A cover by his voice provider to give an impression of what he will sound like (looks like this crowdfund is happening before the vocal goes into full development, similar to Solaria):
SynthV Oscar for Synthesizer V from Voicemith
- Thread starter lIlI
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They've posted several of these now. I think it's kind of endearing to hear the little clips and English bits, since afaik he never had an English UTAU bank but will get cross-lang with the SV bank
So, uh... crowdfund-only vocal modes got announced. Nasal and Special.
I will be very clear, I do not like this. It is not cool that the vocal mode stretch goals have been shifting since funding started, seems unfair to anyone who buys the product later because they didn't happen to have money during the CF period, and sets a bad precedent for other companies doing this in the future. It also kind of reeks of desperation, like he's not getting funded (which he isn't, it's true...) and they want to encourage people to back him now for the FOMO of the 2 modes.
If DT approved this, I'm shocked. Coming from an early backer who really wants Oscar to succeed, I hope they rethink this.
I will be very clear, I do not like this. It is not cool that the vocal mode stretch goals have been shifting since funding started, seems unfair to anyone who buys the product later because they didn't happen to have money during the CF period, and sets a bad precedent for other companies doing this in the future. It also kind of reeks of desperation, like he's not getting funded (which he isn't, it's true...) and they want to encourage people to back him now for the FOMO of the 2 modes.
If DT approved this, I'm shocked. Coming from an early backer who really wants Oscar to succeed, I hope they rethink this.
I don't know if it's necessarily "unfair" as it's definitely not unheard of from a general crowdfund perspective, but... this is a choice, and will only hurt the product in the long run. If you're a producer interested investing in a SynthesizerV product, a VB with features locked out of the main release is a hard sell. Why purchase an expensive product with missing features when you can purchase a fully-featured release from a different developer? Maybe they are counting on his being the only Taiwanese masc vocal on the engine to be a selling point.
I do really hope he makes it regardless.
I do really hope he makes it regardless.
I was introduced to OSCAR through this campaign and just saw his UTAU design. And holy shit, dudes. We got robbed haha. The fire motif is a little on the nose, but it's very unique-- certainly more recognizable than this incarnation.
Honestly, this kind of decision puts me off buying any products from this company. I get having having exclusive merch, physical editions, and maybe like exvoice files or plugins being limited only to backers, but since we don’t know what these vocal modes are like and how they will effect the usefulness of the voicebank overall limiting them to only backers could potentially impact use of the voicebank.
It's indeed a very strange thing to do.
When reading the announcement at first I was like "Sounds cool", but after seeing people (rightfully) complain about it I totally agree: it's a poorly made choice.
I totally get what they wanted to do, it's like when pre-ordering games sometimes you get special unobtainable outfits, rewards, etc. The thing is, as niche as the two modes are, they're still pretty much part of the whole product. You cannot treat them like optional extras and you shouldn't be among the few people who backed the project to have the full voicebank,else you're bound to have the watered down yet official version. When backing a project you're doing it to see it come to life so that anyone can enjoy it, at this point what's the purpose of backing a product which will be incomplete by default lol.
As a backer of him, I don't like this approach and I hope they reconsider it. There are a million different ways to give special treats to backers without locking what people arepaying for behind a paywall.
When reading the announcement at first I was like "Sounds cool", but after seeing people (rightfully) complain about it I totally agree: it's a poorly made choice.
I totally get what they wanted to do, it's like when pre-ordering games sometimes you get special unobtainable outfits, rewards, etc. The thing is, as niche as the two modes are, they're still pretty much part of the whole product. You cannot treat them like optional extras and you shouldn't be among the few people who backed the project to have the full voicebank,else you're bound to have the watered down yet official version. When backing a project you're doing it to see it come to life so that anyone can enjoy it, at this point what's the purpose of backing a product which will be incomplete by default lol.
As a backer of him, I don't like this approach and I hope they reconsider it. There are a million different ways to give special treats to backers without locking what people arepaying for behind a paywall.
I'm not against crowdfund exclusive features, and I can understand their thinking behind this (it doesn't sound like a malicious idea on paper), but I fear in practice it would simply encourage piracy. Psychologically I think the issue comes from the company thinking they're adding a fun extra, whereas customers feel like they've had something taken away.
My biggest issue is when companies move crowdfund goals around while people are donating, which creates a misleading, potentially manipulative scenario where you don't know exactly what you're buying.
In general, Voicemith has done a few things that give the impression, similar to Anicute, that they're a company run by people who haven't done much research into general professional/business practice. Even with the best of intentions, this puts customers at risk. I hope Dreamtonics is more careful about working with people with proven management experience in future: one messy third party casts a bad light on Synthesizer V as a whole.
My biggest issue is when companies move crowdfund goals around while people are donating, which creates a misleading, potentially manipulative scenario where you don't know exactly what you're buying.
In general, Voicemith has done a few things that give the impression, similar to Anicute, that they're a company run by people who haven't done much research into general professional/business practice. Even with the best of intentions, this puts customers at risk. I hope Dreamtonics is more careful about working with people with proven management experience in future: one messy third party casts a bad light on Synthesizer V as a whole.
I will say I love his tone. He sounds so youthful and energetic! A lot of the male VBs these days have either been the usual vaguely "angry" type of power vocals, or very mellow-sounding on the other end, so it's nice to get a cheerful male vocal for once.
Also, it WAS cool to see the recording process of an AI voicebank for once.
Also, it WAS cool to see the recording process of an AI voicebank for once.
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The weird thing is, the other exclusive vocal modes appears to be something which gives an almost Chinese opera tone to his vocal supposedly, which I can actually understand as being a bit more of a *bonus*, as I feel as if the crowdfund is mostly targeted towards people who are... well, Chinese speaking, who would likely back it and then be more likely to use a niche vocal mode like that - not that non-native speakers or people who don't speak Chinese WOULDN'T... but, it's def more of a bonus than something we're just losing out on entirely.
Like you said, it almost feels more like a pay to win game to me - not being locked out of a cosmetic, but instead a really powerful weapon or something that makes the game much better to play - it's less something you can kind of not care about, and instead something that... actually could have considerable impact. Granted, it's just two little vocal modes, but this then means that backers have a more versatile vocal, whilst the one on the market is... less versatile??? In my eyes, that seems like a really questionable move from the eyes of the consumers.
Oscar made it guys!! They’ve reached their lowered goal of NT$550,000 
I think it's a bit of a bummer that they had to drop the goal so low, but maybe people were more confident in the project after that, because it made good money in the last few days. It ended at 768,913 NTD. It's too bad that it didn't hit the 900k stretch goal, but maybe there's a slim chance that it did after you take the Paypal donations into account? I don't think those are tallied up on the FlyingV site.