CeVIO Is CeVIO AI too complex for beginners?

[snailgirl]

Hi everyone, I have been wanting to get into making my own songs and covers using vocal synths, and I kind of really want to get KAFU as it is one of my favourite voice banks. Recently I got some money for my birthday which I was considering using to get her and the CeVIO AI programme.
However, upon doing some more research, it seems that the general concensus is that CeVIO AI is more difficult to use then SynthV and that its not very beginner-friendly. How bad is it? I saw the user manual, and it looks pretty complex, as it has more then 150 pages in total. On the other hand, for my urban planning studies, I often need to read through large documents, so I feel like I should be able to get through that. I imagine I also don't have to read everything in order to get started, and most of the pages contain mostly images and a little bit of text, so its not as bad as it looks.
Am I underestimating how difficult it will be for me? This is my first time seriously using a vocal synth programme, not counting that one time I tried SynthV's Eleanor Forte. Should I still get KAFU?

 

[Twillby]

Personally I don't think CeVIO AI is significantly more complex than other engines. All synths have a learning curve. The reason people say it's harder than Synth V is that Synth V tends to provide pretty impressive vocals out of the box, so it's treated as the gold standard of vocal synths. A fairer comparison would be CeVIO AI vs Vocaloid 6, imo, and I think CeVIO AI's easier to use than V6. (I enjoy using it more at any rate.)

My suggestion would be to try out Techno Speech's other synth, Voisona, first. The editor and the Japanese voicebank of Chis-A are free, and while there are some differences between Voisona and CeVIO AI, I think experimenting with Voisona could give you an idea of what you'd be working with before you commit to buying Kafu.

That being said, in my experience, working with vocal synths is a lot more enjoyable when the voicebank is one you love, even if the engine's harder to use. I despise using Vocaloid 2 in general, but when I tried using my favorite Vocaloid's V2 version, I actually had fun. I'd probably just say "Go for it!" if it weren't for the fact I know it can be intimidating to buy a new synth without being able to try it first.

 

[snailgirl]

Personally I don't think CeVIO AI is significantly more complex than other engines. All synths have a learning curve. The reason people say it's harder than Synth V is that Synth V tends to provide pretty impressive vocals out of the box, so it's treated as the gold standard of vocal synths. A fairer comparison would be CeVIO AI vs Vocaloid 6, imo, and I think CeVIO AI's easier to use than V6. (I enjoy using it more at any rate.)

My suggestion would be to try out Techno Speech's other synth, Voisona, first. The editor and the Japanese voicebank of Chis-A are free, and while there are some differences between Voisona and CeVIO AI, I think experimenting with Voisona could give you an idea of what you'd be working with before you commit to buying Kafu.

That being said, in my experience, working with vocal synths is a lot more enjoyable when the voicebank is one you love, even if the engine's harder to use. I despise using Vocaloid 2 in general, but when I tried using my favorite Vocaloid's V2 version, I actually had fun. I'd probably just say "Go for it!" if it weren't for the fact I know it can be intimidating to buy a new synth without being able to try it first.

Ah I see, that makes a lot of sense. I figured that as well kind of. For my urban planning course I had to learn how to use QGIS, GIMP and Inkscape, and I read online people were saying that ARCGIS is easier, Adobe Illustrator is easier, etc. But I feel like these people were all talking about migrating from the programme they already knew to one of the programmes that I learned. I didn't find it as difficult as they said it would be. So maybe it is same with vocal synths that the one you learn first you kind of get used to and you will compare each new programme to that one and find it less intuitive to use, because your used to something else?

Thanks for the recommendation, I did read a bit more about Chis-A on this forum and I like how she sounds in the songs I have heard of her, definitely among one of my favourite vocal synths. That is a good idea indeed, I think I will experiment a bit with Voisona to kind of get a feel for how it works.

Yes, it would of course be cool to be able to say that I 'have this synth' and be able to display the box on my shelf, but that's not really the reason I want to get it. It's definitely a lot of money so I wanted to make sure that it wouldn't be too difficult for me to use beforehand.