Voice & Conversational AI Engineering
Build, deploy, and optimize production-grade real-time voice AI agents
10 phases. 55 lessons. 55 labs. 4 projects. The full voice AI stack: streaming audio architecture, speech-to-text (ASR), LLM orchestration for voice, text-to-speech (TTS), turn-taking detection, interruption handling, telephony integration, latency optimization, and production evaluation. You build real voice agents that answer phone calls, schedule appointments, qualify leads, and conduct natural spoken conversations — and graduate with a portfolio that proves you can ship voice AI in productio
- Lessons: —
- Labs: —
- Projects: —
- Level: Beginner
Curriculum
- Voice AI Fundamentals & Architecture — Voice agent architectures (chained, half-cascade, native audio), latency budgets, cost economics, audio fundamentals, why voice AI differs from text AI
- Audio Processing & Streaming — Digital audio, PCM/μ-law/Opus formats, resampling, chunking with 20ms frames, buffering strategies, noise suppression, audio visualization, WebSocket audio streaming
- Speech-to-Text (ASR) — ASR architectures (CTC, RNN-T, attention), streaming vs batch, Deepgram Nova-3, AssemblyAI Universal-2, Whisper, WER evaluation, custom vocabulary, accent handling, provider selection
- Text-to-Speech (TTS) — TTS architectures (autoregressive, diffusion, flow-matching), streaming TTS, ElevenLabs, Cartesia, PlayHT, OpenAI TTS, Hume AI, voice cloning, MOS evaluation, multilingual TTS
- LLM Orchestration for Voice — Model selection for voice, streaming LLM output, system prompt design for spoken conversation, context window management, tool/function calling during calls, RAG in voice agents, guardrails, cost optimization
- Turn-Taking & Conversation Management — VAD (Silero, WebRTC, semantic), endpointing (silence-based vs semantic), interruption handling (barge-in), backchanneling, conversation flow design, pacing and talk ratio, escalation to human
- Real-Time Transport & Telephony — WebRTC architecture, WebSocket audio streaming, OpenAI Realtime API, Twilio Media Streams, SIP/PSTN fundamentals, phone number provisioning, STIR-SHAKEN, A2P 10DLC compliance, Twilio/Telnyx/Vonage comparison
- Voice Agent Frameworks — Pipecat (frame-based pipelines), LiveKit Agents (WebRTC rooms), OpenAI Realtime API (native speech-to-speech), Vapi (BYO stack), Retell AI (managed telephony), Bland AI (high-volume outbound), framework selection
- Evaluation, Testing & Production — Latency metrics (TTFA, P50/P95/P99), ASR/TTS quality metrics, conversation quality (WPM, talk ratio, task completion), testing frameworks (Hamming, Cekura), post-call analytics, automated testing, production deployment, scaling, monitoring, fallback strategies, security
- Advanced Topics & Capstone — Native audio models (gpt-realtime-2, Nova Sonic, Moshi), multimodal voice agents, voice cloning, real-time translation, emotional AI (Hume EVI), voice biometrics, cost optimization at scale, career and portfolio
Skills You Will Learn
- Voice AI
- ASR/TTS
- WebRTC
- Telephony
- Turn-Taking
- Latency Optimization
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