General Discussion Thread

[peaches2217]

That's what vocaloid always was though, don't get the wrong idea.

Still, I feel like they previously at least acknowledged the number of hobbyists. I apologize. I might have ranted a bit much.

 

[Exemplar]

Another few issues that happened with V5 is pricing and much heavier system requirements.

Many people thought charging that much for an slightly upgraded Cyber Diva and Cyber Songman was a bit much. The base v5 pricing along with how much horsepower a rig needed compared to V4 put it out of the hands many producers in mainland China (which happened to also play a role with SynthV being pretty quickly picked up by chinese users and the company behind Stardust).

 

[uncreepy]

Personally, I feel it's hard to compare Japanese DTMers to hobbyist Western Vocaloid producers. They sell their music at conventions and have doujin circles. I think that if we talk about "professional musicians" compared to hobbyist ones, which type are we talking about?

Saying hobbyist in terms of Western seems like someone who just does it for fun and has no fame. But if you say it in terms of Japanese, those people can have quite the following even if it is their side gig and not their day job.

Here, if we think of professionals, I think the lowest tier of professional musician would be like... a Soundcloud rapper or something. I'm not sure what we would think of as a low ranking professional in Japan.

That's just my two cents.

 

[Exemplar]

@uncreepy Yes, but not quite. The big difference is that there is a clear path to where a bedroom producer can move up in Japan's music biz versus the western biz. Vocaloid did play a role with injecting actual meritocracy into pop over there. With the pop scene in the west it's about how much cash you can throw at the radio (a.k.a. payola which is unfortunately still alive and well) and on promo. In the west it would be fair to say is that many indie folks claim to have "meritocracy" on their side when they're successful (link). Not to say that the west can't produce great artists but a lot of crap seems to sneak in there or that system that brings in said crap can be used in a way to keep artists at the top still in the top with various loopholes and shady accounting tricks.


That and the music biz over there is much more open to experimentation when it comes to both singing synths and regular human made voices. There was and still is snobbery about voices here. Auto tune and pitch correction is associated with trickery even though many artists like Kesha, Kanye and TPain were quite open about it (ironically leveled by folks in the biz who would be willing to throw wads of cash to attempt to make artists/bands popular). Deep/machine learning tech being incorporated into singing synths that's being used to create significantly clearer & coherent english voices now and over the next few years could possibly panic those in the music biz. Access to singers, producers, promoters, promotional channels, venues, media outlets & recording studios has been used like a commodities market by them. If a western vocaloid producer with that new tech over the next year creates a viral hit in their bedroom that lands in the top 20, there would be an absolute panic by music biz bigwigs. Heck, they still are trying to get over the migraines Old Town Road gave them by topping both hip hop and country charts thus messing up their summer plans hahaha. It would totally f*** up the narrative many pushed of something creative made artificially equaling dishonesty and with underhanded trickery even though it's well known how it was made with readily available tools.

 

[___]

Still, I feel like they previously at least acknowledged the number of hobbyists. I apologize. I might have ranted a bit much.

Still, is it really wrong of Yamaha to venture out and try to reach the target audience Vocaloid was meant for all along? Whether they succeeded or not is another thing.

And as @uncreepy said, western hobbyist is different from japanese hobbyist and Vocaloid's target audience are japanese people. Besides the few companies that produce engloids, we don't get much of a say in Vocaloid-related things. So japanese hobbyist might still have the resources for V5 despite the upgrade ( but I don't speak of this as a fact ).

And you don't need to apologize, everything is okay ^^

 

[Wario94]

(read many comments that said that the V5 is a failure)
Me: Welp, time to go wait to V6 comes out!

 

[mobius017]

With V5, they tried going back to the original concept of Vocaloid: a serious program for professional musicians.

I'm curious as to why you think this. I'm not saying it's incorrect, I'm just curious. My impression of Vocaloid 5 was that, for the most part, it wasn't a huge upgrade from V4--it just includes a bunch of presets for making the voices sound different/use different breath or vibrato effects. I guess that point's debatable, since I don't have insight into what the program actually does--is it really just changing the baseline for the existing parameters (BRE, CLE, etc.) behind the scenes to create different effects, or is it some other kind of processing that exists in addition to those things? To my way of thinking, V5 and its presets made Vocaloid more approachable by novice users, which sounds like the opposite of a professional user to me. Though, I suppose you could argue against that point, too--if Yamaha is targeting "professional musicians," that doesn't necessarily equate to "professional Vocaloid users." Someone who makes music professionally but isn't completely dedicated to using Vocaloids in that music might be more interested in getting quick, easy results than spending time tweaking Vocaloid parameters until they sound just right, the way a bedroom Vocaloid producer might.

I guess I'd break down the traits of Vocaloid 5 respective to for whom it's intended like this, for a start:

Professional Musician	Hobbyist/Non-Professional Musician
High price tag	Voice presets, pre-made lyric phrases
High hardware requirements	Inclusion of audio processing plugins (pros would likely have those already)
	Ability to host WAV/audio files in the editor (Good for covers, which I'd guess is mainly the domain of bedroom hobbyists. Also could be seen as an attempt to avoid requiring a DAW, which pros would almost certainly have anyway.)

Personally, I feel it's hard to compare Japanese DTMers to hobbyist Western Vocaloid producers. They sell their music at conventions and have doujin circles. I think that if we talk about "professional musicians" compared to hobbyist ones, which type are we talking about?

Saying hobbyist in terms of Western seems like someone who just does it for fun and has no fame. But if you say it in terms of Japanese, those people can have quite the following even if it is their side gig and not their day job.

Here, if we think of professionals, I think the lowest tier of professional musician would be like... a Soundcloud rapper or something. I'm not sure what we would think of as a low ranking professional in Japan.

That's just my two cents.

When I think of professional vs. non-professional, I often think of what I read they (used to?) do in sports--you're a professional if someone has paid you to do something. I get the idea from the story of Jim Thorpe, an athlete who went to the Olympics, got a number of medals, and then had them all taken away because the Olympics (at the time) were just for non-professionals but he had done something like play a game of baseball and get paid some measly fee at some prior point.

Under that logic, if you host a song on Bandcamp and someone pays you $1, you're a professional :) .

Having said that, if I'm serious about it, I think there would have to be some dimension of how much time you spend at the activity, too. And maybe how much of your income you derive from it? So maybe if it's something for which you get paid, at which you spend/have spent a lot of time, and which accounts for a large part of your income, you're a professional?

 

[inactive]

A professional is someone with a deadline.

 

[uncreepy]

When I used to do art commissions, I would make like... let's say about $60 in one month as side money. I think anyone--people who sell knitted clothes at craft booths, artists who do commissions infrequently, musicians who manage to sell a couple CDs--would not consider themselves a professional even if they are making some money off of it and have to conduct themselves in a professional behavior. the reality of a lot of those peoples' situations is that it's not even enough side cash to qualify as the equivalent to a part time job. Even if some people would look up to them/argue their talent, I bet most in that situation feel good about not getting to do their somewhat paid hobby full time.

I guess when I saw the new features of V5 when it came out, I thought it seemed completely different, like it had a huge wow factor. The interface seems different even if the old stuff is hidden inside of it. The preset phrases are like exvoices (however you spell that), they just renamed them and made them easier to access. I think that mobius is right about the extra DAW-like features are actually what a pro would own already, I didn't realize that. When I think of a pro musician who isn't like... SUPER mainstream, I think of a YouTuber like Andrew Huang. However, even though he owns all that expensive instruments/tech, he had never messed around with synthesized voices (he did recently in a collab with Yamaha where he gave away a copy if memory serves right). So maybe the target audience would be someone who's lower than the popularity level of someone like Andrew Huang, like an intermediate beatmaker?

Also, I wrote my initial comment like... 10 min before work, didn't expect people to care that much about what I wrote. ^^;

 

[peaches2217]

When saying Professional vs. Hobbyist/Amateur, I think what I mean is "People who do this for a living and have the money for high-quality equipment and to make sure everything runs to optimal conditions" vs. "People who enjoy it but might not have the funds to make music at that level and therefore need lower prices and more flexibility so that they can work with what they already have".

Either way, my original response was poorly worded, ranty, rambly, and just overall stupid, so I'd like to recant it, if that's okay. Please forgive me! This is a topic I could stand to be less assured about, heh.

 

[cafenurse]

This is a really interesting conversation. It's clear that Yamaha has alienated some of their fanbase by raising the price and hardware/software requirements. As someone who just makes covers for fun, Vocaloid is already pretty unreasonably pricey for me since it's just a hobby I make no money off of. If you're someone who uses Vocaloid as I do, V5 comes across as not worth it.
I'm not sure I'd say this alienation was on purpose, but it is interesting to note.

Thanks for clearing this up, before this thread I legit had no idea why V5 was a ghost town.
I have a lot of fond memories of the V4 era, especially for Engloids, so it's kinda sad to see that V5 isn't really kicking off to a great start.

 

[Overcast Immortal]

With V5 having so few new releases after a year and a half and a poor reception in our fandom, along with Crypton splitting off into its own brand, I think Vocaloid is coming to the end of its development. I'm not actually that sad about it, because so many good Vocaloids have been released and are still available, even on Mac, which probably only supports a third to half of all Vocaloids. I'm still having a very good time working with V3 and V4 Vocaloids.

 

[cafenurse]

Hmm, I don't like to think of Vocaloid coming to its end, personally that makes me kinda sad lol.
But with Crypton and Internet Co both taking their hats out of the ring, it's not an absurd assumption.

 

[___]

Hmm, I don't like to think of Vocaloid coming to its end, personally that makes me kinda sad lol.
But with Crypton and Internet Co both taking their hats out of the ring, it's not an absurd assumption.

Internet Co isn't out of the game. They just said they have no plans for V5.

and a poor reception in our fandom

The reception in the western fandom doesn't hold any real weight. I don't have some in-depth knowledge of what the japanese people think of V5 but from what I've gathered it's not nearly as negative as in the west and I do hear producers using it ( can tell by the attack and release features they've used ). Crypton splitting off, now that will change a lot.

 

[uncreepy]

Internet Co isn't out of the game. They just said they have no plans for V5.


The reception in the western fandom doesn't hold any real weight. I don't have some in-depth knowledge of what the japanese people think of V5 but from what I've gathered it's not nearly as negative as in the west and I do hear producers using it ( can tell by the attack and release features they've used ). Crypton splitting off, now that will change a lot.

I know a lot of fans assume that no news = good news (as in: "They never OFFICIALLY canceled Cocorobo, so I will still wait for her, even though it's been like 5 years of waiting so far!"), but I think it's more realistic that no news = don't bother waiting for more releases from the company. Internet Co (or even Zero-G, who had been working on a rock vocal that was supposed to come out in November but just... died) would have to surprise me by switching engines for them to be "back in the game" for me. I think they don't officially say they are out so that fans continue to by what vocals they do have available.

Anyway, I have read comments on V5 in Japanese on Twitter and they were actually similar to the complaints the Western fans have. Such as it being too expensive for hobbyists, they frequently posts videos of bugs, and some complain about lack of male vocals.

 

[mobius017]

I wonder what would happen if Yamaha ever did close up their Vocaloid line completely. Vocaloid is the base technology behind the Vocaloid synths made by a bunch of companies, so I assume the authorization servers/etc. are run by Yamaha. If Yamaha pulls out, do the servers keep running? Surely all those other companies' VBs wouldn't become unable to authorize new users?

(Not that any of us would know the answer to that, I guess....)

 

[___]

@uncreepy Never said I had some high hopes or that I'm expecting release anytime soon , just saying that the situation with Inetrnet Co isn't the same as with Crypton or PowerFX. I do believe they're somewhat still in the vocaloid market for the time being and try to promote their vocaloids and stuff. I do however think that this will very likely change.

Anyway, I have read comments on V5 in Japanese on Twitter and they were actually similar to the complaints the Western fans have. Such as it being too expensive for hobbyists, they frequently posts videos of bugs, and some complain about lack of male vocals.

Ah, alrighty that makes sense. As I said, I don't have much insight when it comes up to the japanese side of things. Also the lack of males was always an issue huh Agree on that one.

 

[Scarlet Illusion]

Tbh, good male voices are hard to come by, even with UTAU despite anyone being able to make one. I feel like male voices tend to just kinda stick to one type of tone (deep, masculine, and powerful) for the most part and don't really branch out... makes it difficult when you're like me and you want more young male sounding vocals (think Kagamine Len) or just more tone variation. I know I could just use Len, but sometimes I don't wanna use him for everything that requires a male vocal. (I have this issue when trying to cover Rin/Len songs. I'm not gonna use Len for a cover when he already sang the original. >.>)

 

[___]

Tbh, good male voices are hard to come by, even with UTAU despite anyone being able to make one.

I know right? Most of them sound so same-y to me, it's kinda hard to come-by ( as you said ) good mature non-generic utau male vocals, more so than in vocaloid surprisingly.

 

[Scarlet Illusion]

Yeah, for sure. It seems they're all either the same generic male voice or a genderbend of an existing UTAU... sadly, genderbent UTAU rarely sound good because it gives their voice too awkward of a tone... (though, I did notice that decreasing Matsudappoiyo's g flag gives him a younger sounding tone and makes the engine noise a little less noticeable. )
(Also, if anyone has any male UTAU recommendations, I'd love to hear them.)