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SynthV SynthV AI Weina

Cluemily

cherish chika
Staff member
Administrator
Mar 25, 2018
221
www.youtube.com
Announced as the first voice in SynthV's new "Gold Series", Dreamtonics will be working alongside vocalist Weina Hu (examples of roles being the Chinese singing voices for both Elsa in Frozen/Frozen 2 and Isabela in Encanto) to release Weina, who will be releasing July 2022.
Though much cannot be revealed at this moment, Kanru has confirmed English songs are being sampled for this product.

 
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lIlI

Staff member
Moderator
Apr 6, 2018
843
The Lightning Strike
Super excited to hear Weina! She'll probably sound exactly like her voice provider; if we had an example of her singing, it would be a demo enough for me, haha.

The Gold Series looks like its firmly positioning Dreamtonics' inhouse voicebanks as professional focused. I have some thoughts on the debate of professional vs character focused voicebanks:

It's often held that marketing character-less voicebanks towards musicians outside the community spells financial failure, but we don't actually have solid evidence to support this. It's thought that characters improve a voicebank's chance of success, but many have been costly failures. Our perception may be distorted.

Professionals often use vocal synthesis as a preliminary step, and don't credit them if they're in the final song, so judging the success of a professional voicebank on how many songs appear in our feeds is misleading. The most compelling evidence that they're profitable is the fact that companies keep choosing this marketing strategy.
One thing we can prove is that a character doesn't guarantee success. During V3 and V4 a huge number of character led voices were heavily marketed in an attempt to recapture Miku's success. The vast majority didn't come close, because people who want a cute character, have Miku. Her success was not just her design, but the unique time in online history when she was released. A new character voice must compete with figures like Miku who're already popular, which is stiff competition. Why would a new producer buy the new character they don't know, instead of an iconic one? The fans who collect new voicebanks are an incredibly small part of the vocal synthesis community: we don't equal success.

Sources from inside Yamaha claim that the Vocaloid division wasn't profitable during V3 and V4, with V5 being the first time in many years that they saw financial success. Although we can't prove hearsay, the fact that Yamaha chose to distance themselves from character marketing provides strong evidence for its failure. Yamaha's disinterest in third parties may be less about poor sales, and more about them learning that third parties aren't necessary.

I think we judge the success of a product based on our limited social media sphere's tastes, and can sometimes forget that we aren't the majority. Knowing this, a company's decisions to pursue other markets doesn't feel as unexpected. Although we all want companies to make the products that appeal to us, we only represent a unique, niche subsection of a much larger industry.

But I don't think fans of character focused products need to fear, mascots are a huge part of vocal synthesis culture, and there's nothing to suggest they're going away. As vocal synthesis becomes more mainstream, we may just see avatar-less voicebanks existing alongside characters more prominently. :ruby_ani_lili:
 

PearlStarLight5

Miss Retrocore, at your service!
First of all, a Disney SynthV let's goooooooo

Second, I actually prefer that Dreamtonics doesn't create characters. I prefer creating my own characters in their place, and it's more fun to see what people come up with. I hope they never listen to English Twitter and make official character designs.
 

Leon

AKA missy20201 (Elliot)
Apr 8, 2018
979
This is kind of exciting! The name SynthV Gold almost sounds like a CeVIO-style subscription, and MAN am I glad that's not the case. A famous VA like Hu Weina is such an interesting move! I look forward to hearing a demo, and seeing what people do with her. Keep up the good work, SynthV 🥰


re: avatar discussion
I don't mind that DT vocals don't have avatars, but I don't think the letters are any better. They didn't start out so bad, but they've just gotten more and more tacky, and I very genuinely dislike them. Imo they aren't any more professional-looking than an avatar like Solaria. If they were all something like Saki then it'd be a different story, but these are just weirdly asymmetrical letters with the same kind of overlay in different colors. It's my least favorite part of anything SV has done 💀
 

morrysillusion

v flower enthusiast
Jul 14, 2018
768
25
Socal
morrysillusion.wixsite.com
not sure if its been explained already what "gold" entails for the future, but i kind of wonder more if "gold" may be about getting well known/famous voices and not just a professional branding. i think SV's avatar-less voices are all 'professional leaning' because they dont have avatars and are just their voices... but that was the vibe i was getting, mostly with the whole trailer they put together to reveal this 'gold series' with a voice that is quite well known (while their previous ones i dont think even have their providers revealed).

