I thought you just put in a random image, until I saw GUMI in the background just chillin... oop
Unpopular Opinions
- Thread starter TheStarPalace
- Start date
Thankfully more and more vocal synth characters are releasing character sheets, which I am very happy for. A lot of game or manga/anime/cartoon characters do not for the most part save for Overwatch, but it only goes up to the characters that launched with the game. And some of these characters have poses that, while are very well done, make it hard to see the design unless you google a picture of them in game or have to find a good screenshot from the show they are from.
This pose is a good example of that. (Wikia does not allow to embed images in a post so I have to link it.)
However, having a good pose can be very good to show of the personality of a character when advertising your product's characters, so I put up with it. I do not really need it for synths since they are blank slates personality-wise for the most part.
Hey, is it just me or does every single preset / pre-made phrase in Vocaloid 5 just sound absolutely terrible? I find it kind of insane how the official Vocaloid YT channel has tutorials like these:
In which they drag clips around where Amy sounds totally plastered and the guy is just like "hmm yes, this sounds good"
Probably not an unpopular opinion at all but I never see anyone talk about this. I don't understand what functional purpose having these drunk pre-made phrases fills either. Maybe Yamaha thinks the edm producer market is deaf?
In which they drag clips around where Amy sounds totally plastered and the guy is just like "hmm yes, this sounds good"
Probably not an unpopular opinion at all but I never see anyone talk about this. I don't understand what functional purpose having these drunk pre-made phrases fills either. Maybe Yamaha thinks the edm producer market is deaf?
I never cared for these phrases either. I always assumed it was for the EDM market as well.
I'd argue it's because it's easy to ignore, if someone doesn't like them they can just not use them.
This is also true, but my main issue is that they've probably used this poorly implemented feature to justify the large price increase from the past editors. If this were an optional downloadable add on, I would have 0 problem with it. It also feels like such a huge waste of resources that could have been better spent on making everything else better.
If I can be honest, I think that has nothing to do with the price increase. And now for an unpopular opinion of my own: the price increase isn’t ludicrous, at least not as bad as people make it out to be. I mean, taking out all of the new features, you’re still getting four VBs right out the gate. For the asking price it’s not bad at all.
That said, I DO wish they had like, V5 Lite, where you can get just the editor without the starters, and the fact that such a thing doesn’t exist is... Not Great.
I guess it really depends on what you're looking for. I can maybe see the appeal in the default 4 v5 voicebanks for some individuals, but I personally really dislike their voices besides maybe Ken's unfortunately
. The fact that there is no v5 lite and that they removed XSY are pretty much just the two biggest things that bother me, otherwise I like what they did with the new attack / release parameters, but I also dislike how they never improved upon the drawing parameter mode like SynthV did. Its a very like/dislike relationship I have with v5.
Ultimately it's just bunch of phrases with effects slapped on top, I can't imagine that took away from resources seeing as they already had to have the voicebanks and effects developed for the engine, if anything it should be criticized for being very obviously a second thought.
You have the right to like or dislike them and judge whether you wanna buy the editor based on those voicebanks but it is still 4 voicebanks and that in the end isn't unreasonable price to be asking for in my opinion, it's just up to you whether you want to spend it or no.I guess it really depends on what you're looking for. I can maybe see the appeal in the default 4 v5 voicebanks for some individuals, but I personally really dislike their voices besides maybe Ken's unfortunately
It's not like V5 hasn't given you any alternatives, the voice color and added and improved parameters, A/R give you more broad control over the voice than previous editors did, it's especially really easy to make voices soft and whispery. Ultimately XSY was really exploitable ( and was by the community ) and encouraged unhealthy practices for VB development ( imo ) and I believe it's important to look at those factors, I believe it's a better move to make the engine itself more capable at manipulating ( any ) voice itself ( like SynthV ) rather than having one feature than many voicebanks were locked out of anyways.
Eleanor Forte sounds SO good in Gen1 SynthV, but she’s lost a great deal of her quality in Studio. And I’m sure it’s just because her Lite port wasn’t tailored for the new engine; I have full faith that her finished bank will sound wonderful. But right now? Hoo boy. I’m not going to touch her again in Studio until we get a full release.
Not an opinion really, but just to add on. In general vocaloid5 (the basic package) is an average price for a music software of its type. But a lot of hobbyists in the community don't have that money to drop on a software especially if they won't use the default voices. I can empathize with both sides of the argument.
