Unpopular Opinions

One thing I never understood is why ppl claim that there is no diversity among English producers. If we compare currently popular Eng and Jp producers

I took the popular ones from a viewcount chart with this year's releases. We will check how many producers we will need until the first genre listed on vocadb is the same.
Those with no tags listed will be skipped and not counted

Let's start with Eng
GHOST: experimental
R.I.P: alternative rock
OSEAN: breakbeat
Louie Zong: bossa nova
KIRA: electropop
Mcki Robyns-P: electronic
CircusP: EDM
Flanger Moose: electro-house
Dante: electro swing
madotspooki: experimental rock
Aphelia: metal
EmpathP: ballad
Skirmish: alternative dance
chanterelle: synthpop
Egg Tan: pop
Cereal Experiements: rock
Zyla Zo: experimental

Now let's go to Jp
Pinocchio-P: electropop
Kanaria: digital rock
DECO*27: pop rock
Mitchie M: dance-pop
Kairiki Bear: rock
WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY: chiptune
syudou: pop
Azari: EDM
Kai: electropop

Total amount of Eng producers: 17
Total amount of Jp producers: 9

I really had to go down to super obscure Eng producers to finally find a double

Granata said:

One thing I never understood is why ppl claim that there is no diversity among English producers. If we compare currently popular Eng and Jp producers

I took the popular ones from a viewcount chart with this year's releases. We will check how many producers we will need until the first genre listed on vocadb is the same.
Those with no tags listed will be skipped and not counted

Let's start with Eng
GHOST: experimental
R.I.P: alternative rock
OSEAN: breakbeat
Louie Zong: bossa nova
KIRA: electropop
Mcki Robyns-P: electronic
CircusP: EDM
Flanger Moose: electro-house
Dante: electro swing
madotspooki: experimental rock
Aphelia: metal
EmpathP: ballad
Skirmish: alternative dance
chanterelle: synthpop
Egg Tan: pop
Cereal Experiements: rock
Zyla Zo: experimental

Now let's go to Jp
Pinocchio-P: electropop
Kanaria: digital rock
DECO*27: pop rock
Mitchie M: dance-pop
Kairiki Bear: rock
WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY: chiptune
syudou: pop
Azari: EDM
Kai: electropop

Total amount of Eng producers: 17
Total amount of Jp producers: 9

I really had to go down to super obscure Eng producers to finally find a double

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I agree that there’s a better variety of English producers than people give credit for, but I don’t think it’s fair to include such a broad list of English producers and then summarize Japanese producers based on a handful of popular producers and a few more obscure ones. Of course there’s going to be more overlap with Japanese producers. There’s far more of them. I think it’s best to elevate and support Western producers for their own merits, rather than putting one side of the scene down to uplift the other.

That said, thank you for that list, because my electro swing-loving ass is gonna go check out Dante now.

As I said I used a viewcount chart and went for producers as long as their is an overlap. Also to be fair if Ferry wouldn't be on hiatus the Eng list would've been notably shorter

my opinion on genres is basically: it really doesnt matter in the end. i dont really care if some fall within the same category or different ones, i just think its great to see so many artists in this community all doing their thing. that being said i think its quite notable that a lot of the above list is basically some kind of additional label to an already general genre which is "electronic". edm, chiptune, electropop, digital rock, electro swing, electro-house ..... they are all their own repspective genres but... arent they all in theory just branching off the more general 'electronic" genre anyways?

again, this isnt a bad thing to me, i really couldnt care less if everyone did similar genres or not but i listen to a lot of obscure stuff with even more obscure genre names so i think often about it lol. some artists dont always 100% fit into them anyways so i think its undeniable that many vocaloid producers lean on the general electronic category and for many to just see it as that, and i can see what people mean when they say things sound similar or very samey in terms of genre. they are, to some degree, producing within similar genres (but many have their own twist or influence that allow them to also identify as the more specific genres like "electro swing" or whatever else).

i love them all but i also have nooo idea the different between "edm" and "electro-house" lol, im sure im not alone on that... its just "electronic" to me, and thats also ok. i think they all unique artists regardless of how i label them.

