Unpopular Opinions

[sketchesofpayne]

I admit I've only heard Oliver in duets. But he sounds pretty good in the Talkaloid skits I've seen him in! (That one made me laugh so hard.)

I wonder if you can get Oliver to do a range of accents from around the UK?

 

[ikaroll]

Sonika’s samples were presumably provided by an adult, or at least not a child, so the fact that she came out the way she did is perplexing, even to this day.

Wasn’t SONiKA voiced by a late teenager? And didn’t Zero G mess with the samples or something? That’s why I always thought she sounded weird

 

[Leon]

Re: the Oliver quality debate, I actually feel the opposite. But ofc this is the Unpopular Opinions thread and you're allowed to hold whatever opinions you want, so please don't take this as me coming after anyone who agrees with it. On that principle, my opinion is spoilered below :>

blap

When I didn't own him and only knew him through his posts on YT, I thought he was so awful. Low quality, muffly, not terribly understandable, all that. But after I bought and messed around with him for a bit I found that he actually takes to phoneme edits really well, and can get a nicely fluid sound semi-easily. None of his phonemes are so fucked that I have to spend time experimenting with different combos to make one word sound "right", type deal. And yeah, he's not very clear -- he is muffled, but it's salvageable. Sonika is definitely worse in this aspect. Use some nice EQ on Oliver in your mix and he's fine. It blew my mind when I got my hands on him, but I guess it kind of makes sense. Because Oliver was so popular so quickly, I think a lot of younger and/or inexperience users bought him first-ish, and so it makes sense that he has a lot of "eh" quality uses online. You can't fault users who are still learning for not being perfect right off the bat. And in his defense, even a lot of long-time Engloid users still don't phoneme edit (or don't do very much), which doesn't flatter the banks any more if the sound quality is already questionable jasdlf;
But yeah. Child's softness paired with not-terribly-crisp mic recording aside, he's a pretty solid bank. On par with other PFX banks. Not as good as Avanna or Cyva, who are probably still the best quality Engloids we got. He's average.

On the other hand...
I adore Sonika but she is probably the worst quality Vocaloid we have, period. Her phonemes are strange and she's muffled and has a lot of background noise. I mean, Sonika has a lot of like? Artifacts. Such as the infamous "Skype sound". You have to edit every word if you want a fluid, understandable (without subtitles) sound from her, and overall just put more work into making her sound good. And then you have to deal with mixing her muffled ass. Again. LOVE Sonika. One of the first handful of banks I bought, and I've done plenty of fanart and all that jazz. But she's just not good

 

[sketchesofpayne]

you have to deal with mixing her muffled ass.

Is that a euphemism I'm not aware of? j/k

 

[ikaroll]

On the same note, I think Sonika is more understandable than Miku. At least with Sonika, I don’t have to apply as many filters to the voice to get her to sound clearer over the music. Miku English is a pain to work with (I know Miku english being terrible is a popular opinion, but when an older engloid manages to sound better-)

I do wish Sonika didn’t have such a horrible reputation. She really is my favorite engloid to use (she was the first Vocaloid I bought, so maybe I’m just used to her muffledness that its ruined other English Vocaloids for me fjhbjhkfb)

 

[___]

Here to elaborate on stuff and share more opinions~

1st I am really happy to find out Rei isn't a port! And since my previous opinion was heavily based on that assumption that turned out to be untrue I have another opinion to make up for it

If IA eng were released in the V5 era instead of V4 era ( even tho it happened at the end of it iirc ) she would've been far more positively recieved and on the contrary, if Rei were released in the V4 era she would've been more heavily criticized. I don't think the treatment both IA eng and Rei are receiving is entirely fair.

And since it was mentioned in the above comment, yea my unpopular opinion is that Miku eng ( V4 ) is made out to be a worse engloid than she actually is lol, she's pretty MQ.

 

[ruffe]

I feel like Miku Eng (V4) is actually pretty nice to work with, if you‘re willing to deal with some odd phonemes here and there! Miku being less understandable isn’t such a big deal for me. On the contrary, I find a lot of really understandable vocals are very TTS-esque in their delivery, which turns me off (it also sacrifices expressiveness).

I do wish VOCALOID took hints from other synths and updated their reclists to make them a little smoother/natural with less phoneme editing. I will say that I don’t mind Vocaloid English in it's current state (V5 definitely helped), I just wish it was a little better.

