We're currently having issues with our e-mail system. Anything requiring e-mail validation (2FA, forgotten passwords, etc.) requires to be changed manually at the moment. Please reach out via the Contact Us form if you require any assistance.
project sekai and project diva are both good games and the comparison between a CONSOLE game and a MOBILE game is unfair (i've seen that in the vocaloid games community)
I can see both sides of that discussion... a lot of us older fans are frustrated that there will be no more Diva games while Sekai is thriving. The reasoning why they won't develop another Diva game didn't made that much sense to a lot of fans and even though you're comparing console vs. mobile game you're still comparing two vsynth games that both have some characters and songs in their respective setlists in common. In fact I've seen a lot more of such comparisions than ppl comparing the actual gameplay. However I have seen Vocaloid fans that are weird about it so ig fair that you bring it up here
project sekai and project diva are both good games and the comparison between a CONSOLE game and a MOBILE game is unfair (i've seen that in the vocaloid games community)
The idea that mobile and console games can't be compared is kinda silly... In this day and age, there are mobile games with budgets just as big or bigger than some console games. They're not all indie games or Angry Birds anymore.
The idea that mobile and console games can't be compared is kinda silly... In this day and age, there are mobile games with budgets just as big or bigger than some console games. They're not all indie games or Angry Birds anymore.
eh, there's specific lmitations when making game for mobile. It's a constraint that radicallly alter the deesign consideerations of the assets (they generally need to be much more low poly in general, and certain engines and graphics effects do not work). it's still like that, so you need to change the whole style to fit smaller hardware. things are different if you don't concern 3d game and focus on 2d type animation, those can compare very closely with some exceptions. Live2d cubism probably has limitations with too many layers in a mobile game so effects/highlights can't be too complex.
ACE Studio recently released 26(!) new voices specifically targetting the exact needs of professional producers: I believe they'll overtake SynthV among casual English-speaking users if Dreamtonics doesn't rapidly increase development and improve their marketing.
ACE uses visually pleasing stock images for their professionally oriented vocals, which is much more appealing to that demographic (and perhaps most people) than DT's inconsistent spiky letters. They catch the eye, provide a clear picture of what type of voice they are, and still feel 'pro'. Sometimes, the oldest vocal synth marketing tactics are the best, haha; Leon and Lola knew. ACE's controversies aren't well-known outside our community, so their reputation can't hold them back outside the fandom.
There was a period when it seemed inevitable that SynthV would become the defacto vocal synth for professionals, but Dreamtonics has lagged behind in its development of English voicebanks, leaving Eleanor, Natalie, Anri and Solaria as the only feminine options for years; which no real choices for common genres like RnB, heavier EDM, a ton of vocal trends in pop, pop punk...etc...etc.... Combine that with nonsensical ads that fail to explain the product, terrible visual design for their in-house vocals, and poor SEO making their outdated SynthV R1 appear first on Google (so many potential customers have bounced off because they accidentally downloaded the wrong program) they made it easy for competition to come in and eat their lunch.
How is the ACE loading time overseas though? I recall one big problem with ACE outside of its controversies was that it was cloud based with servers only in China, so it was super slow everywhere else
How is the ACE loading time overseas though? I recall one big problem with ACE outside of its controversies was that it was cloud based with servers only in China, so it was super slow everywhere else
According to ACE's own statistics published within a DTM magazine interview (iirc), majority of the users for ACE Studio are actually from North America. From this, I'm assuming that the load times have been drastically reduced and perhaps investment in Amazon servers for more region coverage. Their article did not specify how many users they were experiencing overall though (which I find to be peculiar with the alleged claims from an ACE studio member themselves sometime at the end of last year who claimed they were barely turning a profit).
Releasing 26 AI voices is a feat, and many of them do have a high likelihood of appealing to the general producing demographic, but I'm still not too sure about the staying power of these voices and ACE as a whole. While the controversies within the fandom are definitely not known to outsiders, I think that their singer icons are actually not stock images, but AI rendered images which is still a controversial move in most online spaces nowadays. Coupled with the price of ACE (subscription) as well as being cloud-based it's hard to really gauge if this is going to pull them out of the alleged financial deficit they were in, unless they received a new investor. While subscriptions are very common for VST instruments, cloud-based + subscription is not - it's usually one or the other.
While I'm still not sure about ACE's overall power or their ability to truly seize the demographic due to the business methods itself, outside of controversies, I do agree that Dreamtonics needs to step it up. The DT vocals are across the board very good products, but there is an increasing problem as of late with quality control both in their sound quality and visual representation (the recent Cantonese female is a great example of the sound quality issue I'm mentioning. It feels like with every letter-voicebank release the overall noise, but especially on consonants such as (s) is becoming more and more noticeable). The letters are a generally good concept, but the fact they look like they were slapped together in photoshop with no care for consistency among spacing/crop or even background color (many of them do not share the same background color), it can definitely come across as cheap or lousily made.
I agree that the niches filled by Dreamtonics voices are also not nearly wide enough, and the ones that are missing are deeply felt from a contemporary production standpoint. The fact we still don't have what many might consider a "true english female pop" vocalist from Dreamtonics is one that immediately comes to mind. DT definitely needs to focus on ironing out more of the kinks within the letter releases that are getting more prominent, focus on some desperately needed genre variation that average composers/producers outside of the vsynth sphere would need, and improve the visual representation as well. (Not to mention how many voices are taobao exclusives for an insane amount of time, we still have no native Spanish letter, and there's no word on if we'll be getting a letter voice for Korean.)
ACE Studio recently released 26(!) new voices specifically targetting the exact needs of professional producers: I believe they'll overtake SynthV among casual English-speaking users if Dreamtonics doesn't rapidly increase development and improve their marketing.
ACE uses visually pleasing stock images for their professionally oriented vocals, which is much more appealing to that demographic (and perhaps most people) than DT's inconsistent spiky letters. They catch the eye, provide a clear picture of what type of voice they are, and still feel 'pro'. Sometimes, the oldest vocal synth marketing tactics are the best, haha; Leon and Lola knew. ACE's controversies aren't well-known outside our community, so their reputation can't hold them back outside the fandom.
There was a period when it seemed inevitable that SynthV would become the defacto vocal synth for professionals, but Dreamtonics has lagged behind in its development of English voicebanks, leaving Eleanor, Natalie, Anri and Solaria as the only feminine options for years; which no real choices for common genres like RnB, heavier EDM, a ton of vocal trends in pop, pop punk...etc...etc.... Combine that with nonsensical ads that fail to explain the product, terrible visual design for their in-house vocals, and poor SEO making their outdated SynthV R1 appear first on Google (so many potential customers have bounced off because they accidentally downloaded the wrong program) they made it easy for competition to come in and eat their lunch.
I am extremely doubtful of that considering how much the same demographic downright despises subscription based software... which is what ACE is.
Yeah I just cannot agree to this take, no offense.
edit: Small addendum, I don't have much to say about first party voices and their potential issues cause quite frankly I do not give a shit about them so I don't have much to ad. But I feel SV and by extension Dreamtonics is doing well enough where I feel they don't actually have to do anything, but that's just my two cents. At any rate some QOL inprovements would be nice I will say.
According to ACE's own statistics published within a DTM magazine interview (iirc), majority of the users for ACE Studio are actually from North America. From this, I'm assuming that the load times have been drastically reduced and perhaps investment in Amazon servers for more region coverage. Their article did not specify how many users they were experiencing overall though (which I find to be peculiar with the alleged claims from an ACE studio member themselves sometime at the end of last year who claimed they were barely turning a profit).
