Just FYI : optimum Tempo and optimum Range is more like a suggestion from manufacturer, not the actual capacity of the VBs. So the tempo and singing range is kinda irrelevant in real scenario.
Unpopular Opinions
- Thread starter TheStarPalace
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I know, but MEIKO English starts acting up after 140-ish bpm. And the range for vocals is just incorrect, I use around G3 to G4 ish
D
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One of my hot takes-YOHIOLOID's english doesn't actually suck that bad. like why do you think that. Just edit his phoneme if it's a problem.
Another one-Miku V3 English is really good (not understandable, but good). I think I said this.
Another-kyu kurarin? overrated.
Another one-Miku V3 English is really good (not understandable, but good). I think I said this.
Another-kyu kurarin? overrated.
Tbh i don’t like gumi’s synthV at all. Voice and design. Because her voice sounds WAY too soft, and it just doesn’t sound like the gumi i know (I’m looking to you v4 and v3). And gumi’s design just looks like every other anime girl out there. I’m not kidding when i say that whenever i look up her synthV design, a random anime girl with green hair comes up, and it’s just not like her. Not only that, but her old design made it so that she ACTUALLY looked like a vocaloid, and not some…….anime girl.
Not sure how unpopular this is but here's one: I prefer Saros over any other Eclipsed Sounds vocal. I love Solaria and the rest, don't get me wrong, but I really like Saros. His voice can be both strong and soft, and I just really like his voice. Plus the way his design is intentionally androgynous is just really pretty. Asterian is a close second, though.
Wasn't sure whether to post this on this thread or as a status, but I wanted to discuss the infamous 'CryDie' again - namely, the remake by TaroTaro and Phi. Nothing serious, more of an observation I'm not sure enough people are touching on.
For the record, I think the remix is amazing for what it is - I'm not a musician, but I don't think turning an AI song into a human-produced one is an easy feat! But the more I listen to the remake, the more I realise that being remade by actual humans exposes how "AI" the original "production" was - for one, the instrumental sounds very disjointed, especially on the chorus. It's hard to explain, but my brain especially trips up when the beat and lyrics shift in timing on the chorus, because it triggers a musical version of the "uncanny valley" effect where I know something's wrong with the track, but I can't figure out why. Only in this case, it's no doubt because it was originally made with Suno, and it probably isn't very good at creating songs with time signature changes lol. Another issue is the lyrics, since ToraTora and Phi didn't change them at all - once you read the translation, you quickly realise it's also AI-generated slop, being super generic and having no deeper metaphors or emotions other than "I would cry if you died".
One of my favourite comments underneath the remake's video describes the song as being held together by "tape, staples and prayers", and that is exactly the vibe I get from it. That's not to say it's inherently a bad song because it was based on an AI song, but it was probably impossible for TaroTaro and Phi to completely remove the AI "stench" from the original track. (TaroTaro even admitted in the comments that the lingering AI influences were like a "ghost in the room".)
I guess my unpopular opinion is that even if you try to "de-AI" a song, you can't completely get rid of the AI slop influences. I think if TaroTaro and Phi had changed up CryDie too much to remove the AI influences, it would have become a completely different, unrecognisable song, which the fandom wouldn't have liked as much. Still, I appreciate the attempt a lot, especially since the original "producer" got so angry at the remake, they abused YouTube's copyright strike system to try and take down TaroTaro's channel. (It was successfully appealed at least, but no doubt that was the final straw for the original CryDie, and the "producer" in general for the fandom).
For the record, I think the remix is amazing for what it is - I'm not a musician, but I don't think turning an AI song into a human-produced one is an easy feat! But the more I listen to the remake, the more I realise that being remade by actual humans exposes how "AI" the original "production" was - for one, the instrumental sounds very disjointed, especially on the chorus. It's hard to explain, but my brain especially trips up when the beat and lyrics shift in timing on the chorus, because it triggers a musical version of the "uncanny valley" effect where I know something's wrong with the track, but I can't figure out why. Only in this case, it's no doubt because it was originally made with Suno, and it probably isn't very good at creating songs with time signature changes lol. Another issue is the lyrics, since ToraTora and Phi didn't change them at all - once you read the translation, you quickly realise it's also AI-generated slop, being super generic and having no deeper metaphors or emotions other than "I would cry if you died".