Granata said:

One thing I never understood is why ppl claim that there is no diversity among English producers. If we compare currently popular Eng and Jp producers

I took the popular ones from a viewcount chart with this year's releases. We will check how many producers we will need until the first genre listed on vocadb is the same.
Those with no tags listed will be skipped and not counted

Let's start with Eng
GHOST: experimental
R.I.P: alternative rock
OSEAN: breakbeat
Louie Zong: bossa nova
KIRA: electropop
Mcki Robyns-P: electronic
CircusP: EDM
Flanger Moose: electro-house
Dante: electro swing
madotspooki: experimental rock
Aphelia: metal
EmpathP: ballad
Skirmish: alternative dance
chanterelle: synthpop
Egg Tan: pop
Cereal Experiements: rock
Zyla Zo: experimental

Now let's go to Jp
Pinocchio-P: electropop
Kanaria: digital rock
DECO*27: pop rock
Mitchie M: dance-pop
Kairiki Bear: rock
WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY: chiptune
syudou: pop
Azari: EDM
Kai: electropop

Total amount of Eng producers: 17
Total amount of Jp producers: 9

I really had to go down to super obscure Eng producers to finally find a double

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ODDEEO: New wave/Synthwave

If Sonika V4, Anri (and Chuchu and Yuecheng if they didn't release bc of v5 coming) were released for v5, it wouldn't have flopped so hard bc it would have had a larger selection of voices + new characters, which would have attracted more people towards it

aru ii said:

If Sonika V4, Anri (and Chuchu and Yuecheng if they didn't release bc of v5 coming) were released for v5, it wouldn't have flopped so hard bc it would have had a larger selection of voices + new characters, which would have attracted more people towards it

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I've gotta disagree here, on the basis that V5 isn't and never was a flop. With more and more options and with the increase in license cost, it's not as attractive an option to developers, especially with Yamaha working more on private projects like Vocaloid AI. But V5 has seen tremendous success both with its Japanese audience, and with underground producers in the West. Would it have been more in the public or fandom eye? Sure. But there's no flop that V5 could've been saved from, because such a flop never happened in the first place.

I suppose that's my unpopular opinion: I get people being sad that V5 didn't see the boom of VBs and fandom-centric content that V3/4 did, and I for one would forfeit all of my mortal possessions to see greater development for it. But it's also tiring hearing people talking about how hard it flopped and how big a failure it was when, financially and usage-wise, it's every bit as successful as its predecessors. It's a very Western Fandom-Centric mindset, and while I don't begrudge people for not realizing how well it's done outside of the Western fandom, calling it a failure because it didn't take our hand and spoon-feed us new content like the previous two is just incorrect.

V5 also retains one of the widest selections of VBs among commercial editors; even without V2 support, you've got dozens and dozens of V3s-V5s to choose from. Are some of them dated by now? Sure. But no one's scrapping for options there.

I think the thought comes mostly from the lack of new banks made for it. Which I agree is a real shame. I'm still waiting to see if the Vsinger updates are ever gonna come out or not, and if not, then V5 only got like 3 third party characters... So on that front of VB releases alone, it definitely looks like a flop. More damning in a casual fan's eye because Crypton moved to their own platform, I think. Although yeah, in terms of actual usage it's been perfectly fine.

Leon said:

I think the thought comes mostly from the lack of new banks made for it. Which I agree is a real shame. I'm still waiting to see if the Vsinger updates are ever gonna come out or not, and if not, then V5 only got like 3 third party characters... So on that front of VB releases alone, it definitely looks like a flop. More damning in a casual
VVN fan's eye because Crypton moved to their own platform, I think. Although yeah, in terms of actual usage it's been perfectly fine.

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Yeah, that’s understandable, and I get the mindset. What bothers me is just that it’s still taken as 100% Absolute Fact by so many four years later. Sorry if I came across as harsh!! It’s a personal annoyance of mine

Just to add to the point that's being made:

I do recognize that it's more of a circumstantial evidence on my part, but I do believe that V5 actually played a big role in Flower's late-bloom popularity, a lot of the tuning trends and styles associated with Flower could have not been achieved on the older iterations of the editor.

You can see that close to V5's release people have started to take slight liking to her as more experimental vb in their production, and it's only with V5 that I think, it allowed producers to take her in that direction fully. It's only after V5 when the amount of songs featuring her significantly increased, and that's something I think gets very undermined in the whole "V5 is a flop" debate when Flower is actually seen as fairly popular vocaloid now.

Rylitah said:

I think it's a case of speaking from personal experiences rather than knowing what's actually going on at large, which makes sense.

For example, the vitriol for V5 is really strong in Western communities, so as people who are part of that community and has easy access to what the discussions are, it seems like everyone hates V5 and doesn't use it and it's a total failure.

But if you look at new JP songs and up-and-rising producers, a ton of them use V5. You can hear V5 features (vocal fry is the easiest tell, a lot of people use it and it usually sounds the same when they do) in a bunch of new songs, and then you remember that Vocaloid is still a strong name and V5 is the most accessible editor, so of course newer producers are just going to buy that instead of going out of their way to buy V4 or older secondhand. Most people are just gonna buy what's right in front of them, naturally.

And when you take into account that the Japanese producer scene is incredibly strong and growing by the day... it's not hard to come to the conclusion that V5 actually is doing pretty well, regardless of what Yamaha is or isn't doing with it. (Small tangent, but new vocals wouldn't "save" it when most people don't care about new releases anyway.)

