchmarks less mature than Whisper/Kokoro
Quantization variants
Each quantization trades model quality for file size and VRAM. Q4_K_M is the most popular starting point.
| Quantization | File size | VRAM required |
|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 1.7 GB | 3 GB |
Get the model
HuggingFace
Original weights
Source repository — direct quantization required.
Hardware that runs this
Cards with enough VRAM for at least one quantization of Orpheus 3B 0.1 FT.
Models worth comparing
Same parameter band, plus what's one tier above and below — so you can decide what actually fits your hardware.
Frequently asked
What's the minimum VRAM to run Orpheus 3B 0.1 FT?
Can I use Orpheus 3B 0.1 FT commercially?
What's the context length of Orpheus 3B 0.1 FT?
Source: huggingface.co/canopylabs/orpheus-3b-0.1-ft
Reviewed by RunLocalAI Editorial. See our editorial policy for how we research and verify model claims.
Related — keep moving
Verify Orpheus 3B 0.1 FT runs on your specific hardware before committing money.