imo the only time where high pitched miku can sound appealing is when she's using a softer tone (patchwork staccato for example)
Unpopular Opinions
- Thread starter TheStarPalace
- Start date
As Bookworm said Ci being more feminine was much of what did it, I believe. I wasn't there for her release and the ensuing controversy. But going back with the benefit of hindsight and seeing people discuss her now, I think the biggest concern was "is this the future of VFlower?" Her fans do love her androgynous design, (she my favorite androgynes person, suck it Bowie) so pushing a new more 'cutesy' design and a 'weaker voice' I'd say people were worried she'd become more broadly marketable at the cost of niche.
I haven't read all the posts here, so I'm unaware if this has been brought up before and if so how recently. I apologize if it has, diminishing the longer it has been sense these opinions have been shared.
With the discontinuation of 'Maika' I've felt inclined to give voice to what is likely an unpopular opinion, particularly in this group. These smaller more indie voice banks are often less popular for a reason. Not that I have anything against indie development on any level, in fact I like it. But how important was Maika to the fandom? Or any other discontinued one?
The issue I'm trying to stab at is this: some hard-core fans (this is the case with all sorts of forms of media, not just here) become fans of lesser-know VB and artists. Which is all well and good, less they adopt an air of superiority, or look down (attempt to at least) on newer fans, or just ones who like more main-stream content. I do of course support new fans finding new parts of the fandom and finding smaller personal gems that they can love, I have my own VB and songs and art that *I* like. But in the same sense in which a fan should look beyond Miku, or any other "basic" VB, they shouldn't be judged if they're their favorite.
And wouldn't it make sense that these VB's that are 'pillars of the community' have more and bigger fans? They have more content, typically more talent backing and making more frequent use of them. And this community this fandom is driven by content: content is created by fans, bringing in (hopefully) more fans to make more content. The process repeats.
This reveals much of the issue I have with those who insist on that "to be a true fan you have to listen to niche VB's!" Sometime there simply isn't enough. I love Adachi Rei, she's great, and all the support she's getting lately is awesome. But it's still nothing compared to Miku, Teto, and the Kagamines. The overwhelming amount of content is part of the reason I love Miku so much; I can't buy an Adachi Rei mug, now can I?
The tone I want to strike here, is *balance,* both the big VB's and the little ones are needed for this fandom if not to exist, at least to feel so alive. And being bent on one side over the other diminishes the whole. So where does Maika fit into this rant? Nowhere in particular, she simply got my mind on the subject.
P.S. This isn't to call out anyone in particular, merely sharing my opinion as a hardline-middle-grounder, in a topic where sometimes extremes can becomes easy to hold.
With the discontinuation of 'Maika' I've felt inclined to give voice to what is likely an unpopular opinion, particularly in this group. These smaller more indie voice banks are often less popular for a reason. Not that I have anything against indie development on any level, in fact I like it. But how important was Maika to the fandom? Or any other discontinued one?
The issue I'm trying to stab at is this: some hard-core fans (this is the case with all sorts of forms of media, not just here) become fans of lesser-know VB and artists. Which is all well and good, less they adopt an air of superiority, or look down (attempt to at least) on newer fans, or just ones who like more main-stream content. I do of course support new fans finding new parts of the fandom and finding smaller personal gems that they can love, I have my own VB and songs and art that *I* like. But in the same sense in which a fan should look beyond Miku, or any other "basic" VB, they shouldn't be judged if they're their favorite.
And wouldn't it make sense that these VB's that are 'pillars of the community' have more and bigger fans? They have more content, typically more talent backing and making more frequent use of them. And this community this fandom is driven by content: content is created by fans, bringing in (hopefully) more fans to make more content. The process repeats.
This reveals much of the issue I have with those who insist on that "to be a true fan you have to listen to niche VB's!" Sometime there simply isn't enough. I love Adachi Rei, she's great, and all the support she's getting lately is awesome. But it's still nothing compared to Miku, Teto, and the Kagamines. The overwhelming amount of content is part of the reason I love Miku so much; I can't buy an Adachi Rei mug, now can I?
The tone I want to strike here, is *balance,* both the big VB's and the little ones are needed for this fandom if not to exist, at least to feel so alive. And being bent on one side over the other diminishes the whole. So where does Maika fit into this rant? Nowhere in particular, she simply got my mind on the subject.
P.S. This isn't to call out anyone in particular, merely sharing my opinion as a hardline-middle-grounder, in a topic where sometimes extremes can becomes easy to hold.
You're not wrong, but I think this is a pretty prevailing opinion among most fans who've been into vsynth for a while. It's even a bit of a running gag that your average fan's Vocaloid phase went "OMG I love Miku!" -> "Ugh, Miku is so overrated, I hate her" -> "OMG I love Miku!"
Unfortunately it just kind of is what it is that most diehard fans of niche and unpopular banks will feel a little jealous at some point, of all the attention and merch that the big popular banks get. But it is also true that the popular ones are popular for a reason, and it makes complete sense to be into them as well. And it's also fine to only be interested in the popular ones and never look into the smaller ones. It's a hobby, the point is to enjoy it however you enjoy it
Re: Maika... Well, Bruno and Clara stayed pretty obscure, but as far as I know Maika actually did get some amount of attention. I really think it's a shame Voctro didn't try to update any of their trio, either to a more recent Vocaloid engine, or even hopping engines to something like SynthV. ES already got Spanish up and going 🥲
It's also a shame that this makes both Spanish and Korean pretty much nonexistent on modern Vocaloid. I'm sure that's not an unpopular opinion though lol
Unfortunately it just kind of is what it is that most diehard fans of niche and unpopular banks will feel a little jealous at some point, of all the attention and merch that the big popular banks get. But it is also true that the popular ones are popular for a reason, and it makes complete sense to be into them as well. And it's also fine to only be interested in the popular ones and never look into the smaller ones. It's a hobby, the point is to enjoy it however you enjoy it
Re: Maika... Well, Bruno and Clara stayed pretty obscure, but as far as I know Maika actually did get some amount of attention. I really think it's a shame Voctro didn't try to update any of their trio, either to a more recent Vocaloid engine, or even hopping engines to something like SynthV. ES already got Spanish up and going 🥲
It's also a shame that this makes both Spanish and Korean pretty much nonexistent on modern Vocaloid. I'm sure that's not an unpopular opinion though lol
I had seem some remarks from people that were half-way through the pipeline recently, so perhaps my hackles are just raised atm.
Literally nobody is saying you HAVE to like niche voicebanks to be a true fan or something. You can like Miku and that's fine! Literally nothing wrong with that (Just don't complain about not getting any content for a popular vsynth because fans of Miku and the other cryptonloids (even meiko and kaito) get much more than other vsynths get).
Sometimes its literally just a lack of marketing that can kill a voicebank. I know several V3 and V4 voicebanks were like that, where the companies barely marketed them (mostly Yamaha. shadow dropping a voicebank doesn't exactly make it successful). I don't think it's on the fault of the voicebank itself that fans don't cling to them like Miku. Some discontinued Vocaloids were ones that were very popular in the fandom at one point, too (like Oliver. He was popular in the Engloid scene in the early 2010s). People who have their favs as the popular voicebanks don't understand how little food these companies give for the less popular/dead voicebanks. That's why it's important for people to show their support for the little guys.
Sometimes its literally just a lack of marketing that can kill a voicebank. I know several V3 and V4 voicebanks were like that, where the companies barely marketed them (mostly Yamaha. shadow dropping a voicebank doesn't exactly make it successful). I don't think it's on the fault of the voicebank itself that fans don't cling to them like Miku. Some discontinued Vocaloids were ones that were very popular in the fandom at one point, too (like Oliver. He was popular in the Engloid scene in the early 2010s). People who have their favs as the popular voicebanks don't understand how little food these companies give for the less popular/dead voicebanks. That's why it's important for people to show their support for the little guys.
The reason is less marketing. That's basically it. It's not for any reason that actually means they're worse.
I'll add that I have experienced both sides of this. On one hand, I LOVE Meiko and Kaito, and have done the thing were I say they get nothing. However, I also love Big Al a lot, and he gets absolutely NOTHING usually.
I think she got attention because of her extra phonemes for other languages, not for being a native Spanish Vocaloid. A shame, because her Spanish is very pretty too, not just her phoneme-edited English or Japanese.
I can't really say I understand this part of the argument. For me, either I like things or I don't - how much content they get has absolutely no bearing on my enjoyment of the thing in question. I think most of the time, saturation of one character or thing sours people's opinions, see: Kasane Teto's popularity and how many people come out of the woodwork just to say they're sick of seeing her everywhere now.
Sometimes Vocaloids just fail... just because. The best example I can think of is probably Mayu, who got included in so many Exit Tunes albums with the Big 8 and IA simply because Exit Tunes owned her and could just do that. She basically had the best setup any non-Cryptonloid could have, and yet she never got super popular despite all the commissioned songs she got. I wouldn't say she's completely unknown or anything, she's definitely more recognizable than most, but I don't believe she's really seeing much usage these days - and I think Maika was in a similar boat (despite not having as much support from her company besides maybe one song contest?).
I've always suspected them putting out Mayu as a super-defined yandere character pigeonholed her too much, while technically you can obviously use a vocaloid for any song I definitely would suspect a super-defined archetype character isn't going to spring to mind as a choice for a more generic song. (For what it's worth in basically every JP vocals case as opposed to Maika, they also had a lot of competition - IA's heavy marketing and popularity in V3 probably choked a lot of other early-mid V3 vocals off early.)
I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but I feel a lot of producers that got popular aren't that great at tuning and mixing the vocals, although now with AI this has improved a lot. This is very sad because these people are extremely talented at producing music but sometimes the vocals are so grating I can't listen to their songs unless it's a cover. And speaking of covers, here's where the opposite is true. Cover artists are one of the most skilled at mixing and tuning vocals and that's why they get popular, after all. Cover artists need to do a good job, not just slap another vocaloid on the song and that's it, because otherwise it just wouldn't be memorable or worth listening over the original.
Now, my opinion is: they just should collab more. Producers already collab amongst themselves for editing, lyrics, illustration and PV, even making different parts of the song. This means that it wouldn't be surprising for a producer to just be like ''hey, amazing cover artist that can tune better than me, could you handle this?''. Songs would improve in quality so much.
Now, my opinion is: they just should collab more. Producers already collab amongst themselves for editing, lyrics, illustration and PV, even making different parts of the song. This means that it wouldn't be surprising for a producer to just be like ''hey, amazing cover artist that can tune better than me, could you handle this?''. Songs would improve in quality so much.
Recently there has been an uptick in doomsaying over the impact of autotuning on vocal synth tuning as an artform. Although I've previously memed on the tuning's imminent death, I believe the reality is more nuanced.
Most people compare autotuning to AI art's negative impact on contemporary artists. However, I think a better comparison for us would be with the impact of mainstream photography on artists during the previous technological revolution. Prior to photography, painting and drawing were a practical requirement for recording reality: essential to all areas of communication, from advertising to documenting world events. As a result, realism was both favoured and actively enforced by various art institutions in Western Europe as a necessity for quality work.
Then, along came photographs. Objective, almost perfect: the quest for realism had suddenly been achieved, and was rapidly becoming widely available. This contributed to a shift in our culture's artistic priorities: freed from the burden of conveying reality, mainstream art transitioned more deeply into a medium of personal expression. It's likely that easy access to realistic images led people to appreciate art in more diverse ways - lack of detail was no longer a flaw, it was impressionistic.
Throughout the era of concatenative vocal synths, tuning was primarily focused on making vocal synths sound more human. The more human they sounded, the more praise was laid upon the tuner. The default sound of vocal synths was perceived as flawed and unpleasant to the ear, with tuning developed as a practical craft to fix those inadequacies. Leaving a vocal synth untuned wasn't looked down upon as an artistic failure, but a technical one, because the public consensus was that untuned vocal synths sounded worse.
Now autotuning has solved the problem tuning was invented to overcome. The natural vibrato, the little scoops, the smoother transitions between syllables - all there by default! Much less time is required to fix up vocal synths to sound acceptable. Whoohoo, workflow speedier.
So tuning, like painting, has lost its practical application, and the craft of making vocal synths sound realistic is becoming obsolete - or at least a lot more niche. But I don't think tuning is under threat as an artform, rather, that our priorities for it are going to shift. We might not need to worry about pitchbends on consonants, but we do still need to consider whether the singer is joyful, or on the edge of tears. Is this the right spot for an enka flourish, does their diction need to be more clipped, or more slurred? Should their voice waver with emotion at the bridge, do they grit their teeth during the intro? Autotuning cannot render tuning obsolete, because the best AI-driven vocal synth is not telepathic. It does not know intent.
Tuning as an expressive medium is more intimidating: the rules are much more flexible, and it's still a nascent craft. The artist must ask themselves what they value, as opposed to scientifically following fixed principles. But to say autotuning threatens tuners' individuality would be to assume the only end goal of personalising a vocal synth is realism. Imagine praising a real singer for simply sounding "like a person": unique human choices form the backbone of every great vocal performance.
Beyond emotive expression, autotuning has raised a question that went relatively unasked throughout the entire concatenative era: do we even want to sound human? After years of demonising untuned voicebanks, I've seen more and more people express nostalgia and fondness for that raw concatenative sound. It's easy to become obsessed with overcoming certain qualities of a technology when those qualities are limitations. Once those same sounds become creative choices, we're able to reappraise them with new appreciation. Autotuning has changed how many of us listen to vocal synths.
This new technology has caused tuning's motto to subtly shift. Where we once asked "how can we make them sound real?", we now ask "how do I want this sung?". To me, that's more freeing, and it sums up why I'm an Autotuning Optimist (tm).
Most people compare autotuning to AI art's negative impact on contemporary artists. However, I think a better comparison for us would be with the impact of mainstream photography on artists during the previous technological revolution. Prior to photography, painting and drawing were a practical requirement for recording reality: essential to all areas of communication, from advertising to documenting world events. As a result, realism was both favoured and actively enforced by various art institutions in Western Europe as a necessity for quality work.
Then, along came photographs. Objective, almost perfect: the quest for realism had suddenly been achieved, and was rapidly becoming widely available. This contributed to a shift in our culture's artistic priorities: freed from the burden of conveying reality, mainstream art transitioned more deeply into a medium of personal expression. It's likely that easy access to realistic images led people to appreciate art in more diverse ways - lack of detail was no longer a flaw, it was impressionistic.
Throughout the era of concatenative vocal synths, tuning was primarily focused on making vocal synths sound more human. The more human they sounded, the more praise was laid upon the tuner. The default sound of vocal synths was perceived as flawed and unpleasant to the ear, with tuning developed as a practical craft to fix those inadequacies. Leaving a vocal synth untuned wasn't looked down upon as an artistic failure, but a technical one, because the public consensus was that untuned vocal synths sounded worse.
Now autotuning has solved the problem tuning was invented to overcome. The natural vibrato, the little scoops, the smoother transitions between syllables - all there by default! Much less time is required to fix up vocal synths to sound acceptable. Whoohoo, workflow speedier.
So tuning, like painting, has lost its practical application, and the craft of making vocal synths sound realistic is becoming obsolete - or at least a lot more niche. But I don't think tuning is under threat as an artform, rather, that our priorities for it are going to shift. We might not need to worry about pitchbends on consonants, but we do still need to consider whether the singer is joyful, or on the edge of tears. Is this the right spot for an enka flourish, does their diction need to be more clipped, or more slurred? Should their voice waver with emotion at the bridge, do they grit their teeth during the intro? Autotuning cannot render tuning obsolete, because the best AI-driven vocal synth is not telepathic. It does not know intent.
Tuning as an expressive medium is more intimidating: the rules are much more flexible, and it's still a nascent craft. The artist must ask themselves what they value, as opposed to scientifically following fixed principles. But to say autotuning threatens tuners' individuality would be to assume the only end goal of personalising a vocal synth is realism. Imagine praising a real singer for simply sounding "like a person": unique human choices form the backbone of every great vocal performance.
Beyond emotive expression, autotuning has raised a question that went relatively unasked throughout the entire concatenative era: do we even want to sound human? After years of demonising untuned voicebanks, I've seen more and more people express nostalgia and fondness for that raw concatenative sound. It's easy to become obsessed with overcoming certain qualities of a technology when those qualities are limitations. Once those same sounds become creative choices, we're able to reappraise them with new appreciation. Autotuning has changed how many of us listen to vocal synths.
This new technology has caused tuning's motto to subtly shift. Where we once asked "how can we make them sound real?", we now ask "how do I want this sung?". To me, that's more freeing, and it sums up why I'm an Autotuning Optimist (tm).
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...To be honest, I actually prefer realistic tuning over "robotic" tuning 9 times outta 10, but there are definitely instances where robotic works better. Also I'm just generally a "the more the merrier" kinda gal, I'll never say no to more options.Brian Eno (Musician and Producer) said:
My unpopular opinion is that as long as I can manually tune the notes in some way, I don't hate the AI engines. SV2 is the only one I actually dislike due to a lack of manual tuning by default. I know that VoiSona and V6 have auto pitch by default, but there's still manual tuning that can override whatever they generate. Just let me tune and I will be chill lol (which is why I'm happy that some SV2 vbs like Iroha are compatible with SV1, so I don't have to touch the other software lol)
ya, i basically agree with all of lili's points
there have always been lazy producers out there who don't touch up the vocals other than inputting the lyrics, and there always will be.
at least now the 'no tuning' you hear for AI voicebanks is merely mediocre, as opposed to the 'this actually sucks ngl' of untuned concat vocals
also i like sv2. i feel like everyone is complaining about it and idk why
also also people who make a show of hating ai voicebanks are annoying ngl. yeah, like what you like, but when you comment on someone's cover that it sucks cause "the robot sound is the charm, now it just sounds boring" or outright calling it "slop", that is just real fucking rude
...yes, i have seen a hit tweet disparaging someone's sv2teto covers with more rude repliers. i know vocatwt is a scourge on planet earth but c'mon
y'know what, this reminds me. people who complain about ai updates of concat vbs also annoy me, bc
1) the synthvs and 2.0 cevioisonas are basically all "the same, but more realistic". like, if you think sv teto doesn't sound like teto, idk what to tell ya
2) all the concat vbs are still there?? they don't just immediately take concat vbs off the market when they make an ai update, you can still buy and use concat vbs if you want, no one's taking them away from you
in general, i feel people who "don't like synthvs because they're all the same" only listened to dreamtonics' demos and The Hit Teto Song Of The Week, bc wdym the engine that has galenaia, hxvoc, cheng xiao, asterian, etc can't do unique voices
there have always been lazy producers out there who don't touch up the vocals other than inputting the lyrics, and there always will be.
at least now the 'no tuning' you hear for AI voicebanks is merely mediocre, as opposed to the 'this actually sucks ngl' of untuned concat vocals
also i like sv2. i feel like everyone is complaining about it and idk why
also also people who make a show of hating ai voicebanks are annoying ngl. yeah, like what you like, but when you comment on someone's cover that it sucks cause "the robot sound is the charm, now it just sounds boring" or outright calling it "slop", that is just real fucking rude
...yes, i have seen a hit tweet disparaging someone's sv2teto covers with more rude repliers. i know vocatwt is a scourge on planet earth but c'mon
y'know what, this reminds me. people who complain about ai updates of concat vbs also annoy me, bc
1) the synthvs and 2.0 cevioisonas are basically all "the same, but more realistic". like, if you think sv teto doesn't sound like teto, idk what to tell ya
2) all the concat vbs are still there?? they don't just immediately take concat vbs off the market when they make an ai update, you can still buy and use concat vbs if you want, no one's taking them away from you
in general, i feel people who "don't like synthvs because they're all the same" only listened to dreamtonics' demos and The Hit Teto Song Of The Week, bc wdym the engine that has galenaia, hxvoc, cheng xiao, asterian, etc can't do unique voices
Are people still saying all synth Vs sound the same? That argument never made sense from the start. They sound like humans. Do they think all human singers sound the same?
Regarding lIlI's points, I'd like to note this ONLY applies to the new AI voicebanks. Tuning will never truly die out, because older Vocaloids and I think all UTAU voicebanks cannot use AI tuning. And even if you do back port AI tuning to them via Utaformatix or something similar, from what I've heard it still doesn't sound as perfect as it does on AI banks, possibly because of the difference between how AI and Concatenative banks work. This ESPECIALLY applies to English Vocaloid voicebanks, as simply editing pitch is not enough to make it instantly sound natural because of the way the language works. You still need to edit things like the phonemes for proper pronunciation, velocity for emphasis, dynamics for crescendo and decrescendo, etc. The other parameters are there for a reason! I don't know as much about UTAU tuning, but I think it's the same there, even for Japanese CV UTAU banks. Actually, especially for CV voicebanks! You can't just edit the pitch and expect a CV JP voicebank to sound perfectly smooth! Anyways, sorry for the rant, I have opinions.
I think that they mean the Dreamtonics ones. Personally, I can't find much of a difference between some of them. They also might mean that SynthVs individually sound the same each time, which I kinda agree with? People seem to like the tamber of SynthV voices, and often don't work to change it to how they want it.