Western vocal synth community has always made very bold, heated claims. And when surrounded by like-minded people, those claims get reinforced and then you start to think that everyone everywhere thinks the same way. I'm not trying to say that none of these claims are valid, of course, but in this particular case I think it's just a lot of "I hate V5, my friends hate V5, I don't see anybody around me use V5, therefore nobody uses V5 and it's a total flop."

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I'm old fashioned so I use the only accessible form of V4 left, Piapro Studio xD

V5 goes back to Yamaha's original intention with Vocaloid way back in V1, in that it's aimed at more professional producers rather than hobbyists like V2 to V4 were. Considering how the Western fandom originally sprung up from masses of fan content, that decision has alienated them from Yamaha for ages. While Vocaloid has always had a deep learning curve, it still felt a bit more accommodating to noobs back in the V2 era because of the prominence of VBs geared towards otaku. With V5, the less-than-appealing (to fandom eyes) avatars of the V5 starter banks combined with the lack of third party support seems to have really put the Western fandom off V5 - there's no new characters to create fan stuff over, and Yamaha doesn't create first party banks that are aimed towards otaku.

The Japanese fandom doesn't seem too fussed about the aspects of Vocaloid that endeared it to the West these days (probably because of how high the bar is for song and video production), but I could be wrong, since I don't speak or read Japanese.

I think that's a good point ^

It probably doesn't help that V5 is pretty expensive since they never did release a standalone without the standards. When Vocaloid was first really hitting its stride during V2, getting the editor along with the voice probably made people with casual interest more tempted to try it out. I was always dubious that V3's move to separate editors would be cheaper, and I still stand by it at the very least for new people interested in the software. Now unless they like one of the standards, the only editor they can buy is already quite pricy on its own

Also someone on Twitter was saying that the English site's V5 trial doesn't work anymore, and the support request they put in only got an answer that they could purchase the software and then refund it if they didn't want it or something. I hadn't realized V5 had a trial. Maybe it was V4 and I'm misremembering? But this was recent...

Anywayyy, this to say -- I think V5 has a lot of cool features and Vocaloid itself is still perfectly fine and sees plenty of use. But I understand why a lot of casual fans starting in vocalsynth turn to more affordable and accesible options like SynthV Lite

Blue Of Mind said:

V5 goes back to Yamaha's original intention with Vocaloid way back in V1, in that it's aimed at more professional producers rather than hobbyists like V2 to V4 were. Considering how the Western fandom originally sprung up from masses of fan content, that decision has alienated them from Yamaha for ages. While Vocaloid has always had a deep learning curve, it still felt a bit more accommodating to noobs back in the V2 era because of the prominence of VBs geared towards otaku. With V5, the less-than-appealing (to fandom eyes) avatars of the V5 starter banks combined with the lack of third party support seems to have really put the Western fandom off V5 - there's no new characters to create fan stuff over, and Yamaha doesn't create first party banks that are aimed towards otaku.

The Japanese fandom doesn't seem too fussed about the aspects of Vocaloid that endeared it to the West these days (probably because of how high the bar is for song and video production), but I could be wrong, since I don't speak or read Japanese.

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You're not really wrong in what you say! Just generally bouncing off of what's being said here to go on a tangent and to add to it

I'd say there are two sides to the western community in today's age, which is userbase invested in the technical side of voice synths and consumer base invested in the character aspect, but it'd be disingenuous to say there are no overlaps, I'd say more accurate description is that it's a spectrum and those are the opposite ends of it, but I digress.

Point is that I think this userbase views V5 as a failure due to the lack of new content, because we like to see advancements and messing with new technology and to see our options expand on. The decisions Yamaha's made attributed to Vocaloid not being viewed as attractive to develop for as in the past, which as you said, alienated the already existing western userbase.

But on the other hand you have the western consumer base, who's arguably bigger than the userbase mentioned above, who don't have any idea about the vitriol V5 is receiving from them, and this is where the attitudes become more similar to JP producers and where the two go hand in hand, the western consumer base has their select few favorites and are interested in consuming content exclusively featuring them, you'll also notice that it's mostly this crowd that is vocal about "how they should just stop making new voicebanks and focus on updating the existing ones" while the JP producers are more conservative in who they use, and who they use usually aligns with the western consumer base's favorites.

And it's this more conservative mindset of the JP producers that didn't allow for creation of such hateful environment towards V5 as here, they already have their go-to's, they're compatible with V5, so they stick with them.

So this is just expanding on @Rylitah 's point about most people not caring about new releases. This community is ultimately very niche and very much in it's own bubble.