 

[Leon]

Oh here may be an unpopular opinion? I dunno, but I think that the reclists and programming for English Vocaloids aren't even that bad, but that the default English dictionary is awful and half of what leads to some people hearing a default Engloid sing for the first time and going "oh ew"

 

[DefiantKitsune]

this might also be unpopular, but based on the banks we have I really don't think SV or CeVIO are any better with english - they have the same weird notes older engloids do (IA Eng doesn't have a few but adds a bunch more, which makes sense with how cevio works. )

 

[KingPapillon]

I think Miku English V4 specifically can sound pretty nice if you make her sing simple soft songs within her range. She can easily sound super unnatural and strained when she is made to sing lower in the piano roll, as many users might be inclined to do if they make her sing more traditional American pop songs.

As far as Sonika is concerned, I think she is so terribly low in quality, that making her sing regular pop Vocaloid songs isn't the best way to use her for me. She has an endearing accent and timbre when she isn't being held back by her many, many, voicebank issues. Instead, I think she makes a cool robotic sample vocal.

No matter how heavily she is edited, Sonika 100% sounds like a robot when she "sings", so I think using that to her advantage is the best way to use Sonika.

I guess a side opinion coming off of this is that no matter how "bad" a voicebank is, I think every single voicebank can be used to create something really cool, so every Vocaloid has their untapped potential in that way. They are just sounds being resampled after all.

See more

Not all voicebanks are worth the money it takes to buy them though

 

[mobius017]

I might not have enough experience to offer a really valid opinion, but my assessment of Miku V4 English is that she sounds pretty decent out of the box. I agree with @luwo--the most prevalent issue is that some of her phonemes sound weird and require manual phoneme replacement to fix, whether that's because you want her to use a consistent accent (like some other Engloids, she seems to use a mix of British and American pronunciations, so sometimes you have to fix that), or just because the default dictionary doesn't give her a good pronunciation for whatever reason...which I'd think is the case for pretty much every synth in one way or another. Outside of that, I think there's the possibility that tuning can make her pronunciation worse...but that's just my theory since I'm generally ok with how she sounds when I use her, and I haven't really tuned much yet. It's one of the things I still want to grow into doing.

Not sure if this is unpopular or not, but I consider Miku V4 English to be an improvement over V3 English. At least, issues I've encountered in V3 haven't been present in V4. V3 has helped me with some pronunciation stuff, though, via XSY, and I'm sure the different timbre could help with giving her a lower sound.

She can easily sound super unnatural and strained when she is made to sing lower in the piano roll, as many users might be inclined to do if they make her sing more traditional American pop songs.

Definitely agree with this--Miku doesn't like going lower than her advertised range, but I feel like she would hold up ok if pushed a little above it.

 

[Ronny777]

It seems like people like to hate on miku's english VB but honestly she's my favourite to work with. I know she's not exactly the "Plug and Play" type of vocal synth to work with but thats what makes her versatile. Everyone that works with her make her sound different. I don't get that same uniqueness from any other voice I've worked with. I know her pronunciations aren't "good" but I don't feel like you're supposed to use the default dictionary anyway. I'm probaly just biased because I almost only use her and I've gotten used to using workarounds. Honestly, Its really satisfying to put 3-5 vowel phoneme together until you get the exact pronunciation you want and still have a clear and undisturbed flow. Her consonants were a pain to work with until I realized I could interchange them to get better or softer results like (g) and (k), (t) and (d), (p) and( b), (l) and (r).

 

[peaches2217]

It seems like people like to hate on miku's english VB but honestly she's my favourite to work with. I know she's not exactly the "Plug and Play" type of vocal synth to work with but thats what makes her versatile. Everyone that works with her make her sound different. I don't get that same uniqueness from any other voice I've worked with. I know her pronunciations aren't "good" but I don't feel like you're supposed to use the default dictionary anyway. I'm probaly just biased because I almost only use her and I've gotten used to using workarounds. Honestly, Its really satisfying to put 3-5 vowel phoneme together until you get the exact pronunciation you want and still have a clear and undisturbed flow. Her consonants were a pain to work with until I realized I could interchange them to get better or softer results like (g) and (k), (t) and (d), (p) and( b), (l) and (r).

Truth be told, I'm a strong supporter of her V4 English because it's the very first Vocaloid I ever worked with. I remember throwing together a song with her trial and thinking "That was surprisingly easy! And she sounds so good!", and that was before I even knew how to edit phonemes. I get the criticisms of her, but I've honestly never had the issues with her that everyone else seems to have.

 

[ruffe]

I think it's universally agreed upon in the fandom that Miku’s V4 Eng is a massive step up from her V3—Her tone, pronunciation, and overall quality is so much more pleasing! I can see why people would use her for XSY (tonally and pronunciation wise) though, and I'm surprised I didn't consider it sooner hhhh.

