
Cartesia has released Sonic-3.6, the newest version of its real-time text-to-speech model. It arrives roughly three months after Sonic-3.5. The new change is naturalness, and this one is independently checkable. Sonic 3.6 now holds #1 on both Artificial Analysis speech leaderboards — 1,283 Elo on the Provider Voice board and 1,123 on the Controlled Voice board. The second result matters more. That board clones every model onto the same eight reference voices, which isolates the synthesis engine
Cartesia has released Sonic-3.6, a text-to-speech model that converts written text into spoken audio in real time. The model ranks first on both independent speech quality leaderboards, meaning it produces more natural-sounding speech than competing systems. It is available as a cloud-based service rather than software that can be downloaded and run locally, with pricing starting at a $5 tier for individual developers and scaling up for larger commercial operations.
As open-source AI models proliferate, tracking their capabilities against closed alternatives helps developers choose which tools suit their needs and budgets.
Researchers found significant gaps when attempting to verify published machine learning results, raising questions about reproducibility standards in AI research.

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