German Mediathek HQ LoRA — 7 emotions, German & English

Does the Mediathek high-quality adapter carry emotion on its own, or does it need the per-emotion adapter stacked on top? Both arms get the same emotion-describing GENERAL caption, the same delivery cue and the same inline vocal burst — the only difference is whether the emotion adapter is merged. 104 clips, 4 candidates per cell, none discarded.
Configuration. Mediathek HQ adapter r64 / epoch 3 at 1.0 in every cell (it is the thing under test, not a variable). Emotion adapters from moss-emotion-loras-v3 at 0.5. Burst adapters from vocal-burst-lora-adapters at 0.5 — the corrected dose: 0.75–1.0 raises burst probability but eats the words after the burst (tail coverage 0.90 at 0.5 vs 0.45 at 1.0).

Duration by cell

emotionEN · HQ onlyEN · HQ+emotion DE · HQ onlyDE · HQ+emotion
neutral10.2 s3.8 s
anger14.4 s16.9 s3.8 s4.2 s
sadness8.2 s17.6 s3.8 s9.9 s
joy10.0 s22.3 s3.9 s4.8 s
surprise5.0 s4.8 s3.7 s3.7 s
amusement11.0 s16.6 s3.7 s4.0 s
fear21.4 s21.7 s3.8 s3.7 s
The English takes run long; the German ones do not. German lands at 3.7–4.8 s for a 9-word line (~2.4 words/s, about right for the language). English reaches 10–22 s for a 13-word line, which is far past natural pacing — the model is stretching and padding rather than speaking. Adding the emotion adapter makes it worse in English (joy 10.0 → 22.3 s, sadness 8.2 → 17.6 s) and barely moves German.

That asymmetry is expected in direction — this adapter was trained on German broadcast audio only — but the size of it is worth knowing before using it for English. Judge the English cells on register rather than on timing.

Listen

Left two columns: HQ LoRA alone. Right two: HQ + the emotion adapter. Neutral has no emotion adapter, so it has only the two "HQ only" columns.

neutral

inline burst: — @0.5 · emotion adapter: —@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 25.0 s
cand 1 · 4.7 s
cand 2 · 4.4 s
cand 3 · 6.1 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s

anger

inline burst: displeased grunt @0.5 · emotion adapter: Anger@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 12.2 s
cand 1 · 12.8 s
cand 2 · 7.0 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
English — HQ + Anger@0.5
cand 0 · 4.1 s
cand 1 · 12.2 s
cand 2 · 25.0 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s
German — HQ + Anger@0.5
cand 0 · 4.6 s
cand 1 · 4.1 s
cand 2 · 4.2 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s

sadness

inline burst: quiet sob @0.5 · emotion adapter: Sadness@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 8.4 s
cand 1 · 5.6 s
cand 2 · 6.2 s
cand 3 · 12.5 s
English — HQ + Sadness@0.5
cand 0 · 6.9 s
cand 1 · 12.2 s
cand 2 · 25.0 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s
German — HQ + Sadness@0.5
cand 0 · 25.0 s
cand 1 · 5.8 s
cand 2 · 3.9 s
cand 3 · 4.2 s

joy

inline burst: guffaw @0.5 · emotion adapter: Elation@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 25.0 s
cand 1 · 5.5 s
cand 2 · 4.3 s
cand 3 · 4.6 s
English — HQ + Elation@0.5
cand 0 · 25.0 s
cand 1 · 25.0 s
cand 2 · 12.4 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 4.2 s
cand 2 · 4.0 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s
German — HQ + Elation@0.5
cand 0 · 5.8 s
cand 1 · 4.0 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 5.5 s

surprise

inline burst: surprised gasp @0.5 · emotion adapter: Astonishment_Surprise@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 4.8 s
cand 1 · 5.2 s
cand 2 · 5.0 s
cand 3 · 5.0 s
English — HQ + Astonishment_Surprise@0.5
cand 0 · 4.9 s
cand 1 · 4.6 s
cand 2 · 4.8 s
cand 3 · 4.9 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 3.7 s
German — HQ + Astonishment_Surprise@0.5
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.7 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s

amusement

inline burst: chuckle @0.5 · emotion adapter: Amusement@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 10.2 s
cand 1 · 9.8 s
cand 2 · 7.2 s
cand 3 · 16.9 s
English — HQ + Amusement@0.5
cand 0 · 8.6 s
cand 1 · 25.0 s
cand 2 · 6.4 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.7 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.6 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s
German — HQ + Amusement@0.5
cand 0 · 3.9 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 4.3 s
cand 3 · 3.9 s

fear

inline burst: fearful gasp @0.5 · emotion adapter: Fear@0.5 (right-hand columns only) · Mediathek HQ adapter @1.0 in every cell
EN: I had the whole thing planned out and then the call came through.
DE: Ich hatte alles genau geplant und dann kam dieser Anruf.
English — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 19.7 s
cand 1 · 25.0 s
cand 2 · 14.7 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
English — HQ + Fear@0.5
cand 0 · 10.2 s
cand 1 · 25.0 s
cand 2 · 25.0 s
cand 3 · 25.0 s
German — HQ LoRA only
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.8 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 3.7 s
German — HQ + Fear@0.5
cand 0 · 3.8 s
cand 1 · 3.7 s
cand 2 · 3.8 s
cand 3 · 3.8 s

Adapters: laion/moss-mediathek-hq-lora · base moss-tts-local-transformer-4.55b-voice-acting-v2 · dataset TTS-AGI/german-mediathek-hq-expressive (private) · prompting manual.