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Is Vocaloid ever on sale?

kessel

kessel

wagakki-electro-otaku
Hi,

I've been thinking a couple of times about making use of vocaloid on some songs but I wasn't really impressed by how it sounds in the past.

Looking at the newest Vocalic 6 version it seems like it's finally getting better and I could imagine making some good use of it, but honestly I find its price quite expensive for what it does.

I know, depending on what use you make of this it could be even seen as a cheap price, it's a point of view thing, but as it's not my case I wonder if it gets some good sales every now and then. All I could find was a 15% discount on a black friday, which I find ridiculous.
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Sounds very good, nice demo. I'll try that for sure.

I don't own a Mac but the good news is that EMVoice is publishing the windows version on April 14th, I'll definitely check that out too, only bad thing is they only have one voice so far
 
I got it on sale at some point so the literal answer to your question is yes. But I'd never choose it over, say, Realivox Blue. That said I'm on an old version and never upgraded. In fact I think I never even installed it.

Just searched my emails: Vocaloid3 AVANNA purchased from Zero-G webshop, $65 back in 2013. Still same version selling today. I should install it and give it a try!

Also, this is not 'full' Vocaloid which is up to 5 now. Not sure they ever discount full Vocaloid. But demos still aren't blowing me away.
 
667 said:
I got it on sale at some point so the literal answer to your question is yes. But I'd never choose it over, say, Realivox Blue. That said I'm on an old version and never upgraded. In fact I think I never even installed it.

Just searched my emails: Vocaloid3 AVANNA purchased from Zero-G webshop, $65 back in 2013. Still same version selling today. I should install it and give it a try!

Also, this is not 'full' Vocaloid which is up to 5 now. Not sure they ever discount full Vocaloid. But demos still aren't blowing me away.
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Yes, the voice in the video at the main page on their website sounds pretty good to me, but the demos not as good, so I guess I'll have to do some more research on Vocaloid before even considering buying it. BTW, I think I've seen in their website that there is a lower price for upgrades so maybe that would be interesting for you in case you want to use it at some point.
 
Vocaloid Editor is rarely if ever on sale; individual voices from various developers sometimes are. I vaguely remember Zero-G having something for theirs.

In general, I think it's a lot of work to get a usable vocal, but for short simple vocals it can be faster and easier than arranging a recording session with a human singer. About a 15-second vocal is probably the break-even point typically, I'd guess, though of course it'll vary a lot depending on how natural the vocal needs to sound and how complex the expression is. Vocaloid 5 does include some nice note start and note end ornamantations that help with getting all R&Bish, that's probably the biggest step forward with version 4.

And yeah, Alter/Ego is free, but probably even more work to get it to sound natural. I made one of the voices for that, in the interest of full disclosure. The big difference from the other synths is that it's possible to enter the lyrics first, then play in the part including MIDI CCs in realtime, which could be a plus for people around here. Vocaloid (and Synthesizer V, not sure about Emvoice) need the notes first, and aren't playable in realtime, but that means they can look ahead and compensate for the duration of syllable starts and phoneme transitions. That make it much, MUCH less work to get the timing right.

I've used Alter/Ego for legato vowels or weird abstract noises in songs produced for human singers. And for some memey stuff with growled vocals. So I'm not really a big user.
 
For those who want to try Emvoice One, the beta is now available for PC (32 and 64 bits) and Mac (Sierra at least) on our website (can't post the link here)
It's got a new text editor and improved speed. Let me know what you think! (I'm the founder of Emvoice)
 
rodyy said:
For those who want to try Emvoice One, the beta is now available for PC (32 and 64 bits) and Mac (Sierra at least) on our website (can't post the link here)
It's got a new text editor and improved speed. Let me know what you think! (I'm the founder of Emvoice)
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Hey Rodyy, I tried it last weekend on windows 10 using Reason as my DAW and I liked it, it is pretty easy to get some nice results and the UI is also easy to understand.

As constructive criticism or more likely personal wishes I'd say the app could have some nicer up-to-date UI in terms of design and of course more than just one singer but or a beta I found it pretty good.
 
kessel said:
Hey Rodyy, I tried it last weekend on windows 10 using Reason as my DAW and I liked it, it is pretty easy to get some nice results and the UI is also easy to understand.

As constructive criticism or more likely personal wishes I'd say the app could have some nicer up-to-date UI in terms of design and of course more than just one singer but or a beta I found it pretty good.
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Thanks kessel, you're right that the UI needs a better design. We'll take care of that before commercial launch. Also, we're working on new voices now, both natural (male) and synthetic.
 
Nice to see you post here. Singing synthesizers aren't the most efficient things to either create or use, compared to instruments, but that's what makes them so interesting. We've evolved to detect things that aren't quite right in human voices very well, so it's always going to be a challenge. But the potential is immense, and a lot of research remains to be done.
 
DSmolken said:
Nice to see you post here. Singing synthesizers aren't the most efficient things to either create or use, compared to instruments, but that's what makes them so interesting. We've evolved to detect things that aren't quite right in human voices very well, so it's always going to be a challenge. But the potential is immense, and a lot of research remains to be done.
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Absolutely, they're hard to use because there's a lack of proper controllers for voice synths, and a piano keyboard doesn't really work. The best controller could be... the user's own voice.
And yes, we're all highly efficient at telling a real human voice from a fake one. We all know exactly how it sounds, unlike other instruments (few people really know what an oboe sounds like for example, for lack of a direct experience being in a room with someone playing oboe)
 
rodyy said:
Absolutely, they're hard to use because there's a lack of proper controllers for voice synths, and a piano keyboard doesn't really work. The best controller could be... the user's own voice.
And yes, we're all highly efficient at telling a real human voice from a fake one. We all know exactly how it sounds, unlike other instruments (few people really know what an oboe sounds like for example, for lack of a direct experience being in a room with someone playing oboe)
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I wonder how a Roli Seaboard or the Expressive E Touche SE work with Vocaloid and EMVoice, but that could be a nice combination.
 
kessel said:
I wonder how a Roli Seaboard or the Expressive E Touche SE work with Vocaloid and EMVoice, but that could be a nice combination.
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Playing voices in real time is problematic.

That's because the vowel needs to arrive when the note changes. So if you've got something like this:

A strong beat

Note by note, it's actually broken up as:

A str | ong b | eat

That is, the consonants are part of the prior note.

When you play in real time, the software doesn't know when you're going to change the note. So as a performer, you need compensate for this and hit the notes a bit early so the consonants will have time to sounds and the vowel will land on the beat.

The other problem is the expressiveness of the synthesis. At this point, you can basically choose between synthesized vocals, which are expressive but clearly not human, or sampled data, which is more realistic, but have less expressive parameters that can be tweaked when re-synthesizing.

For some fun with expressive vocals, check out Pink Trombone.
 
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To work quickly and well, what do you recommend? Realivox Blue or Emvoice One (knowing that Realivox Blue is currently on promotion).
 
Akcel said:
To work quickly and well, what do you recommend? Realivox Blue or Emvoice One (knowing that Realivox Blue is currently on promotion).
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depends on the type/genre of music.. and how deep you want to go.

emvoice is very very very good for a synthesized singer. not robotic, but human sounding. Ofcourse this is to do with proper edits of the phasing and such you would do in the editor.
But still it's the best in synthesized vocals, way better than vocaloid

Blue is a diva, based on real samples of a singer. So it is human (non synthesized), but also "unhuman" in the sense of combinating vowels and consonants (aka wordbuilding). It's missing the connecting "glue" sound a human has, because it's recorded seperately instead of a phrase or a full word. It is quite good, still.. and easier to use than emvoice overall
 
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currently v5 is on sale.
as to the vocal bank, it is company based sale, for example, if zero-G is on sale the banks that developed by zero-g will be on sale.
 
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