Leon said:

Also someone on Twitter was saying that the English site's V5 trial doesn't work anymore, and the support request they put in only got an answer that they could purchase the software and then refund it if they didn't want it or something. I hadn't realized V5 had a trial. Maybe it was V4 and I'm misremembering? But this was recent...

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I know what you're referring to and this is untrue, you can still get the V5 trial, the reason you don't know about it is because it was advertised for the japanese community for a japanese exclusive contest where one of the awards was V5 editor, the person had trouble running the editor and it later turned out it's because it needs japanese locale, the person was just wrong about the trial not working, and they just added they can get a refund if they're unhappy with the editor because the person in question mentioned they wanted to use the trial because they were considering purchasing it to them.

Legally Pipp Petals said:

I know what you're referring to and this is untrue, you can still get the V5 trial, the reason you don't know about it is because it was advertised for the japanese community for a japanese exclusive contest where one of the awards was V5 editor, the person had trouble running the editor and it later turned out it's because it needs japanese locale, the person was just wrong about the trial not working, and they just added they can get a refund if they're unhappy with the editor because the person in question mentioned they wanted to use the trial because they were considering purchasing it to them.

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I see! Thanks for the info! That's kind of a bummer that it needed a JP locale, but if it was a JP exclusive contest, then that makes sense

Legally Pipp Petals said:

I know what you're referring to and this is untrue, you can still get the V5 trial, the reason you don't know about it is because it was advertised for the japanese community for a japanese exclusive contest where one of the awards was V5 editor, the person had trouble running the editor and it later turned out it's because it needs japanese locale, the person was just wrong about the trial not working, and they just added they can get a refund if they're unhappy with the editor because the person in question mentioned they wanted to use the trial because they were considering purchasing it to them.

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The person who made that thread, iirc, even came back and said "Whoops, misunderstood, it DOES work on English systems," but it got buried, so it's easy to see how that info got lost! (And given how many people in the Western fandom use Utau, the Japanese locale thing is hardly even an issue I think. I was honestly expecting there to be some other major setback, but nope! Just the locale. Phew!) I do wish V5 came with a Lite option, that would definitely help make it more immediately accessible, but I don't think the cost is unjustified at all for what you get.

Kinda piggybacking on this topic, I'll share another opinion: it's easy to make SynthV or Vocaloid look like the more logical and enviable option if you cherry-pick in either direction, but comparing each on the whole overall, I'd say they're neck-and-neck in terms of what they offer, what you can get out of them, pros, cons, etc. (This also applies to Utau/CeVIO/Ace, but given SVS vs. Vocaloid is such a huge point of contention in the Western fandom I'll focus on those two.) I know as of late a lot of what I say comes across as "Ew, SynthV, Vocaloid Master Race," but honestly I think they're both excellent programs that offer a plethora of options to suit a wiiiiide range of tastes. I'm just sick of seeing the two pitted as EVIL BIG CORP YAMAHA VOCALOID vs. WHOLESOME ALTRUISTIC MORALLY CORRECT TECHNICALLY SUPERIOR SYNTHV. It's just a matter of which one is best for what you, personally, prefer.

(Apologies if this isn't entirely coherent, I'm at work juggling fifteen jobs between typing this. )

Here's sort of a related question to whom V5 is targeted at: who do we think the various V5 vocal modes/plugins are directed toward? As well as the ability to have a wav file for a backing instrumental?

The various vocal plugins are sort of a magic secret sauce, being able to wildly transform the voice in different ways easily, if you use the presets. But IMO, one of their weaknesses is that (as far as I know) you can't automate them from your DAW (i.e., control V5's internal reverb/delay/EQ plugins from inside your DAW). Similarly, being able to put an instrumental wav into V5 strikes me as being something that would appeal to someone who didn't have a DAW, which I assume most pro musicians would have. So I've assumed that these features, at least, were more geared toward making V5 accessible to more amateur musicians.

(For whatever insight it adds, SynthV lets you add a backing wav, too. I've similarly assumed that was meant to appeal to folks without DAWs, or else to provide a one-stop shop for musicians who focus on covers.)

On the other hand, though, the various vocal presets make transforming the voice easy, and pro musicians who don't want to get into the minutiae of controlling their Vocaloid would probably find those presets attractive. They might also be more the ones who wouldn't use V5 as a plugin, preferring to render a vocal wav and mix that in their DAW. To my mind, that doesn't work so well for things like reverb, where a dry signal would be preferred, but maybe that's not the case for everyone. I guess I could see the thinking that you're well enough off to add effects to the voice and just render it...but that wouldn't work so well if you wanted to use a delay or something as an effect (during a drop or something).

So, what do you think? Are these features made to broaden V5 to both amateurs and professionals? Is it common for pros to add effects to their vocals before rendering them? I've thought about this occasionally, so I'm just sort of curious, as well as curious about how people tend to work.

wow, that's a big discussion i've started