Luke Oliff · Blog
Writing.
Original posts, published first on this site. Imported posts live in the archive.
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263 posts
2026
Grok Voice Gets 21 New Voices. The Price Is the PointOriginalxAI added 21 multilingual voices, voice cloning from one minute of audio, and a no-code agent builder to Grok Voice at $0.05 per minute of audio.Voice AI
An Open Source TTS Model That Edits Words After RecordingOriginalViiTorVoice-NAR is an open-source TTS model that can replace individual words inside finished audio without regenerating the surrounding content.Voice AI
TIL: Playing Audio From the Terminal With SoX PlayOriginalplay (from SoX) plays any audio file through your speakers with one command. No media player needed when you are already in the terminal.TIL
Pricing wars are good for developersOriginalThree TTS providers changed pricing in the same week, all in one direction: down. Cheaper voice is good for developers, and the trend is not slowing.Opinion
Building a writing routine that actually sticksOriginalA daily writing habit that finally works: one post a day, a weekly format rota, and a hard time box that forces the draft to exist.Developer Experience
Finding the rhythm: first impressions of a new role in a new corner of AIOriginalFinding the rhythm two weeks into a new DevRel role: what surprised me about text-to-speech, what I was right about, and what I am still figuring out.Developer Experience
Lessons from my first two weeks in a new corner of AIOriginalTwo weeks in voice AI on the text-to-speech side: a new community, a new set of constraints, and a definition of quality nobody quite agrees on.Developer Experience
Onboarding at a new company: what I wish I had knownOriginalOnboarding at a new company after years at the same one: imposter feelings that hit harder, domain knowledge that transfers slowly, and remote loneliness.Developer Experience
Voice AI mid-2026: the trends I am watchingOriginalQuality convergence, pricing pressure, open-weight models, and the regulatory shift. The voice AI landscape halfway through 2026.Voice AI
What surprised me about TTS API design after years of STTOriginalAfter years of speech-to-text, TTS API design broke my assumptions: output parameters everywhere, SSML that fights you, and speech marks nobody mentions.API Design