Remote backend

The normal installation keeps Miso and audio.cpp together on one GPU machine. Miso also works with audio.cpp on a different computer, and never assumes a shared filesystem.

Audio goes to the server over HTTP and results come back the same way.

When this is useful

The GPU is in another computer, or in a GPU-capable NAS.

A CPU-only NAS is not a recommended inference host. It will work, in the sense that the full-cpu image works, but generation takes minutes per take.

Setting it up

Run Miso on its own and give it the address:

MISO_BACKEND_URL=http://gpu-box.local:8080 docker compose up -d miso

Remember that MISO_BACKEND_URL only seeds the address into an empty database. On an existing install, change it in Settings instead. See Configuration.

What it costs

Every source track crosses the network once per job.

A slow link shows up most on stem separation and voice conversion, because those send a whole song each way. Generation from a prompt sends nothing but text.

Miso caches staged uploads by asset and backend, so running two jobs on the same source does not upload it twice. A source that had to be converted for its sample rate skips that cache in both directions, because the cache cannot tell a converted copy from the original.

Why this works at all

The client never talks to audio.cpp. Only the Miso service does.

That is the rule the whole architecture is built on, and a remote backend is the clearest thing it buys. The browser only ever needs to reach Miso. See Architecture.

Security

audio.cpp’s management interface asks nobody for a password.

In the default stack this does not matter, because audio.cpp has no published port and nothing outside the compose network can reach it. Over a network it does matter. Do not expose an audio.cpp server to anything you do not control.