Two reports, one root: the platform's speech engine.
"Loud cracking at the end of every sentence" is the browser/OS TTS popping
between its internal sentence chunks (an idle cancel makes it worse). Hygiene
for that path: never cancel when nothing is pending, normalise the spoken text
(control characters, ellipses, dashes), and a 140ms beat between sections so
speech never runs into the engine's tail.
The real fix is a second voice source that does not use the platform engine:
- lib/providers carries TTS profiles (OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts, Groq
playai-tts, any OpenAI-compatible /audio/speech behind the custom provider),
male voices first.
- /api/tts proxies them with the same guards and the key still in headers.
- the picker gains System / Natural, with the provider's voice list.
- lib/podcast-audio plays one clip per section through a hidden <audio>
element, measures the clip's real duration and gives each word a slice of it
proportional to its spoken length - the highlight follows the audio exactly,
and pause/seek/chapters become real audio operations. Clips cache per
session, the next section generates while the current plays, and a voice
change disposes the element and its blobs. Speed applies live (setRate)
without dropping the cache.
podcast-test stubs /api/tts with a real silent WAV and pins the path: the
voice list, the request body, exactly one playing element, and the highlight
riding currentTime. 43 checks. tests/lib.mjs launches Chromium with the
autoplay policy relaxed (a real device has the listener's gesture).
Version 0.7.6, SW v98.
"The scrolling works kinda weirdly" + "maybe a less robotic voice, preferably
male".
Scroll: the transcript now follows by LINE, not by word - words on the same
line never move the page (that was the jitter), a line only scrolls once it
leaves a comfortable band, small corrections are instant rather than animated,
and a wheel/touch/drag on the transcript pauses the following for four seconds
instead of fighting the reader. Chapter jumps and word taps re-centre at once.
Voice: lib/podcast-voices ranks what the platform installed (natural / neural
/ online names up, espeak / SAM / compact down, a male name preferred) and the
player picks the best one automatically; a new picker in the chrome lists
everything in the episode's language, applies it live and remembers the choice
per language. A note points at the system settings when only robotic voices
exist. The engine takes the chosen voice instead of guessing.
podcast-test: 34 checks now (voice ranking, filtered picker, persisted pick,
same-line silence, line following, manual-scroll suspension). Version 0.7.4,
SW v96.
The third segment of the note-powered wizards (Study deck / Homework /
Podcast) takes the same intake - photos, documents, pasted text, the share
target - and turns it into a spoken episode.
- prompts: PODCAST_SYSTEM_PROMPT writes for the ear (plain prose, no markdown,
no visual references), chaptered into 3-8 sections around a length target.
- /api/podcast mirrors /api/generate's plumbing (rate limit, model gate,
provider keys, heartbeats, the 2x deadline, the optional vision pass).
- storage: frezmo.podcasts.v1, zod-validated, included in the backup and the
encrypted sync payload; a new library tab lists episodes with listen /
rename / delete-with-undo, and the wizard switch deep-links in.
- player: the transcript is word-wrapped spans and the word under the voice
rides a lyric-style highlight that keeps itself centred. Two clocks: exact
onboundary events where the browser reports them, a per-word length timer
where it does not (iOS Safari); the first boundary retires the timer.
Pause = cancel + re-speak from the word, which makes resume, chapter jumps
and tap-any-word-to-seek the same operation; the position saves on pause,
page-hide and unmount, so reopening resumes. Speed rebuilds the engine and
keeps playing; the Aero soundtrack pauses itself when the voice starts; a
browser with no voice gets an honest note and a readable transcript.
- the script sits on a glass pane (plain paragraphs over Aero's grass failed
contrast; the scan now covers the player too).
tests/podcast-test.mjs (17th suite) stubs the model and the speech engine and
drives the highlight by hand: 26 checks. All suites green, contrast clean.
Version 0.7.3, SW v95.