One of my favourite comments underneath the remake's video describes the song as being held together by "tape, staples and prayers", and that is exactly the vibe I get from it. That's not to say it's inherently a bad song because it was based on an AI song, but it was probably impossible for TaroTaro and Phi to completely remove the AI "stench" from the original track. (TaroTaro even admitted in the comments that the lingering AI influences were like a "ghost in the room".)
I guess my unpopular opinion is that even if you try to "de-AI" a song, you can't completely get rid of the AI slop influences. I think if TaroTaro and Phi had changed up CryDie too much to remove the AI influences, it would have become a completely different, unrecognisable song, which the fandom wouldn't have liked as much. Still, I appreciate the attempt a lot, especially since the original "producer" got so angry at the remake, they abused YouTube's copyright strike system to try and take down TaroTaro's channel. (It was successfully appealed at least, but no doubt that was the final straw for the original CryDie, and the "producer" in general for the fandom).
I don't get why people are like "finally a version I can listen to without guilt!" when it would not exist without AI because AI generated the composition, original arrangement, and possibly even lyrics. You're just using AI with extra steps.
this seems like a general problem with every fandom, but i don't like how sexualized all the characters (especially popular characters, like the cryptonloids + teto) often are in fan-works. even if i block some of the tags for specific content (again, when i have the option, since some modern sites people often post art to either don't have the abillity to remove works that have one tag when looking up another one, people don't know how to use a site's tagging system properly or they don't even a coherent tagging system in the first place), it feels like every other art is something supposed to be seen as sexy. sometimes i don't mind, but its annoying when i want to see safe for work art and every 3 results is a work thats probably not apporpriate to even describe on this site.
while this applies to pretty much every character, and its still annoying to see sexual content about kaito when i'm trying to just find art of him, its especially bad with female characters + it turns from mildly irritating to uncomfortable when its miku or rin. even if miku's age was reconned by crypton to just be a vague suggestion and she could be any age you want (an objectively good design choice and one i appreciate the majority of the time), the trend of everyone and their pet cats and dogs drawing rabbit hole miku in midly explicit situations made me uncomfortable as someone who couldn't see that song's miku as a seperate character and still has the old-fandom "canon" of her being 16 burned into my brain.
its even worse when everyone started arguing over character ages and going at eachothers throats when some expressed being uncomfortable with the trend while others liked it, and everyone on either opposing side were awful people who deserved to lose their house. it was really tiring and made me that much more into a hermit in the fandom space i grew up in and used to love ( ' - ~ -)
(its not a problem i expect everyone to have except myself on account how past experiences and modern thought has made me realize that i am very picky about nsfw / suggestive content in general. i don't ever want to see people harassed over a perfectly fine or even nuanced piece of art and i think no art should be censored by any outside force. but i think people should be able to self-regulate and select the tags for the art they make and see, and most social media makes it really hard to do that)
(i also apologize for the extremely long reply, and if i broke any rules please tell me ;;)
while this applies to pretty much every character, and its still annoying to see sexual content about kaito when i'm trying to just find art of him, its especially bad with female characters + it turns from mildly irritating to uncomfortable when its miku or rin. even if miku's age was reconned by crypton to just be a vague suggestion and she could be any age you want (an objectively good design choice and one i appreciate the majority of the time), the trend of everyone and their pet cats and dogs drawing rabbit hole miku in midly explicit situations made me uncomfortable as someone who couldn't see that song's miku as a seperate character and still has the old-fandom "canon" of her being 16 burned into my brain.
its even worse when everyone started arguing over character ages and going at eachothers throats when some expressed being uncomfortable with the trend while others liked it, and everyone on either opposing side were awful people who deserved to lose their house. it was really tiring and made me that much more into a hermit in the fandom space i grew up in and used to love ( ' - ~ -)
(its not a problem i expect everyone to have except myself on account how past experiences and modern thought has made me realize that i am very picky about nsfw / suggestive content in general. i don't ever want to see people harassed over a perfectly fine or even nuanced piece of art and i think no art should be censored by any outside force. but i think people should be able to self-regulate and select the tags for the art they make and see, and most social media makes it really hard to do that)
(i also apologize for the extremely long reply, and if i broke any rules please tell me ;;)
Honesty, I agree on this. I love Kaito to death, yet when I look for good fanart for him on, say, Pinterest, I get TONS of really suggestive art. I understand that there is a niche for this, and every fandom has this, but it's getting kind of ridiculous. It's even worse with Miku, Rin, and Teto. I understand that fanart can be whatever the artist wants it to be, and that they have no canon age, but the designs are still very much rooted in the tween/teens look. Hell, I'm like 90% sure that UTAU Teto's body is 16 IN CANON, yet I see a ton of art of her in her UTAU design that treats her like an adult woman due to her mental age, and sexualizes her like such.
yep :( the kaito fanart situation is so strange. i remember getting into the fandom in 2017 and everyone was still portraying kaito as a goofy goober commonly (more mean portrayals make him entirely a "joke" character. the joke being public nudity and/or making him a guy the neighbors would be alerted to if he moves in their neigborhood;;), so the shift around pjsk's launch and resulting extreme popularity turning his most common fan portrayals from a goofy goober of variying degrees of hilarity to a flavor of the month sexy anime boy from a gacha game was really strange to witness in real time. now instead of seeing him half naked for humor i'm seeing him half naked for sexy.
would like to tell you a fact about this statement though;
Teto had a "canon" age made when she was conceptulized and revealed on April Fools day several years back as a fake Vocaloid; 31 years old. Teto was created to explicitly troll Japanese fourm users, so the information given about her when she was created was explicitly meant to be ridiculous and weird. This isn't as noticable with Teto, but other Viperloids / UTAU's have more joking official information. Look at Ritsu, a 6 year old who's a guy dressed as a girl (transmisogynist "girl is actually a guy" jokes were at its peak around 2008) who has missile boobs.
Anyways, Teto was originally conceptulized as a Chimera; a word with several definitions, but in this case would probably be closest to a human with DNA from some sort of other creature or animal. Despite not appearing to be anything else but humanoid. This peice of info already basically tells you "we're just trolling some gullible internet users about a new Vocaloid", so her age was given as 31. Fans ended up taking this and running with the idea that she may be 31, but lies about being 15 (playing into the joke-y nature of her character while still grounding her to reality). This eventually morphed into the "Teto is 31. or 15. i don't know" information fans say today.
Like most other Vocal Synth companies who make characters, her age has been sidelined to be more of an approximate age rather than an official one. In the end, its up to the general user to portray her however you want. Unlike a character like Miku who was earnestly made to be 16 before Crypton changed it to be more of a "we conceptulized her as 16 but its really up to anyone" situation, I don't think either the fans or her creators ever really took Teto's age seriously.
I'm not a diehard teto fanatic, so i could be false about a lot of this, and its a pain in the ass looking up anything relating to specific earlier information about teto (the era from her creation in 2008 to her synth v bank's release in 2023). but its generally what i remember about her. i fact checked this information from this official archive of information about teto and this modern one, but i could've messed up since the machine translation i hastily chucked into firefox's automatic translation tool was extremely sloppy and strange + i'm tired.
Oh, sorry. I'm somewhat new to the Vocaloid fandom (about 1.5 years in this place), and I get tripped up quite a bit of Canon vs. Not Canon. Thanks!
no problem ( - v -)
i didn't know about vocaloids not being entirely computer generated and having real life people provide their voices for months after getting into the fandom so i totally get it. talking about the general point i do agree that characters who are commonly seen and sometimes even originally designed as clear teenagers (or even children in extreme examples) with a loophole to their age being used for nsfw so often without any changes to their design to make them look a different age and people having to keep aggressively asserting that loophole when people are put-off at it is a little strange at best. and it's just nauseating to have to see people fight every other day anytime shipping or explicit art with vocal synth characters comes up 
i didn't know about vocaloids not being entirely computer generated and having real life people provide their voices for months after getting into the fandom so i totally get it. talking about the general point i do agree that characters who are commonly seen and sometimes even originally designed as clear teenagers (or even children in extreme examples) with a loophole to their age being used for nsfw so often without any changes to their design to make them look a different age and people having to keep aggressively asserting that loophole when people are put-off at it is a little strange at best. and it's just nauseating to have to see people fight every other day anytime shipping or explicit art with vocal synth characters comes up 
To clarify this: Twindrill described Teto as mentally and physically 15 years old, but having existed for 31 years real-time because Chimeras' age more slowly. So for all intents and purposes, she's functionally 15. The joke was supposed to be 'She looks like a cute teenager, but she's actually OLD!' (shock, horror, etc.)
Not a lot of Western people know this, despite her resembling a teenager much more than she resembles someone in her 30s in the vast majority of official depictions. In Japan, her being 'basically 15' is widely understood, and her being technically 31 isn't taken into consideration outside of ageist jokes.
Of course, Twindrill said it's fine to see her as 31, if you want to.
nodding my head; thanks for clarification!
i wish one day we will have a genuine attempt at a vocal synth character that's in their 30's. especially a woman :,]
Somehow I feel like Teto's age thing is like the Mermaid Melody's mermaids' age thing but either reverted or pushed to eleventh
It's extremely hard to talk about this without being seen as some sort of problem, but...
I don't see the appeal of Saros's voice?
it's a forced falsetto voice that sounds very nasal and doesn't have much of a high or low range,
The texture of the breath is grating like sandpaper to the ears
and it sounds amateurish in all the song examples I've seen.
If Saros wasn't noted for being canonically LGBT and hispanic,
I don't think much people would care for this style of voice.
I suppose it's a niche, though.
Maybe it's part of the fact that I personally don't care much for SynthV
since every western voice sounds like a random person picked up off the street...
which I guess is the point.
As for the eastern side, well... there's a lot of idol voices.
I do like the tone of Gumi SV2, though, her english XLS has less of that "uncanny valley" effect from the SV1 version,
and she's way more versatile, doing the job of V4 Complete with just one database.
People really need to learn to mix her, though. A lot of people accidentally make her sound too dry or tinny.
I think the darker female voices are the strong part of SynthV,
As for Vocaloid6, not a single male voicebank has kept my attention for longer than a minute.
They all sound so similar other than Pouta who sounds alien, and Shiki, who is a faux younger voice???
I guess??? Male voices have never been Vocaloid's forte, but,
it's kinda sad how they still haven't managed to pick up the pace at all
in the past decade.
In a more controversial take,
I feel that the SP and NT Crypton voicebanks don't actually sound all that irredeemable.
The intense robotic-ness of it has its own odd charm in a way,
specially with the clacky high-attack consonants.
It's like someone is typing the lyrics out as someone is singing.
If they were just a quite bit less abrasive and processed sounding,
I think people wouldn't be so opposed to them.
They're quite like the old Kagamine's ACT1/ACT2 voices, choppy and artificial sounding,
but it's every Cryptonloid.
I don't see the appeal of Saros's voice?
it's a forced falsetto voice that sounds very nasal and doesn't have much of a high or low range,
The texture of the breath is grating like sandpaper to the ears
and it sounds amateurish in all the song examples I've seen.
If Saros wasn't noted for being canonically LGBT and hispanic,
I don't think much people would care for this style of voice.
I suppose it's a niche, though.
Maybe it's part of the fact that I personally don't care much for SynthV
since every western voice sounds like a random person picked up off the street...
which I guess is the point.
As for the eastern side, well... there's a lot of idol voices.
I do like the tone of Gumi SV2, though, her english XLS has less of that "uncanny valley" effect from the SV1 version,
and she's way more versatile, doing the job of V4 Complete with just one database.
People really need to learn to mix her, though. A lot of people accidentally make her sound too dry or tinny.
I think the darker female voices are the strong part of SynthV,
As for Vocaloid6, not a single male voicebank has kept my attention for longer than a minute.
They all sound so similar other than Pouta who sounds alien, and Shiki, who is a faux younger voice???
I guess??? Male voices have never been Vocaloid's forte, but,
it's kinda sad how they still haven't managed to pick up the pace at all
in the past decade.
In a more controversial take,
I feel that the SP and NT Crypton voicebanks don't actually sound all that irredeemable.
The intense robotic-ness of it has its own odd charm in a way,
specially with the clacky high-attack consonants.
It's like someone is typing the lyrics out as someone is singing.
If they were just a quite bit less abrasive and processed sounding,
I think people wouldn't be so opposed to them.
They're quite like the old Kagamine's ACT1/ACT2 voices, choppy and artificial sounding,
but it's every Cryptonloid.
Personally, I really like Saros, but I can see why others might not. I feel like his voice is very specific in use. Although, from what little I have heard of Saros, the breaths are really weird.
I went back today to refresh myself on the sources for this information, and I believe I can now give a more thorough and accurate history. The most important amendment is that, while Twindrill has officially acknowledged that many fans use the Chimera-aging explanation for Teto's young appearance in their Q&As, it actually originated from (and was popularised by) Kasane Territory, which wasn't made by the doujin circle. Teto's age being dramatically older than her appearance was part of the absurdism of a joke Twindrill themselves likely never thought they'd need to actually explain. If there was a time when they committed to one explanation as canon, it's not on their official site anymore. Upon rereading the statements I found, I don't think they offered it as more than one of several possible interpretations.
Part of the complexity of explaining the 'real Teto' is that she was built from fan-submitted ideas since the start, making it ambiguous where canon ends and fanon begins. Despite Twindrill's existence, the community around Teto has continued to shape her character to a more direct and specific degree than Miku. Another example is Teto's belt being her tail, which was originally just an artist error, with the 'tail' explanation being retroactively suggested by netizens. (Just something I learned while researching this haha.)
The Nicopedia for the Teto31 tag, as if to make things more confusing, claims her true age is 14. This article is obviously humorous in tone (to a certain definition of "humour"), it creepily sums up the Japanese NND fandom's impression of her as being a 'legal loli' AKA a character who is technically an adult but appears younger. This highlights why defining canon for Teto is so difficult. Nicopedia gives us an accurate insight into NND's culture around Teto's age, but the exact number cited is clearly part of a joke, and not supposed to be taken seriously. (Twindrill, to their credit, refused to simply reduce Teto's age despite complaints from otaku that it made her less appealing - although you could interpret that as just them committing to the bit.)
I still think it's useful to understand that Teto is portrayed as functionally a teenager by the majority of her original fanbase, and to know the reasons why that came to be. This gives context for why her being 31 is treated as a joke, and why most of her official and unofficial art + merch looks like a character in their teens.
To bring this long aside back on topic: I hope the new English speaking fandom's innocent, slightly-out-of-touch adoption of Teto being genuinely just 31 makes vocal synth companies a little more open to characters who are canonically adult women. I actually appreciate this change in culture greatly. So long as it doesn't give fans an unrealistic expectation of what a 31-year-old actually looks like, lol.
Guess I must be a fake Mermaid Melody fan because I have no idea what you're talking about. Aren't the main 3 princesses 14? They have to be adults in Aqua if they have kids now.