AWS outlines Sonic hosting
Managed and self-managed deployment have different prerequisites.
The AWS guide covers Sonic; Ink uses Cartesia’s API. From SageMaker Studio or a notebook instance, use an execution role with AmazonSageMakerFullAccess, a supported instance and sufficient quota. Already subscribed accounts need no new subscription; Marketplace permissions apply when subscribing. Subscription grants a region-specific model-package identifier, not running resources. Create the model and endpoint; await InService before invocation. For self-managed EC2 hosting, request the container image and licensing terms from Cartesia. Your team handles provisioning, scaling, patching and monitoring.
Cartesia’s overview separates the components of a voice conversation. Sonic generates speech from text, while Ink transcribes incoming speech and detects conversational turns. Managed Agents combines Ink, a language model chosen by the developer, and Sonic. That platform handles turn-taking, tools and telephony. For developers choosing what to assemble themselves, the managed platform therefore takes on conversation orchestration alongside the underlying speech models.
The Sonic documentation also distinguishes update policies. The sonic-3.6 API identifier follows the latest stable snapshot; dated snapshots never change after release. The preview identifier is for testing, can change without notice and is not intended for production. For language settings, supply language or locale, never both. Text normalization normally follows that choice, but a separate normalization setting can select different conventions for dates, times and numbers.