These are some raw samples extracted directly from LUKA_SP's ddb. I think this should settle things a bit.
Dude this is going to drain my bank accountCrypton staff - talking session at Magical Mirai 2024 in Tokyo
8月31日(土)15:00~16:00
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Piapro Characters Super Pack
-SP databases are originals and compatible with others previous versions V3 and V4X, so is possible to make different combinations.
-Super Pack is more about the charm of singing together, with harmony and fun.It's a good starting point.
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-Growl and Cross Synthesis of Super Pack can blend those various expressions to make unique results in a song.
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-The demo songs were made to demonstrate the bright and cute side of the Piapro Characters, so that's why they sounded similar and had almost a different signature from the past, but it's up to the producers to make their own original songs with very different voice signatures.
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Miku NT ver.2
-Miku NT ver.2 early access will be available on October, with public release planned for first half of 2025.
-The early access version, also referred as beta version or pre-development version, will be free to download to owners of Miku NT.
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-The whole engine M9 of Miku NT ver.2 has changed significantly, with original database and new features, such as Piapro Studio Automatic Control (to help customize settings as pitch and vibrato) and the accent function that allows for under-expression.
-New parameters for adjusting the singing have been newly developed for the NT2 engine.
-NT2 will be also optimized for lower-end PC hardware compared to now, so startup will be faster and there will be less use of resources.
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-Development is going very well and Crypton staff is very satisfied with all the results. The following months will be for debugging and check any compatibility issues and hear all feedback from producers.
-The on-stage live demo of Miku NT2 was very impressive.
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Vocaloid 6 and future products
-Regarding Miku Vocaloid 6, is currently under development together with Yamaha, with a planned release in late-2024.
-Vocaloid 6 can use the original japanese database to make songs in different languages, not only english.
-There is a alpha-version of Miku Vocaloid 6, and there are some challenges compared to V4X and NT2, so Crypton and Yamaha are working together to offer a good result. It's about giving users choices. Some things have to be tuned on Yamaha's side, so there is a lot of back and forth. There will be a follow-up report about Vocaloid 6.
-Crypton staff also hinted that Meiko, Kaito, Rin, Len and Luka will receive updates in terms of NT2 and Vocaloid 6,that's why they left some empty boxes in the line-up image of the presentation.
-Super Pack, V3, V4X, NT2 and Vocaloid 6 are all so different and can be used together to create unique and beautiful songs.
Hiroyuki Itoh (CEO of Crypton Future Media, Inc.)
Wataru Sasaki (Hatsune Miku producer of Crypton Future Media, Inc.)
Kiyomitsu Koizumi (Team manager of SONICWIRE music business team)
I've seen people use the SP banks in Tunelab and in V4 and V6, so yeah. Aren't they just V4 banks?Some questions I have for people who own the Super Pack:
- Is an internet connection ALWAYS required for usage? It says so in the requirements, but I'm not sure if it actually does need it.
- Will it work outside of Piapro? Like, will it work on V4, V5, and V6?
I decided to listen to something using Luka SP to see if the drama was warranted. Good God It literally sounds like she gets replaced with Miku whenever she hits a certain pitch threshold.I mean, I appreciate the frequency analysis and all, but at the end of the day Luka SP literally sounds like Miku.
She has the same distinct accent as Saki Fujita in certain sounds like [ i ] and some [ k ] phonemes.
Side note but from those same sounds I recognized Saki Fujita's voice in Shikanoko Nokotan lol
My inkling is that they are genuinely struggling with Luka on their technology. The sole reason for that being how precisely the issues users are complaining about with Luka SP mirror the repeated issues of Luka NT within the context of her Project Sekai demos. This is purely speculation, but I have a strong gut feeling that the SP vocals were heavily derived from work on the NT projects. I think they know what Luka is supposed to sound like and want her to fill the niche she used to given how Luka v4x went and how she continues to sound in her lower range. But for whatever reason, these pitches keep falling through since they initially split from the Vocaloid engine. It is very interesting.Thanks Pico, that's really interesting!
This means that the samples must sound similar for one (or both) of these reasons:
1. Technical failure
Crypton is so used to working on Miku that they struggle to process samples from other styles of singing without Miku-ifying them. I don't have the technical expertise to speculate on how or why this could happen, or if it's even possible to do this accidentally; but it's a potential option.
OR
They couldn't get cross-synth to sound acceptable between drastically different timbres, so they homogenised everyone's sound. Something similar happened with Luka EVEC, which had less tonal variety than previous appends, ostensibly so they could be combined more smoothly.
2. Deliberate stylistic change
Miku is the most popular voicebank = we can make other voicebanks more popular by making them sound more like Miku ...or at least that's how I imagine Crypton's logic would go. While this initially sounds absurd, Vocaloid's primary Japanese demographic is men who prefer the youthful sound of anime highschoolers: 'cuter' higher pitched voices have been considered more desirable as far back as the creation of Sakine Meiko. It's not out of the question that Crypton would deliberately create 'Sakine' versions of their adult female voicebanks in an attempt at giving them more market appealto COWARDS.
My personal opinion I don't really care if they just stick to Japanese. japanese and english Miku just sounded so different from my ear, like a tonal shift from someone that knows two languages and sometimes feel like two different people. But if they could somehow make it consistant without relying on the inguinuity of Vocaloid producers sound design talent and make her sing bilingual, panlingual phrases seemlessly just with whatever they can bring up in just Miku V6 AI editor that would really be groundbreaking. Imagine Mongolian Miku to Khoisan Miku in single verses.Given the choice, I'd rather get into NT at some point, but if it doesn't support English, there's not much reason for me to do that....
1) VocaPigeon recently went to the Yamaha booth at Magical Mirai and they said they are planning on adding things over time to both V6 and VX-B, so that is something hopefuly. However, it does seem like NT2 is still Crypton's primary focus.I'd personally prefer the idea of going to NT because
1) I feel like any new features that might come out are more likely there. (Though this is debatable. Yamaha may well introduce new features in a V7...which makes no difference, I guess, since it's not V6. And honestly, it seems likely that new NT features will probably take some time after release to work properly. I hate saying it, but that's the track record so far. I keep hoping that CFM will overturn that expectation.)
2) It might just be a case of me not having gotten used to it yet, but I always found the V5 UI rather unintuitive, with singers being selected and parameters changed in odd places/buried under menus. And, AFAIK, V6 still basically has the same UI as V5. I'd love to hear what experiences anyone has had with the V6 UI, though.
3) The fact that vocal presets rely on onboard plugins that can't be controlled from the DAW at all/integrated with your own effects chains doesn't help, either.
If those issues arise, how do you fix them? Add an extra -r phoneme or something?V6's poor cross-lang model where most vocals can't pronounce a lot of core sounds (most notable ar/er/ir/or).