Releasing 26 AI voices is a feat, and many of them do have a high likelihood of appealing to the general producing demographic, but I'm still not too sure about the staying power of these voices and ACE as a whole. While the controversies within the fandom are definitely not known to outsiders, I think that their singer icons are actually not stock images, but AI rendered images which is still a controversial move in most online spaces nowadays. Coupled with the price of ACE (subscription) as well as being cloud-based it's hard to really gauge if this is going to pull them out of the alleged financial deficit they were in, unless they received a new investor. While subscriptions are very common for VST instruments, cloud-based + subscription is not - it's usually one or the other.
While I'm still not sure about ACE's overall power or their ability to truly seize the demographic due to the business methods itself, outside of controversies, I do agree that Dreamtonics needs to step it up. The DT vocals are across the board very good products, but there is an increasing problem as of late with quality control both in their sound quality and visual representation (the recent Cantonese female is a great example of the sound quality issue I'm mentioning. It feels like with every letter-voicebank release the overall noise, but especially on consonants such as (s) is becoming more and more noticeable). The letters are a generally good concept, but the fact they look like they were slapped together in photoshop with no care for consistency among spacing/crop or even background color (many of them do not share the same background color), it can definitely come across as cheap or lousily made.
I agree that the niches filled by Dreamtonics voices are also not nearly wide enough, and the ones that are missing are deeply felt from a contemporary production standpoint. The fact we still don't have what many might consider a "true english female pop" vocalist from Dreamtonics is one that immediately comes to mind. DT definitely needs to focus on ironing out more of the kinks within the letter releases that are getting more prominent, focus on some desperately needed genre variation that average composers/producers outside of the vsynth sphere would need, and improve the visual representation as well. (Not to mention how many voices are taobao exclusives for an insane amount of time, we still have no native Spanish letter, and there's no word on if we'll be getting a letter voice for Korean.)
I agree with a lot here, but I don't think the AI generated images will be a problem. They're almost indistinguishable from photos, so many like myself won't be able to tell - but most significantly, the majority of normal people don't understand the difference between AI images and AI voices. For this reason, most producers I see using SynthV or ACE outside the fandom are completely fine with AI images, and most people that aren't think that SynthV/ACE are just as bad. The nuance of what distinguishes ethical and non-ethical AI is poorly understood, with your average Joe having the same knee-jerk reaction to the word regardless of context. I think the biggest decider will simply be who can answer the question: 'Which program has the voicetype I need?'.
ACE Studio recently released 26(!) new voices specifically targetting the exact needs of professional producers: I believe they'll overtake SynthV among casual English-speaking users if Dreamtonics doesn't rapidly increase development and improve their marketing.
ACE uses visually pleasing stock images for their professionally oriented vocals, which is much more appealing to that demographic (and perhaps most people) than DT's inconsistent spiky letters. They catch the eye, provide a clear picture of what type of voice they are, and still feel 'pro'. Sometimes, the oldest vocal synth marketing tactics are the best, haha; Leon and Lola knew. ACE's controversies aren't well-known outside our community, so their reputation can't hold them back outside the fandom.
There was a period when it seemed inevitable that SynthV would become the defacto vocal synth for professionals, but Dreamtonics has lagged behind in its development of English voicebanks, leaving Eleanor, Natalie, Anri and Solaria as the only feminine options for years; which no real choices for common genres like RnB, heavier EDM, a ton of vocal trends in pop, pop punk...etc...etc.... Combine that with nonsensical ads that fail to explain the product, terrible visual design for their in-house vocals, and poor SEO making their outdated SynthV R1 appear first on Google (so many potential customers have bounced off because they accidentally downloaded the wrong program) they made it easy for competition to come in and eat their lunch.
This is definitely how SynthV took over Vocaloid outside of Japan. Interesting!
I think that most ACE users are (sadly) AI and Cryptobros themselves so I doubt they’ll care about the AI pictures. Most videos praising ACE (and using the program at all, unlike SynthV which western vocal synth fans actually care about) are usually “OMG AI!!!” type videos, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem for it’s userbase. Also the on the Clara Solace video they clarified that vocal synths are ethical AI. (I also originally mistook the photos for stock photos myself..)
They originally removed the AI character art due to us (vocal synth fans/fandom/enthusiasts) but I think they found a new way to keep themselves afloat—pandering to AI/cryptobros (lol)
yeah, synthv really needs to step up its game at this point. ace studio is really amping up the variation...it's definitely got a more colorful and interesting ui (synthv just sticks with the gray and green, and only added the option to color the tracks (and ONLY in the track view) later on (R1 had full color customization, so I'm not sure why R2 removed that)), and some very interesting-sounding vocals to boot, including ones that aren't usual in vocal synthesis.
This made me curious enough to see what the newest ACE vocal teaser was like. From a genre standpoint, I didn't really feel that they covered a significant amount of ground that SynthV hadn't already, but the tuning stood out as really realistic and it didn't overstay its welcome. That might address a common point of criticism from the professional sphere I see towards SynthV developers (both first- and third-party), which is that they don't have enough quality control for their demo songs and end up giving people a weak impression. On the other hand, it's hard to tell if it really is the tuning or if the natural timbre is actually better without a lot of material.
I think heavily investing in the YT tutorials community was still the most impactful marketing decision they've made so far. I'm not sure if they've ever brought SynthV out for comparison in any of those, so there's a good chance that a non-negligible amount of people literally aren't aware of the competition.
But I guess with the subscription model, ACE seems to mainly appeal to people who just need a voice for their songs and don't necessarily have the incentive to get attached to any particular vocal.
But I guess with the subscription model, ACE seems to mainly appeal to people who just need a voice for their songs and don't necessarily have the incentive to get attached to any particular vocal.
It does seem to come up when those engines are being compared, the concept of owning one vocal vs. renting all of them. There's an obvious incentive to prioritize buying over renting in the vsynth community, but outside of that, it's possible that the two could coexist in different economic niches if they remain comparable otherwise. There are some who'd probably consider it a bigger inconvenience to have to pay for each individual VB.
Then again, the professional English-speaking vocal synth demographic isn't that large as it is, so it's dubious whether taking just a fraction of that would be enough to keep a company afloat.
It does seem to come up when those engines are being compared, the concept of owning one vocal vs. renting all of them. There's an obvious incentive to prioritize buying over renting in the vsynth community, but outside of that, it's possible that the two could coexist in different economic niches if they remain comparable otherwise. There are some who'd probably consider it a bigger inconvenience to have to pay for each individual VB.
And I guess ACE's model might make it closer to "working with a singer agency but easier"; from what I've read the subscription model helps pay the devs so they'll never implement perpetual licensing (the Clara video also implies it's paying the VPs)
But it also might make it more "realistic" to the experience of working with real singers
also, with cloud services like this, vocals that are discontinued disappear entirely, which is sadder but also more realistic to real singers leaving singing (i'm pretty sure fibe..."died", basically)
Semi-related, but I've felt for a while that the sheer number of letter voices combined with the lack of notable presence they have (they really aren't marketed much) makes most of them totally forgettable and difficult to market. Professional producers might not be looking for the same fandom-based marketing that the classical "fanbase" is, but the product needs to either be included with the program or have an actual presence! There's a reason Solaria and Avanna were successful outside the fandom; they had actual marketing and something resembling a memorable concept.
Semi-related, but I've felt for a while that the sheer number of letter voices combined with the lack of notable presence they have (they really aren't marketed much) makes most of them totally forgettable and difficult to market. Professional producers might not be looking for the same fandom-based marketing that the classical "fanbase" is, but the product needs to either be included with the program or have an actual presence! There's a reason Solaria and Avanna were successful outside the fandom; they had actual marketing and something resembling a memorable concept.
yeah, there ARE fans that get attached to the letter vocals (and kevin sorta became a meme) but...i feel like having a mascot really does help sell the vocal. like, for me i can actually visualize the character singing, while with the letter vocals (or even v6's silhouette vocalists) it's hard to settle on one appearance for them
and there's something to be said about your favorite character singing your favorite songs, as opposed to some...nondescript disembodied (albeit nice-sounding) voice
i mean, real singers have, um...faces, so...
On that note, I feel like certain modern vocal synth designs seem to be subscribing to a sort of maximalism, with crazy bright colors and accessories, and I'm not sure I like it. Still others look too normal, like the AUDIOLOGIE characters, who look like realistic modern-day social media influencers. There are some that got good designs, but I feel like designs were more consistently appealing and not too little or too much back in Vocaloid's heyday.
(not that the audiologie vocals have bad designs! they're just a lot like irl social media influencers and i guess that's supposed to be relatable? idk i'm not an influencer myself)
I AM wondering if it's the rise of VTuber influence in the east and...influencer...influence?...in the west?
this may not be too much on "unpopular" as we go on but in topic of it: as much as i am a guy to say i dont want/need the kinds of "character" designs we get out of a lot of vocaloids and the like, i think reality is having SOME kind of visual that is "character" in some form is what helps with a product. even if its just some stock photo/basic real human/hell even yamaha's current silhouettes. on an ad, you can show it. when someone sees the ad, theyll see that character and theyll think of them when they think of the program. yeah, even something like LOLA's stock human lips are still something tied to her and so you will think of that image. but abstract letters of varying colors just arent that. it may be aesthetically nice outside of the thought of needing a character for it but thats as far as it goes-- a clean aesthetic to suit their minimalist professional look. but just because they might be getting the aesthetic they want out of it doesnt mean its effective for other purposes, like advertisement and memorability, as mentioned above
I don't want to come out as rude, but it's obvious that the character's design helps to sell them. Miku's, Gumi's and Len's hair are icon's by themselves. The twins and Miku's clothes are also very charming and memorable. A lot of people likes VFlower only because she has no gender specified and I belive the same apply to VY1 and VY2 since some people, and even the wiki (at least for the VY1), interprets their voices as not gendered (What is just fake news, VY1 is advertised as a strong females voice, but whatevs).
We could stay here citing examples like Kaai Yuki cuteness and even that the first thing that got me attracted to CUL was her design, but I think those by themselves are pretty good example of, if not a character becoming immortalized only by their design, how much design sells. This is so true that the only memorable letter vb I know from SynthV is Kevin and it's actually bc he has lots of good designs all around the fandom (Specially the meme one). So yes, letters sucks and character design rules. (I would talk about panncake's ninezero too, but this is kinda polemic so let's left it as it is XD)
I was gonna write a short reply to this, but to my own shock I have a lot of thoughts on this subject, so under the spoiler it goes because I don't want to flashbang everyone here with walls of text:
Kaai Yuki took off because producers like inabakumori and nakiso made them popular with their hit songs. That is how most voicebanks gain relevancy, large number of hits over a sustained period of time. You see this with Kafu, you see this with Gumi, IA, the list goes on. Miku is the biggest example, having a large amout of notable works with her over a sustained period of time on a newly founded and developing media platform to boot. A character design does not in any way shape or form guarante success. It might secure like a small cult following of people who like the character more than anything, but the simple fact is vocaloid voices get popular the same whay human singers do: Lot's of hits over a sustained period of time.
I cannot believe I might actually have to defend the alphabet voices today, but I find this talking point about character designs straight up bullshit in particular. V3 era was full off interesting character designs for vocals but most of them did not take off because producers did not pick them up.
Kevin become popular because we had zero masculine English voices at the time and because his name was Kevin, which most people found hilarious. His popularity is further solidified when producers like GHOST and Pals picked him up. Like I'm sure the highly memeable stick figure fan design might have helped things along but Kevin's popularity has a lot of factors to it, most of them boiling down to dumb luck.
This is coming from someone who once again does not give much of a crap about the letter gang but this talking point specifically annoys me a lot, cause a.) it has little basis in reality and b.) it reflects a tendency amongst vocalsynth fans to confuse fandom demand for characters to make fanwork of* with market demand for voicebanks as products. You have so many people clamoring for ports and updates of certain voicebanks they like but half of them would not buy it if it existed. I mean, look at Galaco: everyone wanted a publicly purchaseable version of her, they had a whole social media movement to bring her back and when they got what they wanted, crickets. We got a banger 40meterP song out of it and that's it.
I can count the number of letter voices I like on one hand, but the thing is if they really were such poor sellers Dreamtonics would have stopped producing them a long time ago. The fact that they keep pumping them out tells me they must do decently enough to worth it. ** I do not understand how or why either frankly, I do not see the appeal of "nine millionth soft feminine vocal for pop ballads" or "same masculine voice but in cursive this time" but one should not assume that just because the fandom side at large do not care to make many fanworks of a pair of letters, the voicebanks themselves don't sell. The fact that notable producers picked up some of those letter voices is worth noting too: NyanyannyaP made I think at least two originals with Yuma, Ghost made several songs with the letter voices, 3/4th of FLAVOR FOLEY's original discography involves alphabet gang including their biggest hit Butcher Vanity. I saw quite a few originals with Mai, Ryo and Kevin by Japanese producers on niconico too.
I think at the end of the day what I think the alphabet gang really needs are cover art that aren't ugly as sin and look like bootleg Adobe software icons.
*Not even fanwork with, as in making covers/songs/remixes, but of as in fanart and fanfiction where you put them in situations and/or ship them with your other singing blorbos **Now in the interest of fairness it does worth noting that these voices might be relatively low cost to dev for the company: They already own the engine so no extra dev fees up front, their icon is literally just bad photoshop letters so producing the assets neccesary does not require hiring an illustrator, they don't market them much beyond a demo or two and most of the VPs are unnamed session singers (not counting cases like Ninezero and Weina) so no extra cost that comes with hiring a more notable talent. I still think it would take people to actually, y'know, buy the banks to return their investment cause even a low amount of financial cost is cost all the same, so my point stands.
I was gonna write a short reply to this, but to my own shock I have a lot of thoughts on this subject, so under the spoiler it goes because I don't want to flashbang everyone here with walls of text:
Kaai Yuki took off because producers like inabakumori and nakiso made them popular with their hit songs. That is how most voicebanks gain relevancy, large number of hits over a sustained period of time. You see this with Kafu, you see this with Gumi, IA, the list goes on. Miku is the biggest example, having a large amout of notable works with her over a sustained period of time on a newly founded and developing media platform to boot. A character design does not in any way shape or form guarante success. It might secure like a small cult following of people who like the character more than anything, but the simple fact is vocaloid voices get popular the same whay human singers do: Lot's of hits over a sustained period of time.
I cannot believe I might actually have to defend the alphabet voices today, but I find this talking point about character designs straight up bullshit in particular. V3 era was full off interesting character designs for vocals but most of them did not take off because producers did not pick them up.
Kevin become popular because we had zero masculine English voices at the time and because his name was Kevin, which most people found hilarious. His popularity is further solidified when producers like GHOST and Pals picked him up. Like I'm sure the highly memeable stick figure fan design might have helped things along but Kevin's popularity has a lot of factors to it, most of them boiling down to dumb luck.
This is coming from someone who once again does not give much of a crap about the letter gang but this talking point specifically annoys me a lot, cause a.) it has little basis in reality and b.) it reflects a tendency amongst vocalsynth fans to confuse fandom demand for characters to make fanwork of* with market demand for voicebanks as products. You have so many people clamoring for ports and updates of certain voicebanks they like but half of them would not buy it if it existed. I mean, look at Galaco: everyone wanted a publicly purchaseable version of her, they had a whole social media movement to bring her back and when they got what they wanted, crickets. We got a banger 40meterP song out of it and that's it.
I can count the number of letter voices I like on one hand, but the thing is if they really were such poor sellers Dreamtonics would have stopped producing them a long time ago. The fact that they keep pumping them out tells me they must do decently enough to worth it. ** I do not understand how or why either frankly, I do not see the appeal of "nine millionth soft feminine vocal for pop ballads" or "same masculine voice but in cursive this time" but one should not assume that just because the fandom side at large do not care to make many fanworks of a pair of letters, the voicebanks themselves don't sell. The fact that notable producers picked up some of those letter voices is worth noting too: NyanyannyaP made I think at least two originals with Yuma, Ghost made several songs with the letter voices, 3/4th of FLAVOR FOLEY's original discography involves alphabet gang including their biggest hit Butcher Vanity. I saw quite a few originals with Mai, Ryo and Kevin by Japanese producers on niconico too.
I think at the end of the day what I think the alphabet gang really needs are cover art that aren't ugly as sin and look like bootleg Adobe software icons.
*Not even fanwork with, as in making covers/songs/remixes, but of as in fanart and fanfiction where you put them in situations and/or ship them with your other singing blorbos **Now in the interest of fairness it does worth noting that these voices might be relatively low cost to dev for the company: They already own the engine so no extra dev fees up front, their icon is literally just bad photoshop letters so producing the assets neccesary does not require hiring an illustrator, they don't market them much beyond a demo or two and most of the VPs are unnamed session singers (not counting cases like Ninezero and Weina) so no extra cost that comes with hiring a more notable talent. I still think it would take people to actually, y'know, buy the banks to return their investment cause even a low amount of financial cost is cost all the same, so my point stands.
i think a "faceless" vocal has its upsides and downsides; you can create your own design if you're artistically inclined and they tend to have good voices for certain niches (sorta similar to the point of Zero-G's Vocaloids, though their most recent ones have character designs), but it can also be difficult to sell the product when the letters say next to nothing about the voice (i've seen dt vocal ads on facebook, and it feels like you don't know what you're getting into until you hear the demo, whereas with Zero-G's ads you get an idea of what the voice would sound like from the package design, even with vocals like Prima and Tonio that just use stock photos). and there are of course, on the flip-side, vocals made solely for the character that don't really have terribly stand-out characteristics and just exist to give the face a voice.
I was gonna write a short reply to this, but to my own shock I have a lot of thoughts on this subject, so under the spoiler it goes because I don't want to flashbang everyone here with walls of text:
Kaai Yuki took off because producers like inabakumori and nakiso made them popular with their hit songs. That is how most voicebanks gain relevancy, large number of hits over a sustained period of time. You see this with Kafu, you see this with Gumi, IA, the list goes on. Miku is the biggest example, having a large amout of notable works with her over a sustained period of time on a newly founded and developing media platform to boot. A character design does not in any way shape or form guarante success. It might secure like a small cult following of people who like the character more than anything, but the simple fact is vocaloid voices get popular the same whay human singers do: Lot's of hits over a sustained period of time.
I cannot believe I might actually have to defend the alphabet voices today, but I find this talking point about character designs straight up bullshit in particular. V3 era was full off interesting character designs for vocals but most of them did not take off because producers did not pick them up.
Kevin become popular because we had zero masculine English voices at the time and because his name was Kevin, which most people found hilarious. His popularity is further solidified when producers like GHOST and Pals picked him up. Like I'm sure the highly memeable stick figure fan design might have helped things along but Kevin's popularity has a lot of factors to it, most of them boiling down to dumb luck.
This is coming from someone who once again does not give much of a crap about the letter gang but this talking point specifically annoys me a lot, cause a.) it has little basis in reality and b.) it reflects a tendency amongst vocalsynth fans to confuse fandom demand for characters to make fanwork of* with market demand for voicebanks as products. You have so many people clamoring for ports and updates of certain voicebanks they like but half of them would not buy it if it existed. I mean, look at Galaco: everyone wanted a publicly purchaseable version of her, they had a whole social media movement to bring her back and when they got what they wanted, crickets. We got a banger 40meterP song out of it and that's it.
I can count the number of letter voices I like on one hand, but the thing is if they really were such poor sellers Dreamtonics would have stopped producing them a long time ago. The fact that they keep pumping them out tells me they must do decently enough to worth it. ** I do not understand how or why either frankly, I do not see the appeal of "nine millionth soft feminine vocal for pop ballads" or "same masculine voice but in cursive this time" but one should not assume that just because the fandom side at large do not care to make many fanworks of a pair of letters, the voicebanks themselves don't sell. The fact that notable producers picked up some of those letter voices is worth noting too: NyanyannyaP made I think at least two originals with Yuma, Ghost made several songs with the letter voices, 3/4th of FLAVOR FOLEY's original discography involves alphabet gang including their biggest hit Butcher Vanity. I saw quite a few originals with Mai, Ryo and Kevin by Japanese producers on niconico too.
I think at the end of the day what I think the alphabet gang really needs are cover art that aren't ugly as sin and look like bootleg Adobe software icons.
*Not even fanwork with, as in making covers/songs/remixes, but of as in fanart and fanfiction where you put them in situations and/or ship them with your other singing blorbos **Now in the interest of fairness it does worth noting that these voices might be relatively low cost to dev for the company: They already own the engine so no extra dev fees up front, their icon is literally just bad photoshop letters so producing the assets neccesary does not require hiring an illustrator, they don't market them much beyond a demo or two and most of the VPs are unnamed session singers (not counting cases like Ninezero and Weina) so no extra cost that comes with hiring a more notable talent. I still think it would take people to actually, y'know, buy the banks to return their investment cause even a low amount of financial cost is cost all the same, so my point stands.
So, I don't have idea why u had access to quote my comment even tho I deleted it way as soon as I posted it, but I guess it has some good remarks that deserves some answers. In general, I don't disagree with a lot of your points (Although u remembered very well about Galaco's situation and she was surprisingly one voicebank that only sold due to her design. It's really buggy and there's not one remarkable original song I remember that uses her, so I think her popularity can be genuinely attached to her design. I mean, it's pretty creative). Kaai Yuki was really only popular due to how much usage she had due to her very unique voice (I mean, a sick child is very unique of a voice design). Miku indeed in fact gained popularity due to Melt and original songs that were created by producers since then, also it helps that Crypton has lots of money and does a really good marketing, specially appealing to the masculine side of the fandom with the whole "Waifu" image they create off Miku. But there are two fundamental points that I think are coming from a place of "fanboyism" from you:
1º - I've never said that designs are FUNDAMENTAL, DETRIMENTAL, EXACTLY WHAT MAKES A VB POPULAR like you imply here " It might secure like a small cult following of people who like the character more than anything, but the simple fact is vocaloid voices get popular the same whay human singers do: Lot's of hits over a sustained period of time". What I said was that it helps and in fact it helps. As I already said, Miku's design may not be the fundamental motive to why she became such an icon, but it's undeniably that if you ever see a hair like hers in a cosplay convention u will end up probably going to think it's Miku, even if it's not a Miku cosplay. Same for banana boy.
You can cry as much as you want that this is not the case, but if I see the letter K I will not think of Kevin bc it's just a letter.
2º - I've never said that characters sells poorly bc they have no design. This one you can be talking generaly to everyone and just happened to have my message marked (Still I don't know how bc I deleted it the moment after I posted it, but okay XD), but yes, you're right, a voicebank don't sells poorly due the lack of design, but design helps to sell more. Pay atention, the designs helping to sell more products doesn't mean automatically that the designless voicebanks sells poorly. One thing don't imply automatically the other. This is basics of logical thinking and argument structure.
Again, what I said is that this whole discussion is kinda unnecessary because design helps to sell vbs. I didn't said it's detrimental, fundamental or designless vbs don't sell bc they don't have vbs. I said it helps to sell, not that it's detrimental.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