regardless, excited to see what will come of this! while i think their current batch of vocals have been nice, i feel there is some quality lacking mostly on the side of cross synth, i dont think a lot of the last voices have had proper english training at all and its obvious. if they are working with english samples and with such an important voice, it sounds like there may be more work put into these gold voices' development perhaps? idk, just theorizing. i feel like the last voices have been catered to their native languages with little work put on cross language which is a shame when SV is known for that feature, so i want to hope that maybe these gold voices will have more time and data put into them mostly due to their voicers being more well known.

my only gripe with the avatarless design is how long can they go with these colored letters and make them recognizable? i say they look good so far in the sense that a glance at the colors is what reminds me who it is, more than the letters alone. i really like that dreamtonics is keeping them avtarless, because i really dont think they need avatars, and its really not a surprise for the company developing the engine to want to keep things "neutral" for their voices (much like yamaha's vy1/vy2) in order to appeal to a more general audience. but i kinda wonder how many more of these voices theyll make because i feel like they'll run out of recognizable colors and letters... they really have been churning out a lot of them lately.
 
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Prism

Enthusiast
Jul 18, 2019
524
You see the term gold pop up in virtual instruments "ethera gold" comes to mind it usually denotes a premium or special version. I highly doubt it's a subscription base model
 
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Prism

Enthusiast
Jul 18, 2019
524
I wonder if they'll have a different user agreement. I'm personally not a big fan of voice backs with the same exact name as their voice provider because I find it messy to distinguish them from their voice providers. Also when a voice provider does something controversial it effects them more. No looks down on seeu but they do for yohioloid
 

Cluemily

cherish chika
Staff member
Administrator
Mar 25, 2018
221
www.youtube.com
I'd not 100% assume Fukase's user agreement is what a user would be subject to upon buying Weina. Of course it is a possibility, his agreement stands out compared to others, especially amongst products who have names that are the same as or relate to their voice provider (eg. a number of Internet Co.'s, Nemu, Arsloid, IA, MEIKO, Miriam, KAFU, SEKAI, etc. (Though as I don't own most of these so haven't personally read everyone's, I've not heard any complaints akin to Fukase's about these guys.))
 

Stigbn

Aspiring Fan
Jul 21, 2018
74
Denmark
I just saw on SynthV News on twitter a post by アカサコフ@s_akasakov
it translates to:

"Regarding the Synthesizer V GOLD series announced by Dreamtonics the other day, it is the name of the library series made by a specific producer in China, it is not a high-end series, and it is not particularly functional and sound output.
It's hard to understand, so please follow me."
 

Leon

AKA missy20201 (Elliot)
Apr 8, 2018
979
That's kinda what I figured it would be. Just that the Golds were banks voiced by (and named after?) celebrities. Maybe there's extra song data for a smoother bank, but I don't have any hopes for extra amazing features or anything. I do hope I'm proven wrong though!
 
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Leon

AKA missy20201 (Elliot)
Apr 8, 2018
979
She sounds really nice! I think it would hit me harder if I knew the VA before hearing about this, though. But yes, it sounds like a very nice approximation of the real voice. Very impressive. I don't think I will be buying her myself, but I hope anyone who does is very happy with the product!
 

morrysillusion

v flower enthusiast
Jul 14, 2018
768
25
Socal
morrysillusion.wixsite.com
she sounds very good, quality and voice wise! im not convinced to buy her as i have a few non-eng voices already (which i only use for english, and i dont feel like weina will bring anything new for me in that area). im hope chinese fans more familiar with her are hype tho! very cool to see a voice with context like her in a vocal synth
 

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