Voice Configuration

You can configure how your persona’s voice sounds — speed, volume, and emotion — via voiceGenerationOptions in the persona config. The available options depend on the provider and model of the configured voice.

const personaConfig = {
  name: "Cara",
  avatarId: "30fa96d0-26c4-4e55-94a0-517025942e18",
  avatarModel: "cara-4",
  voiceId: "6bfbe25a-979d-40f3-a92b-5394170af54b",
  llmId: "a7cf662c-2ace-4de1-a21e-ef0fbf144bb7",
  systemPrompt: "You are Cara, a helpful customer service representative.",
  voiceGenerationOptions: {
    speed: 1.2,
    volume: 0.8,
    emotion: "content"
  }
};

These settings can be set when creating or updating a persona, as well as when generating a session token. See the API Reference for details.

Cartesia voices

For expressive speech, use Cartesia Sonic 3.6 (sonic-3.6). The following options are valid for Cartesia Sonic 3 voices, including Sonic 3.6:

Option	Range	Description
`volume`	0.5 – 2.0	Multiplier to decrease or increase the volume of the original voice
`speed`	0.6 – 1.5	Multiplier to decrease or increase the speed of the original voice
`emotion`	string	Emotion to apply: `neutral`, `calm`, `angry`, `content`, `sad`, `scared`

ElevenLabs voices

ElevenLabs v4

Anam supports eleven_v4 and eleven_v4_turbo. Use eleven_v4_turbo for higher throughput and lower latency than eleven_v4. Select an Anam voice configured with either model and use its Anam voice ID as voiceId. The model name is not a voice ID. See Custom Voices to import an ElevenLabs voice. Both v4 models support these settings in voiceGenerationOptions:

Option	Range	Description
`stability`	0 – 1	How much the voice varies between generations. Lower values introduce more emotional variation
`similarityBoost`	0 – 1	How closely the generated voice matches the original reference audio

Do not send speed, volume, emotion, style, or useSpeakerBoost for v4 voices.

ElevenLabs v3

Use ElevenLabs eleven_v3_conversational for expressive speech with inline cues. See Director Notes for guidance on combining voice cues with avatar direction. For ElevenLabs v3 voices, stability is the only supported voice setting in voiceGenerationOptions:

Option	Range	Description
`stability`	0 – 1	How much the voice varies between generations. Lower values introduce more emotional variation

Select an Anam voice configured with eleven_v3_conversational and use its Anam voice ID as voiceId. The model name is not a voice ID. Include only stability in the voice generation settings of your REST API persona configuration:

{
  "voiceId": "YOUR_ANAM_ELEVENLABS_V3_VOICE_ID",
  "voiceGenerationOptions": {
    "stability": 0.5
  }
}

Do not send speed, volume, emotion, similarityBoost, style, or useSpeakerBoost for v3 voices. The v1 and v2 options below do not apply to v3.

ElevenLabs v1 and v2

The following options are valid for ElevenLabs v1 and v2 voices:

Option	Range	Description
`stability`	0 – 1	How much the voice varies between generations. Lower values introduce more emotional variation
`similarityBoost`	0 – 1	How closely the generated voice matches the original reference audio
`speed`	0.7 – 1.2	Multiplier to decrease or increase the speed of the original voice

For v2 voices, these additional options are also available:

Option	Type	Description
`useSpeakerBoost`	boolean	Boost similarity to the original speaker. May increase latency
`style`	0 – 1	How much the original speaker’s style is amplified. Values other than 0 may increase latency

Pronunciation dictionaries

Use a pronunciation dictionary to control how your persona says names, brands, or technical terms. Each entry pairs a word or phrase with a sounds like spelling, an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation, or both. For example, enter Anam as the source and annum as its “sounds-like” spelling. Captions and conversation history keep the original text.

Pronunciation dictionaries are currently available through the Anam Lab UI. API support is coming soon.

IPA support depends on the voice’s model. Cartesia Sonic 3 models, including Sonic 3.5 and 3.6, and ElevenLabs v3 and v4 models, including eleven_v3_conversational, eleven_v4, and eleven_v4_turbo, support IPA. When you provide both forms, Anam uses IPA on a model that supports it and the sounds-like spelling on other models. Provide both IPA and sounds like for each entry to enable the fallback. Anam does not generate a sounds-like spelling from IPA. If you provide only IPA and the selected model does not support it, the entry is skipped and the word is spoken as written.

Create and select a dictionary

Open the dictionary workspace

Open your persona in Anam Lab and select the Voice tab. Under Pronunciation dictionary, select Manage dictionaries.

Create a dictionary

Select New, enter a name, then select Create dictionary. Dictionaries belong to your organization and can be reused across personas.

Add and preview entries

Select Add entry and enter the source word or phrase. Fill in Sounds like for a respelling, IPA for a phonetic pronunciation, or both. To use IPA with a fallback for other models, fill in both fields on the same entry. Lab accepts IPA in Cartesia format, such as <<ˈ|ɑ|n|ə|m>>, and converts it for the selected provider.Matching ignores capitalization by default; enable Match case to match only the spelling you entered.For Cartesia or ElevenLabs voices, choose a preview voice and use the entry’s play button to listen before saving. Previewing does not save your edits.

Save and apply

Select Save, then return to the Voice tab and confirm your dictionary is selected. Publish the persona to apply the selection to its saved configuration.Saving updates the dictionary in place for every existing persona that references it. Each of those personas automatically uses the updated entries in new sessions; you do not need to reselect the dictionary or republish those personas. The dictionary has no separate publish step. Start a new session to test changes; running sessions keep the entries loaded when they started.

Entry limits and matching

A dictionary can contain up to 500 entries.
Source text can contain up to 100 Unicode code points and cannot be blank; sounds-like spellings can contain up to 200. Neither can contain [ or ]. Provide at least one pronunciation form per entry.
Entries match whole words or phrases: cat does not match inside catalog.
Duplicate sources are rejected. Sources that differ only in capitalization are allowed when both use Match case.

To stop using a dictionary, select None in the persona’s Pronunciation dictionary selector and publish the persona.

Changing voices

The voiceGenerationOptions are specific to the provider, model, and voice being used. When you change the voiceId for a persona, these options reset. Use the copy persona feature in Lab when experimenting with different voices to avoid losing your existing config.

Introduction

Personas

Avatar videos

Security & Compliance

Resources

Voice Configuration

Cartesia voices

ElevenLabs voices

ElevenLabs v4

ElevenLabs v3

ElevenLabs v1 and v2

Pronunciation dictionaries

Create and select a dictionary

Entry limits and matching

Changing voices

​Cartesia voices

​ElevenLabs voices

​ElevenLabs v4

​ElevenLabs v3

​ElevenLabs v1 and v2

​Pronunciation dictionaries

​Create and select a dictionary

​Entry limits and matching

​Changing voices

Cartesia voices

ElevenLabs voices

ElevenLabs v4

ElevenLabs v3

ElevenLabs v1 and v2

Pronunciation dictionaries

Create and select a dictionary

Entry limits and matching

Changing voices