Edinburgh CSTR

Name: Edinburgh CSTR
Author: University of Edinburgh

by University of Edinburgh

Centre for Speech Technology Research — VCTK + Merlin TTS + Festival origins.

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TL;DR

Best for tTS research; multi-speaker corpora; statistical parametric speech synthesis history. Pricing: free.

What it is

Edinburgh CSTR pioneered statistical parametric TTS (HTS, Merlin) and released VCTK, the canonical multi-speaker English corpus. Major academic hub for TTS + voice cloning.

Best for: TTS research; multi-speaker corpora; statistical parametric speech synthesis history.
Watch out for: Academic; tools open-source.

Install / use

Go to Edinburgh CSTR www.cstr.ed.ac.uk

Features

Speaker diarization	No
Word-level timestamps	No
Streaming / real-time	No
Languages supported	0
HIPAA eligible	No

Edinburgh CSTR vs Whipscribe

Feature	Edinburgh CSTR	Whipscribe
Category	Open source	Transcription APIs
Pricing	free	$4–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · $2 single unlock · 60 min free on signup
Speaker diarization	No	Yes
Word timestamps	No	Yes
Streaming	No	No
Languages	0	99
Platforms	Web	Web, API, MCP

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