# AI voice cloning guide — clone your voice and make characters speak > Clone your voice in the eroq studio and give it to your characters — clean audio tips, Voice One vs Voice Turbo, and punctuation that shapes the delivery. Published 2026-09-08 · eroq.ai — canonical: https://eroq.ai/blog/ai-voice-cloning-guide A cloned voice is the difference between "an AI reads my script" and "I read my script, without booking a studio". It is also the fastest way to give a cast of characters voices that stay put across a hundred lines. This guide covers the practical side in the eroq [Voice tool](/studio/voice): what to record, how to upload it, which model to render with, and how to write text that the engine performs instead of recites. ## First, whose voice Yours, or one you have explicit permission to use. Cloning a real, identifiable person without consent — a celebrity, an ex, a streamer — is banned under the acceptable-use policy and enforced at the account level, which means the account goes, not just the clip. The platform is for adult fiction. Your narrator, your characters, your ad read: those are the jobs a clone is for. ## Record a sample the engine can learn from [Voice cloning](/glossary/voice-cloning) copies what it hears, including what you did not mean to give it. The tips below are honest about the engine rather than optimistic: - **A quiet room, no music, no reverb.** Soft furnishings absorb echo; a closet full of coats is a better booth than a kitchen. Background hum becomes part of the voice. - **One mic, one distance.** Keep your mouth at the same distance from the microphone for the whole take. Moving closer and further reads as two voices. - **Speak the way you want to be cloned.** If the clone is for calm narration, record calm narration. If it is for a character who bites, give it a few lines with bite. The engine clones a manner, not just a timbre. - **Vary the sentences.** Questions, statements, a list, an aside. Flat, repetitive text produces a flat clone. - **No processing.** Skip the compressor and the noise gate; the raw file is the better input. - **Trim the dead air.** Long silences at the start and end are wasted material. Upload the file from the Voice tool. The clone shows up next to the roster voices — Aria (warm, intimate, female) and Orion (low, calm, male) — and can be used by both text-to-speech models. ## Voice One or Voice Turbo Two models render speech, and both use the same roster and the same clones: - [Voice One](/models/eroq-voice-one) is the expressive flagship — 3 credits per 100 characters, MP3 out. Use it for anything with emotion in it: character lines, audiobook narration, a scene. - [Voice Turbo](/models/eroq-voice-turbo) is faster — 2 credits per 100 characters. Use it for drafts, long neutral reads, UI copy, and iterating on a script before the final pass on Voice One. Both are on the free tier, so the choice is about delivery and speed, not access. For a 1,000-character monologue, that is 30 credits on Voice One and 20 on Turbo — a difference small enough that the honest rule is "Turbo to iterate, One to ship". ## Write for the ear — punctuation is direction The voice engines read punctuation as delivery. There is no separate markup to learn; the script is the direction. A complete example, written to be performed: > You came back. I didn't think you would… not after last time. Sit down — no, really, sit. We have maybe ten minutes before they notice the door, and I am not spending them watching you stand there. So. Tell me what you saw. What each mark does: - **Periods** end a thought and drop the pitch. Short sentences read as decisive. - **Commas** are short breaths. Too many and the delivery gets sing-song; cut them where you would not pause aloud. - **Ellipses** trail off and slow down. One per paragraph, or the voice sounds unsure of everything. - **Dashes** interrupt — a change of mind mid-sentence, a self-correction. - **Question marks** lift the ending. Exclamation marks add energy; use them sparingly or everything shouts. - **One-word sentences** ("So.") land as a beat. They are the closest thing to a director's pause. Read the script aloud once before rendering. If you stumble, the engine will too, and 3 credits per 100 characters is cheap enough to fix the sentence and render again. ## Speed and expressiveness Two controls sit next to the model choice: - **Speed** — slow down for audiobook narration and anything the listener needs to follow; speed up for ad reads and messaging-style lines. - **Expressiveness** — low keeps the delivery even and close to the sample, right for documentary voice-over; high lets the engine lean into the punctuation, right for characters and drama. Adjust one at a time. If a clone stops sounding like you, bring expressiveness down first, then speed; the sample is the anchor and both controls pull away from it. ## Give the voice to a Character A [Character](/studio/characters) has a name, a persona, reference photos and a voice — and that voice can be your clone. Set it once and every line you generate for that character uses it; the Voice tool lists your cast, so you pick "Mara" rather than remembering which clone was hers. Pair it with the Text tool: write the scene with RP+, paste the line, render it in her voice, download the MP3 and lay it under the clip in your editor. [TTS for AI characters](/blog/tts-for-ai-characters) goes deeper on writing lines that sound like a person rather than a paragraph. Developers get the same voices over the API — `audio/speech` and `voices` (including cloning) are in the [speech docs](/docs/speech) — and the `eroq` CLI renders a line in one command: `eroq speech "Tell me what you saw." -v aria`. ## FAQ ### Can I clone someone else's voice if they said yes? Consent is the requirement, and it has to be real. Your own voice or a voice you have explicit permission to use is fine; a real person cloned without consent is an account-level ban. ### Does the clone work on both voice models? Yes. Voice One and Voice Turbo share the same roster and the same clones; the difference is expressiveness and price — 3 versus 2 credits per 100 characters. ### How do I make the voice pause? With punctuation. A period is a full stop, a comma a breath, an ellipsis a trail-off, a one-word sentence a beat. There is no separate pause tag. Ready to hear yourself? [Open the Voice tool](/studio/voice) — the first 50 credits are free, and both voice models are on the free tier.