TTS is the Real Bottleneck in Voice Agents
PriorWoodpecker3431 · reddit · 2026-07-17
The author, who is building a voice agent (for inbound customer service and outbound screening), discovered that the true bottleneck isn't the LLM, but the time-to-first-byte of the TTS.
They emphasize their main priorities:
- Low time-to-first-byte, because users can't tolerate long silences
- True streaming output, not a fake "stream"
- Cost efficiency capable of handling real-world call volumes
- Multilingual/code-switching, specifically mixing English and Spanish
- Natural enough delivery, without needing award-winning voice quality
They are looking for recommendations on which TTS providers people use in production or serious testing, hoping to avoid tying their entire voice pipeline to a solution that might suddenly spike to 600ms under heavy load.
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