Project AURIONAI Use-Cases Research & Innovation
speech synthesis

Sonic 3.6

Cartesia GA TTS model with sub-90 ms latency, 4th on the Artificial Analysis TTS arena.

CartesiaCartesiaUSASonicFamily
Cartesia
Levelmodel
Classspeech synthesis
Parametersnot in the notes
Contextnot in the notes
ReleasedAug 2026
Opennessproprietary
Runs onnot in the notes
Statusactive

Benchmark Results

independent
Artificial Analysis Text-to-Speech Arenagenerative media
independent
1,284
1,0001,2001,400

Score in Elo; the axis starts at 1,000, as Elo has no zero. Higher is better.

rank 4 of 96, AA Text-to-Speech arena, 96 models10 Oct 2026 artificialanalysis.ai
Where this comes from
Every score names who ran it: vendor-reported, maintainer-run or independent. A rank is shown with the population it was ranked in (gap rule 3).

Lineage

successor
Sonic 3.5 to Sonic 3.6: successor, high confidenceSonic 3.5Sonic 3.5Cartesia, May 2026Sonic 3.6Sonic 3.6Cartesia, Aug 2026
CartesiaSonic 3.5 is the parent (successor)high confidencenotes
Where this comes from
Parent and child relations from model cards, Hugging Face base_model fields and the genealogy tables of the research notes. The tree shows two generations each way, 2 models. Confidence and evidence are the notes' own.

R&D Topics

Real-time spoken dialogue and low-latency voice generationproduced by

Identity

Developer
Cartesia
Family
Sonic
Released
Aug 2026 sourcessecondary report
Weights published
–
Record checked
10 Oct 2026
Where this comes from
Developer and dates from the research notes. Release date is the vendor's public announcement; weights date is when open weights were published.

Architecture and Size

Architecture
SSM State Space Model
Total parameters
– sources
Active parameters
–
Checkpoint parameters
–
Context length
not in the notes
Input
text
Output
audio
Where this comes from
Parameter counts as the developer states them. Where the checkpoint holds a different total, both are shown (register A16).

Openness and Access

Openness
proprietary
Licence
Proprietary sources
Access routes
API
Where this comes from
The licence file governs over registry tags and aggregator labels.

Deployment

Runs on
not in the notes
Footprint
Cloud or on-prem deployment offered
Runtimes
not in the notes
Where this comes from
Deployment tiers and runtimes as named in the notes. Footprint is the notes' figure, not a measurement by AURION.

Indonesia

Indonesian support
listed by developer
Regional languages
not in the notes
Jakarta hosting
unknown
Languages
44 languages
Where this comes from
Indonesia fields are carried on every model; unknown is an allowed value.

Industry Use Cases

No industry use case links this model.

Sources

  1. Cartesia | Sonic AI voice: real-time TTS API with emotion cartesia.ai https://cartesia.ai/sonic
  2. Text to Speech Leaderboard - Top AI Speech Models | Artificial Analysis artificialanalysis.ai https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-speech/leaderboard
  3. Sonic 3.6 - Cartesia Docs docs.cartesia.ai https://docs.cartesia.ai/build-with-cartesia/tts-models/latest

To cite this page: Project AURION, AI Use-Cases Research & Innovation, "Sonic 3.6", https://aurion.semai.id/models/cartesia-sonic-3-6/, records of October 2026.