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VOCALOID Miku Using XSY Before VOCALOID4?

sour_supreme

Aspiring Fan
okay so i noticed that the DIVA version of "Black Rock Shooter" by ryo is different from the original. the vocal take is completely different, taking advantage of her append voicebanks, specifically her SOLID and SOFT (?) voicebanks. however, the voicebanks do not seem to alternate between sections of the song, but rather between notes. my thinking is this must be some form of cross-synthesis (XSY) that was tested before VOCALOID4 released, because the two voicebanks seem to transition as if they were on the same vocal track, but crossfaded using technology similar to XSY. i could be wrong, and perhaps no one actually knows the answer, but i am wondering if anyone can confirm this to me!

i have a video trailer for Project DIVA f that came out in 2013, predating VOCALOID4's release by almost two years!


another reason i am thinking this is possibly beta software in use is because i SWEAR i read something about Miku's vocals for "ODDS&ENDS" using special/unreleased/beta technology where two or more of her voicebanks were blended together. i'm pretty sure it was a YouTube comment on the VocaloidMist upload of the song, which very well could have been a figment of my imagination or just false. it would make sense to me for ryo to have access to such special technology though, considering they are a beloved VOCALOID composer.

anyways i guess this could just be some food for thought, thanks for reading!
 

caustic

Vocalsynth.Audio & Vocalsynth.Space Administrator
Official Representative
Mar 7, 2018
9
27
www.dynamivox.com
Vocaloid has/had a lot of WIP technologies that get used privately as part of events, promotions, games, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they had something akin to XSY.
I know the Vocalistener 2 demos from 2010 would mix the different appends together, so it's been a thing for a long time.
 

sour_supreme

Aspiring Fan
Vocaloid has/had a lot of WIP technologies that get used privately as part of events, promotions, games, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they had something akin to XSY.
I know the Vocalistener 2 demos from 2010 would mix the different appends together, so it's been a thing for a long time.
yeah i remember those demos for Vocalistener 2, i was actually thinking of mentioning that in my first post. i feel like that could be really possible, considering that was the closest thing to XSY that we knew about at that time, and it almost sounds like more than two voicebanks are being blended together, like how it could blend ALL appends together!

either way i just thought i'd bring it up cuz its quite interesting and i'm surprised i've not seen someone else talk about it.
 

Nezuh

Official Piko Husband
Apr 17, 2018
77
Argentina
www.youtube.com
Ohhhhhhh I always thought that! And I'm pretty sure they actually did it with Odds & Ends.

I did a cover with VocaListener of that song (which is why I heard it a lot), and it really sounds like an XSY of Original and Solid, at least in the lower parts. There are also parts with VocalDry (like VOCALOID5) but that is plausible in Vocaloid for a long time if you know what you do.

I got the acapella voice from the Project Diva F2nd files on PS3, btw
I uploaded it here, so all of you can listen to it and draw your own conclusions :3
 
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sour_supreme

Aspiring Fan
Ohhhhhhh I always thought that! And I'm pretty sure they actually did it with Odds & Ends.

I did a cover with VocaListener of that song (which is why I heard it a lot), and it really sounds like an XSY of Original and Solid, at least in the lower parts. There are also parts with VocalDry (like VOCALOID5) but that is plausible in Vocaloid for a long time if you know what you do.

I got the acapella voice from the Project Diva F2nd files on PS3, btw
I uploaded it here, so all of you can listen to it and draw your own conclusions :3
wow!! thank you for uploading that acapella, its really something!! i think its definitely XSY-ing ORIGINAL and SOLID, and then at the bridge it seems like its ORIGINAL and SOFT/SWEET. and then there's all the breaths and the glottal stops, i imagine it was possible with VOCALOID at the time, but REALLY hard to do, so ryo is either just that good, or they (are still that good but) used techniques outside of the VOCALOID2 editor.

like maybe they used VocaListener 2 for the pitchbends and the voicebank mixing, and then added in the breaths and glottal stops which were based off of a real human's voice? or maybe VocaListener 2 could somehow translate the glottal stops as pitchbends for VOCALOID to read, or maybe Miku's vocals are layered with a real person singing underneath, adding those details. i don't know! its crazy though, it sounds so good and i knew as soon as i heard it the first time (in 2012) that there was more to it than just ryo using Append voicebanks.
 

sour_supreme

Aspiring Fan
hello! sorry for bumping this post but i have some new information.

another reason i am thinking this is possibly beta software in use is because i SWEAR i read something about Miku's vocals for "ODDS&ENDS" using special/unreleased/beta technology where two or more of her voicebanks were blended together. i'm pretty sure it was a YouTube comment...
so i mentioned this in my original post, but having skimmed through the VocaloidMist video upload of "ODDS&ENDS", i found no comments that mentioned special XSY technology.

today i received a notification on YouTube that was someone responding to a comment i left on a VocaListener video from seven years ago lol anyways, i scrolled through the comments and saw that GrandMasterFlames159 (GMF159) had made some comments about Ryo having access to VocaListener2, which is different from the released version of VocaListener.

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i am pretty much certain that these are the comments i'd referred to in my original post. and i think most of us know that VocaListener2 is a real thing, and it really can blend Miku's Appends together to create and endlessly varied tone, which is really cool! i do not remember the comment of Ryo and Mitchie M being the only ones who have it, but that definitely makes sense. and the songs Ryo has supposedly used it on ("ODDS&ENDS" and this updated version of "Black Rock Shooter") seem to sound very similar to this sample of VocaListener2 in action.


putting all this together, it seems i have found the answer i was looking for! this is why i love VOCALOID, there is so much interesting history surrounding it! unfortunately its not all very well documented (this being a case of that) but its fun to piece things together and discover things! anyways, thanks for reading lol
 

frankensalad

Passionate Fan
Feb 27, 2019
103
That Prologue 2010 video is so nostalgic. Vocalistener was really set to be a beast if it actually released with all the features it was demonstrated to have, but apparently that wasn't to be.
 
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DefiantKitsune

Lonely kanon fan
Apr 11, 2018
621
I do have to ask if there's any proof for what GMF said.
I don't necessarily NOT believe it, but it isn't confirmed afaik

(I have a feeling Vocalistener2 didn't work well, but since it never released it's hard to say)
 
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sour_supreme

Aspiring Fan
I do have to ask if there's any proof for what GMF said.
I don't necessarily NOT believe it, but it isn't confirmed afaik

(I have a feeling Vocalistener2 didn't work well, but since it never released it's hard to say)
it is true that these are just YouTube comments and don't necessarily confirm anything, but it at least confirms for me that i did in fact see comments stating this WAY back in the day cuz i thought i'd made them up in my head after a while lol

and i think it does make sense that Ryo and Mitchie M have it, i mean if Crypton were to give special software to any producers to use, it would be them, right? maybe also OSTER, like they gave her KAITO/MEIKO Append V2. it doesn't seem like there's any evidence that Mitchie M has used VocaListener2 though, i'm pretty sure he tunes all his songs in Melodyne and is just THAT GOOD (now he uses Piapro Studio NT and all those new plugins Crypton is developing as well).

Ryo's songs on the other hand, especially the two i've mentioned above, DEFINITELY sound like the product of VocaListener2. i will say that the tone seems more deliberate, like Ryo could more or less choose when Miku's whispery tone voicebanks would be used and when her power tone voicebanks would be used.

this IS all just speculation though, so i could be completely wrong. this just makes the most sense to me given the information we have.
 

Nezuh

Official Piko Husband
Apr 17, 2018
77
Argentina
www.youtube.com
That Prologue 2010 video is so nostalgic.
this is so true omg, the intro give me the chills

[...]and i think it does make sense that Ryo and Mitchie M have it, i mean if Crypton were to give special software to any producers to use, it would be them, right? [...]
Crypton gave Cherry Pie and the new Piapro Studio to Mitche M for some of their latest songs, so...
 

msmsmsm

CUL Supremacist
Sep 15, 2018
11
it doesn't seem like there's any evidence that Mitchie M has used VocaListener2 though, i'm pretty sure he tunes all his songs in Melodyne and is just THAT GOOD
A little nitpick on my behalf, but Mitchie M never used to tune songs in Melodyne. I'm thinking something was wrongly translated or some information was misconstrued, because it's never been possible to tune in Melodyne since it's a pitch correction program first and foremost. He's a strange case because his vocals are way too clean to be anything but tuning in the vocaloid program itself with some stuff in post, like it completely lacks artefacts that vocalistener would leave behind. I stand by my belief that he's a skilled tuner with incredible mixing skills, which further emphasises his tuning.
 

sour_supreme

Aspiring Fan
A little nitpick on my behalf, but Mitchie M never used to tune songs in Melodyne. I'm thinking something was wrongly translated or some information was misconstrued, because it's never been possible to tune in Melodyne since it's a pitch correction program first and foremost. He's a strange case because his vocals are way too clean to be anything but tuning in the vocaloid program itself with some stuff in post, like it completely lacks artefacts that vocalistener would leave behind. I stand by my belief that he's a skilled tuner with incredible mixing skills, which further emphasises his tuning.
ah okay, it was just something i remember reading or seeing somewhere. i don't really understand Melodyne's feature set but i guess i just assumed you can do some real tuning with it since i'd heard this about Mitchie M. but if that's true that he tunes fully in VOCALOID than that is really a HUGE DEAL. and with regards to his mixing, i never hear any kind of weird engine noise from the VOCALOID engine at all. that's crazy!
 
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