[magnus-dev-melin]

/v1/tasks/run took voice_ref only as a server-local path, so a client sending a reference voice had to store it on the server first, for example the target speaker of a voice conversion, which may be a person's recording that shouldn't be written to disk. /v1/audio/speech already accepts it inline. Task requests now take the same shapes: a path string (unchanged), {"type": "path", "path": "..."}, or {"type": "base64", "data": "..."} with a WAV or data:audio/wav;base64,... URI of at most 5 MiB, the same limit /v1/audio/speech uses. Invalid values are request errors (HTTP 400). Previously an object voice_ref failed with "json value is not a string".

The change is in the shared request parser (app/cli/request.cpp), so CLI request files and the batch and stream endpoints accept it too; both server runtimes use that parser. Only voice_ref parsing changes: path requests behave as before. Docs in app/server/api.md.

Validation (macOS, M1 Max, Metal, chatterbox_q8_0):

• cmake -S . -B build/pr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENGINE_BUILD_EXTENDED_TESTS=ON -DAUDIOCPP_MODELS=chatterbox -DGGML_METAL=ON, then cli_request_options_test: the new test_request_json_voice_ref (path string, path object, inline base64, data URI, null, and rejections of a non-string/non-object, unknown or missing type, missing path/data, invalid base64, an empty payload and an over-limit payload) passes; on main it aborts with "json value is not a string".
• Legacy server (audiocpp_server --config … --backend metal) with chatterbox_q8_0 as "task": "vc": /v1/tasks/run with audio_base64 plus voice_ref as inline base64, data URI, path object and path string all returned HTTP 200 and a 4.7 s 24 kHz WAV; {"type": "url"} and invalid base64 returned HTTP 400 with the messages above.

[0xShug0]

@magnus-dev-melin Thanks for the PR! Merged.

One follow-up item: The PR description and API docs say invalid voice_ref values return HTTP 400. I sent valid Base64 that decoded to non-WAV bytes and got HTTP 500. Please return 400 for this case (preferred) or update the docs to reflect the current behavior.

[magnus-dev-melin]

Thanks for merging, and good catch. Fixed in #1255: valid Base64 that isn't a WAV now returns HTTP 400 ("voice_ref base64 data is not a readable WAV (…)"), with a unit test that aborts on main, and the docs say exactly which voice_ref problems return 400.