I find Macne Nana Eng to be rather similar to Miku in some of those regards, but I think it’s much easier to let certain pronunciation issues slide when it comes to non-native speakers—especially non-english speakers like Saki Fujita (correct me if I'm wrong lol). Hell, I even recall someone saying they find the accented vocals charming in a voice bank, which is neat!

 

[ThatGirlMyra]

She's not a favourite of mine, but Chika has my favourite box art and style of any Vocaloid. My second favourite is Miriam, strangely.

 

[Kona]

I dunno how much of a minority I am here, but wen it comes to Vocaloids moving to different engines, I don't mind that they don't sound "different." I'm actually happy that they don't. And I kinda think a lot of the wanting it to sound different is more or less just having different expectations of how dramatic an engine change would be.

For example, when it comes to Yukari REi, I'm happy she sounds close to Yukari, because it IS just Yukari on CeVIO. I really don't know or understand what people were expecting, but I don't think I would be happy if she didn't sound like Yukari...because it IS Yukari.
It almost feels backwards to me thinking back to IA's CeVIO releases, and the, to my memory, mixed reactions of IA English not sounding exactly like IA's Vocaloid voicebanks.
I guess I'm just a little...different thinking, but i'm excited for Yukari Rei, especially considering Ih ave been excited for this CeVIO update for...since I knew about it basically. And honestly, I ave wanted Yukari and might just consider getting REi over her Vocaloid VBs so I can give myself more of a reason to use CeVIO than just for IA and ONE haha

And to add another opinion here,
As much as I like their voices, I really don't like using Dex and Daina all that much. They just feel so different than all the other Vocaloids I own, and it's so hard for me to use them...

 

[___]

I really don't know or understand what people were expecting, but I don't think I would be happy if she didn't sound like Yukari...because it IS Yukari.

I don't think people would have had any of those expectations if said voicebanks were mere ports, but they're not, they're using a newly popularized sampling method that's been shown to usually produce different sounding and behaving product, being this new exciting technology is the selling point...or a part of it. Gonna keep my biases away from this, just explaining where some people's expectations might have come from. Ofc saying you're okay with/want them to sound like their sample-based counterparts is fine.

 

[Ronny777]

As much as I like their voices, I really don't like using Dex and Daina all that much. They just feel so different than all the other Vocaloids I own, and it's so hard for me to use them...

Yeah, to me they sound much louder then every other vocaloid. They can can be intimidating if you put them in a vsqx that wasn't tuned specifically for them.

I dunno how much of a minority I am here, but wen it comes to Vocaloids moving to different engines, I don't mind that they don't sound "different." I'm actually happy that they don't. And I kinda think a lot of the wanting it to sound different is more or less just having different expectations of how dramatic an engine change would be.

For example, when it comes to Yukari REi, I'm happy she sounds close to Yukari, because it IS just Yukari on CeVIO. I really don't know or understand what people were expecting, but I don't think I would be happy if she didn't sound like Yukari...because it IS Yukari.
It almost feels backwards to me thinking back to IA's CeVIO releases, and the, to my memory, mixed reactions of IA English not sounding exactly like IA's Vocaloid voicebanks.

I don't think people would have had any of those expectations if said voicebanks were mere ports, but they're not, they're using a newly popularized sampling method that's been shown to usually produce different sounding and behaving product, being this new exciting technology is the selling point...or a part of it. Gonna keep my biases away from this, just explaining where some people's expectations might have come from. Ofc saying you're okay with/want them to sound like their sample-based counterparts is fine.

The main thing that stands out to me is that she is Called Yukari "Rei" not just Yukari. Giving her the name Rei immediately tells the public that she is a new persona like her other VBs (JUN, ON and LIN). It would be a different story if she looked the same as her original design as well.

 

[Kona]

The main thing that stands out to me is that she is Called Yukari "Rei" not just Yukari. Giving her the name Rei immediately tells the public that she is a new persona like her other VBs (JUN, ON and LIN). It would be a different story if she looked the same as her original design as well.

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. To me, I just kinda considered it as Rei is just an identifier for "CeVIO Yukari" not really intended to be different than the other Yukari VBs, just trying to keep the same naming conventions and be uniform (Yukari Jun, Lin, Onn, and Rei rather than Yukari Jun, Lin, Onn, and CeVIO). I guess in a way, I thought of it similar to how AHS puts "Natural" on Yuki, Miki, and Zunko, but it's completely uneded because they don't have any other voicebanks that would warant them needing the "Natural" label.

 

[___]

I wrote a long ass essay about this but ultimately I am better at expressing my thoughts visually: