Fire your singers folks, Vocaloid 5 is here!

[GearNostalgia]

All I know is this. I can't sing for shit, so I'd be lost without Vocaloid and all this music that I've created would have never gotten made.

Vocaloid has opened up a whole new world for me.

And that makes it a good tool.

[GearNostalgia]

One last thing. Amy and Chris' diction is terrible. No amount of editing is going to fix it.

I get that they couldn't put the amount of time into these stock voices as they did for Cyber Diva and other voices, but really, this is the BEST they could do?

My gut tells me this is going to be $156 thrown out the window.

Right now, very disappointed.

"$156 thrown out the window", so they don't allow any kind of resale/refund/transfer, do they?

[GearNostalgia]

I have been catching up in this thread now and I am not sure if v5 is great or not. One thing that has not been taken up here is if the new version5 have any tools if you want to record and make your own singer. Is it possible now? In v4 it was not possible at all unless you got some special developer license from Yamaha. I am guessing not, but I just want to make sure if I have missed it.

[baggagelizard]

I have been catching up in this thread now and I am not sure if v5 is great or not. One thing that has not been taken up here is if the new version5 have any tools if you want to record and make your own singer. Is it possible now? In v4 it was not possible at all unless you got some special developer license from Yamaha. I am guessing not, but I just want to make sure if I have missed it.

It's still proprietary, but on the other hand, there are more vocal synthesizers coming out in the future that may do that. Of course, there's also the japanese shareware UTAU, where you can record your own voice, but it's pretty much entirely manual. I don't know if Synthesizer V will allow you to make your own voices, but it might be what you're looking for

Testing with Vocaloid 5, I noticed that midis imported into Vocaloid 5 finally retain pitchbend and Volume parameters. This is quite a useful addition.

[Scotty]

The Cubase Editor integrates the Vocaloid engine directly into Cubase... you can view the lyric data within a cubase midi track. It stays in sync with the song playhead. That was version 4... version 4.5 of the Cubase Editor allows it to work with the new vocaloid engine but I don't think it gives access to the prebuilt phrase libraries (perhaps a couple of more control parameters have been added) ... this is what I am trying to determine. I am close to upgrading but if the Cubase Editor doesn't give phrase library access I won't upgrade. IF they add the phrase library support to the Cubase Editor I'll upgrade at that point.

To my ears, and I may be wrong ,it looks like to me the biggest advancements in the vocaloid technology is the phrase library which makes it easier to put together ideas as the library was expertly assembled. Apart from that I don't find the new voice examples to have inherently more human quality - easier editing is helpful for sure. I'll wait for some more reviews before I jump on board. Again... much appreciation for sharing your thoughts and expertise. - Scotty

Wag are you using the Cubase 4.5 editor? My entry into Vocaloid was with the Version 4 Cubase Editor. The website doesn't give a lot of details but it sound like with the Cubase 4.5 editor you can access to the new voices but the pre built phrase libraries aren't present unlike their VST counterparts. Do you have any insight into the cubase 4.5 editor?

Your posted examples have been very helpful. Thanks for this.

I didn't download the 4.5 Editor. I didn't know what it was for. I figured it was just an updated V4. I mean if I'm going to use V5 I'm not going to use V4 too.

Where can I find detailed info on 4.5?

[GearNostalgia]

It's still proprietary, but on the other hand, there are more vocal synthesizers coming out in the future that may do that. Of course, there's also the japanese shareware UTAU, where you can record your own voice, but it's pretty much entirely manual. I don't know if Synthesizer V will allow you to make your own voices, but it might be what you're looking for

Cool, did not know about this software before, but I can't find a developers homepage for it. Got a link?

[chk071]

Regardless that it's not totally realistic, and, obviously, still sounds very robotic: I think it's amazing what a job they did there. I imagine it to be a very, very hard task to get a synthetically produce voice, which you can feed with words and lyrics, to sound remotely similar to a human voice. Of course, the way it sounds makes it pretty limited to certain musical genres. Could imagine it in J-Pop, for example. Don't see much use outside of it (no offense towards people using it in other genres, of course. All up to the composer).

[wagtunes]

Well, I'm trying to do my first complete Vocaloid 5 track but I just can't. This thing is so buggy it's inexcusable. I have my first note at measure 54. It's sounding at measure 49. I'm looking. There's nothing there, but it's registering a note.

I'm done with V5 until they fix it.

[baggagelizard]

Regardless that it's not totally realistic, and, obviously, still sounds very robotic: I think it's amazing what a job they did there. I imagine it to be a very, very hard task to get a synthetically produce voice, which you can feed with words and lyrics, to sound remotely similar to a human voice. Of course, the way it sounds makes it pretty limited to certain musical genres. Could imagine it in J-Pop, for example. Don't see much use outside of it (no offense towards people using it in other genres, of course. All up to the composer).

No problem. I believe Yamaha is focusing on EDM with the marketing, which might be an area where it could shine, if people get used to it. There's always room for improvement.

It's still proprietary, but on the other hand, there are more vocal synthesizers coming out in the future that may do that. Of course, there's also the japanese shareware UTAU, where you can record your own voice, but it's pretty much entirely manual. I don't know if Synthesizer V will allow you to make your own voices, but it might be what you're looking for

Cool, did not know about this software before, but I can't find a developers homepage for it. Got a link?

Synthesizer V
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW6x6EMACbg

UTAU info
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utau

[Vortifex]

..

[wagtunes]

Okay, I made a quick test of all my Vocaloid "artists" in V5. Each track is only 12 seconds and just a few bars.

Here it is.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... oid-5-test

I used the "To The Stars" style for each Vocaloid so they all had the same processing.

This is what I discovered.

For some Vocaloids, the change in character to their voice (arguably an improvement over the original) made it so that I almost couldn't tell who that Vocaloid was. And outside of Amy and Chris (the new ones) I am intimately familiar with each of these Vocaloids, having done hundreds of songs. The good news is, none of them sounded worse, though the new sound (for me anyway) is going to take some getting used to.

For other Vocaloids I noticed no change at all. Their character still shown right through.

Amy and Chris are still my least favorite, though they don't sound as bad as first test.

In short, I don't hate V5 quite as much as when I first opened it up. But the jury is still out as to whether or not I use it exclusively. If Amy and Chris sounded really good, I'd use it for them if nothing else. But, IMO, the quality of their voices is not up to the other Vocaloids.

Out of those, only Avanna and Cyber Songman sounded acceptable to me. The rest had odd quirks with pronunciation. Chris was downright awful.

Chris is an absolute train wreck. But then V5 is a train wreck and I'm sorry I got it. No sync between DAW and editor and I have notes playing where they shouldn't be playing.

I went to the VocaVerse Network Forum to voice my disapproval with this piece of crap software.

[baggagelizard]

Chris probably has some use, but it's not immediately apparent where the voice lies. I think it's trying to be like a spiritual successor to the vocaloid LEON, but the range is different. I can't comment on the DAW functionality as I use vocaloid in standalone mode.

[wagtunes]

Chris probably has some use, but it's not immediately apparent where the voice lies. I think it's trying to be like a spiritual successor to the vocaloid LEON, but the range is different. I can't comment on the DAW functionality as I use vocaloid in standalone mode.

What they probably expect you to do is render your audio in your DAW, then take the audio track and place it in the editor. Do all your vocal editing with the audio track in the editor and then, if you want to go back to using your DAW tracks (in case it's not fully mixed) remove the audio from the editor and then, hopefully, the singing will be sync'd up with your DAW. I haven't tried that and, quite honestly, at this point I don't care enough to. V5 should be a step up in workflow with your DAW. Not a step back. In this case it's multiple steps back.

[Vortifex]

..

[wagtunes]

Chris probably has some use, but it's not immediately apparent where the voice lies. I think it's trying to be like a spiritual successor to the vocaloid LEON, but the range is different. I can't comment on the DAW functionality as I use vocaloid in standalone mode.

What they probably expect you to do is render your audio in your DAW, then take the audio track and place it in the editor. Do all your vocal editing with the audio track in the editor and then, if you want to go back to using your DAW tracks (in case it's not fully mixed) remove the audio from the editor and then, hopefully, the singing will be sync'd up with your DAW. I haven't tried that and, quite honestly, at this point I don't care enough to. V5 should be a step up in workflow with your DAW. Not a step back. In this case it's multiple steps back.

Probably a dumb question Wagtunes, but have you considered singing and using something like Melodyne or Autotune instead? I know you say you can't sing (neither can I) but surely for the vocally challenged like us simply singing and using autotune would sound better than Vocaloid, and be easier too?

:sigh: No.