For what it's worth I like all the V5 starters, but from a producers perspective not all of them are useful. (eg Kasamura Toota uses Ken and Kaori, but doesn't know English, so Chris and Amy are not useful for them) This is why selling a version of the editor with no voice banks would have been crucial, but I guess yamaha wanted to make it easier for newbies with money. (I remember having to explain a LOT that the editor and voices were separate for V3 & V4. That system confused some people)
On the opinionated side- I like the idea of using one voicebank and being able to edit it a lot during the tuning process to get a certain singing style. The IDEA. Many vocaloids in V2 era and after were made using the "append" principle of making multiple voice banks to be used separately or cross synthesized (in V4's case). I'm not surprised that users didn't like the sudden changes and the lack of XSY. I do agree that people kinda abused XSY, but it was inevitable I think. People have been breaking the vocaloid terms of use for years in many ways. That doesn't mean all the features should go away forever. Synth V was made from the beginning to be an editor more capable of changing the sound of the voices, while the other versions of vocaloid weren't.
For what it's worth I like all the V5 starters, but from a producers perspective not all of them are useful. (eg Kasamura Toota uses Ken and Kaori, but doesn't know English, so Chris and Amy are not useful for them) This is why selling a version of the editor with no voice banks would have been crucial, but I guess yamaha wanted to make it easier for newbies with money. (I remember having to explain a LOT that the editor and voices were separate for V3 & V4. That system confused some people)
On the opinionated side- I like the idea of using one voicebank and being able to edit it a lot during the tuning process to get a certain singing style. The IDEA. Many vocaloids in V2 era and after were made using the "append" principle of making multiple voice banks to be used separately or cross synthesized (in V4's case). I'm not surprised that users didn't like the sudden changes and the lack of XSY. I do agree that people kinda abused XSY, but it was inevitable I think. People have been breaking the vocaloid terms of use for years in many ways. That doesn't mean all the features should go away forever. Synth V was made from the beginning to be an editor more capable of changing the sound of the voices, while the other versions of vocaloid weren't.
Well from late 2018 to 2020, they released periodic updates to add more phrases, and its the continuing marketing point in all of their promo, the time it took to create 2000+ phrases and 100+ presets definitely could have been spent to do literally anything else and it probably would've yielded a better feature.
It is a reasonable price for 4 voicebanks if thats what you are looking for, but it is a totally unreasonable decision to not offer an editor by itself, especially considering that it was an option with past iterations, it is the definition of an anti consumer move. Also, it makes zero sense to me that they pair Ken and Kaori with Amy and Chris if their intention was to focus in on western and japanese music producer demographics separately. And the packages they offer that include non native anime character english voicebanks like Macne Nana eng make even less sense to me... who is it that they are trying to appeal to?
V5 alternatives are okay I guess, and XSY was a messy experimental feature, but I don't think the right solution was to get rid of it. Cross referencing sound sources was such a great way to add more shades of expression for voicebanks that otherwise lacked variety, and I don't think the negatives(?) came close to outweighing the positives. Certain vocaloids like VY1v4 and Iroha V4 sounded their very best with XSY, and I don't think V5 parameters can compare to the same effect that they had in V4. Similarly, I wish V5 had a native "EVEC" system that made referencing alternative note sample sources easier. Crypton is going down the right path with EVEC, and SynthV has the similar "Expression Group" function which GENBU Soft utilizes. The new parameters in V5 are the best that they have ever been for Vocaloid, but they still distort the voice too much for my tastes.
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Also a side note: I always thought the "drama"" pertaining to XSY was way overblown and kind of nonsensical? I guess the only instance where I can see it doing damage to anything, is where there is a financial risk with people being deceived, that can also potentially hurt the Vocaloid brand (stella lol, but I truly believe no one was ever in any real danger because it was extremely obvious she was a fake from the start), but the manipulation of audio software creating an environment where everything has to be weirdly policed is a phenomenon that exists literally nowhere outside the vocaloid community.
Also Yamaha doesn't even care, look at their soundcloud loool
listen to that abomination and tell me with a straight face that they in any way care about what a bunch of weeb teenagers do to their virtual anime girl singers' voices for fun
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well I can explain that: internet made it and they just demoed basically every possible combo they had for no reason.
Consider that the English site is the only version that offers these, and that Nana, Gumi, and Fukase are the only English banks outside of V5 standards/Cybers on the English Vocaloid site.....
Also from what I've heard the preset phrases are actually VERY well used for loop production, which has been one of the biggest market for Vocaloid sales since the beginning so like. Take that as you will. (Even then, I don't think it takes as much time/effort to make them as you'd think it does....)
imo banks that were only good with XSY (the bloated Gumi package, Nana Petit, ArsloidXSY) were an utter scam anyway, i see people complain about them specifically a lot and it's like why did you even buy em
Woah really? Do you know any good uses? I've heard a couple of uses from random producers but I always thought they sounded a little rough. I think Amy especially requires a hard autotuning in a lot of her phrases because for some reason, she sounds off pitch half the time.
The bloated Gumi V4 package is probably the one example I can think of where they really did overdo it, but there are still some good combinations in there, just way too many voicebanks for no good reason. Arsloid struggles because his voicebanks are just low quality to begin with, so yeah. I like that Nana Petit exists as an additional option, but I haven't tried XSYing her yet so I don't really know how that is.
What I can say, is that there are many more good XSY possibilities than bad. VY1, Iroha, Yukari, Una, Kaito, Meiko, Miku, Rin, Len, IA, Gakupo, Gumi, and Fukase all provide stable results with XSYing their additional voicebanks. The key is to use the voicebank with the more stable consonant output as the base voicebank, I've seen uses where users use a softer voicebank as the base and the stronger voicebank to be crossed and that makes the end result sound really distorted. As for the bad XSY voicebanks.. I'd say.. hmm..
Luka XSY is iffy because her V4x voicebanks are iffy. (Her English Soft V4 voicebank is probably the single worst vocaloid voicebank of all time, worse than Sonika because at least they tried with Sonika), VY2+Falsetto is... a thing, Galaco, Nemu/Rion, and Lily V3 are all iffy too because their voicebanks really don't add to each other, but I bet you could still do something interesting with all of them if you really tried.
I bet Haruno Sora Cool / Natural would've been good with XSY..
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So I guess liking Gumi v4’s inbetween vbs is an unpopular opinion then. I actually like having a range of Gumi vbs.
Eh, I like it too. You can choose which voicebanks you don't want to keep installed anyways. Its kind of fun making Gumi not sound like Gumi, its why Gumi Adult is my favorite vb of hers, and you can get some really interesting results if you XSY her with her other random vbs too. Most vocaloids have the issue of not having enough voicebanks or options, so it feels a little dumb to seriously complain about it aha.
It was sudden, ridiculously so, and I can agree with that. That said, because it was so sudden, and since it's so different than the systems we've grown accustomed to regarding Vocaloid, V5's voice editing functions are usually viewed in scorn, and the more I consider it the more unfair it seems. As you said, Vocaloid wasn't tailored to making single voices have a variety of sounds like SynthV, but V5's new features are an attempt to rectify this. Such attempts shouldn't be shot down just because the change was so sudden and drastic and unlike what we'd been used to. Besides, it's a great benefit to single VBs, as we can now do even more to make them sound unique and stand out!
Like Kitsune pointed out, making phrases and presets isn't labor-intensive or even time-consuming. For producers of certain genres like EDM, it's a helpful and quick way to net Yamaha some easy money (and it's important to remember that they're, above all else, a company; they do need to focus on what turns profits, after all). I'd agree with you more if additional phrases were the only thing they put effort into, V5-wise, but V5 has been undergoing updates and changes and fixes through its entire life. Compared to previous engines, I believe it's actually received more updates and has had more poured into it since its release, being so much heavier than V2/3/4.
That's the point that she was making; not necessarily that it's logical to offer that as the only choice, but that, considering you're getting four full VBs along with a jam-packed editor, it's a fair price. A common complaint from producers in the past was that the editors and VBs had to be bought separately post-V2, and while I agree that it could have been executed better, it's a perfectly understandable business move.
Refresh my memory, and apologies for my ignorance, but have you used V5, especially since its launch? Patuk mains V5 and, while she personally loves it, she's happy to discuss it critically and show me the ins, outs, pros, and cons of its features; it's come quite a long way from when I was last able to use it. For example, it's easy to say Iroha sounds her very best with XSY if that's your primary experience with her, but I'd say she benefits just as much from V5's features. We've experimented with her, and we've figured out you can pretty easily substitute Iroha Soft using her Natural and V5's features, resulting in a VB that has her Natural tone but is soft enough for ballads. I feel like you're underestimating just how powerful and stable said features can be once you learn them and work with them.
From personal experience, XSY is best used for cover-ups and transitions: I use it primarily to balance VB traits that I don't want being too prominent. But the gamble with XSY is that you can only control which VB is prominent over the other and by how much. It lacks nuance. With V5 you can iron out the results more than you could with XSY. If the end result is distorted beyond your tastes, you're given a whole range of options to change it, dial it back, tailor it exactly to your liking. (Though ultimately, that's the risk with manipulating VBs, no matter the method. That's true of both V5 and XSY.)
Also! V5 does have an EVEC system of sorts in Attack and Release. They're often tailored to the VBs they come with as well! Granted I'm still learning about all of that, but I've made Patuk abuse various functions for my amusement and education (and, in fact, we've been discussing this on call for a bit while drafting this response), so I love talking about them.
Ultimately, XSY wasn't removed because it was bad, but because a better method was introduced. And speaking as someone who loves and greatly abuses XSY, I really don't think we lost much in losing it.
Again, as Kitsune mentioned, this was just Internet doing random shit because XSY was new and they were having fun with it for the sake of a demo. I don't think for a minute that the abuse of XSY was the sole reason it was removed, as my above comments indicate.
Getting elements of each VB to overlap isn't particularly difficult. Sora has built-in functions to help her transition between her VBs and bring out the best in her.
I'm with you there! I don't think they were all necessary, but damn if some of them aren't just wonderful. I'm impartial to NativeFat and SoftWhisper.
I don't really disagree with any of this really, V5 made some right steps for the demographic its trying to reach, theres even some improvements to how the parameters behave, and I understand why XSY was cut, but I just personally dislike the route Vocaloid has been taking ever since V3. I think I've been spoiled by SynthV, as it has reached everything I've been looking for in a commercial voice synth after Vocaloid laid the foundation.
With the cuts to older features like XSY and job plugins, the lack of any improvement to drawing parameters, the grim future of new voicebank development, the inability to purchase v5 standalone, and the insistence on marketing to a scarce edm producer market primarily (who i frankly believe are better off just purchasing either vocal sample packs from real singers, or plogue's really cool chipspeech for robotic vocals), Vocaloid doesn't feel like its for the voice synth hobbyist anymore, and the edm producers its trying to reach are so few and far between. Also all of the new plugin effects and presets they've added seem kind of pointless to me, considering all of the effects can be run in a DAW after exporting, and are usually of much higher quality and are easier to automate and control with the rest of the mix. The only reason I bought V5 at launch was for the standalone mac support, but other than that I still much prefer using V4 on my windows laptop.
I think the future of promise for Vocaloid has already left Vocaloid itself behind, and it can now be found in the futures of SynthV and CevioAI. I still don't hate V5 at all, especially since its the last thing keeping so many of my favorite voice synth libraries on life support, but Vocaloid has never felt clunkier and more dissatisfying to use for me.
Also, I always thought XSY was super easy to use and fine tune, since you can edit the default singer parameters for both voices in use, on top of using all of the other drawing parameters, on top of the XSY parameter itself. The two biggest issues with XSY imo, were the inconsistencies in some vocals, and the fact that it left many stand alone vocals lacking support of a big new feature, so V5's new implementation was important, but I still don't prefer it lol.
On the topic of XSY being cut from V5, my only real issue with it is that it's not even available to the V4 banks you import. I understand that after the changes they made to how voicebanks are developed and how the new engine works the point was to move away from multiple banks and work toward getting the most versatility out of the samples, but for people who want to keep using their V4s, it's nice to be able to have them working side by side with the new voices and gain access to some of the engines new features.
I think my only real issue with Yamaha (not exclusive to V5) right now is how uh... draconian they are with Vocaloid.
Sora was really obviously meant to be V4 (she was teased almost an entire year before V5 was announced), but AHS wasn't allowed to release her until V5 was out. Sure, you can mess with V5's parameters to smooth out transitions between banks, but it's pretty obvious that AHS didn't really have that in mind - otherwise Sora wouldn't have two banks. Any V3-V4 Vocaloid can utilize V5's parameters too - with V5's high price point and Sora's also high price point because of her two banks (you could just buy one though), it makes her... kinda inaccessible, and that's just a bit sad to me. People might say she's just unpopular, but I honestly think she got a bit screwed over.
(Also Gynoid bragged about the Meikas being "the first third party Vocaloids developed specifically for V5," so. that's a confirmation in itself that Sora wasn't intended for V5)
Sora was really obviously meant to be V4 (she was teased almost an entire year before V5 was announced), but AHS wasn't allowed to release her until V5 was out. Sure, you can mess with V5's parameters to smooth out transitions between banks, but it's pretty obvious that AHS didn't really have that in mind - otherwise Sora wouldn't have two banks. Any V3-V4 Vocaloid can utilize V5's parameters too - with V5's high price point and Sora's also high price point because of her two banks (you could just buy one though), it makes her... kinda inaccessible, and that's just a bit sad to me. People might say she's just unpopular, but I honestly think she got a bit screwed over.
(Also Gynoid bragged about the Meikas being "the first third party Vocaloids developed specifically for V5," so. that's a confirmation in itself that Sora wasn't intended for V5)