16 ms·

Vocaloid 6

205 points by brudgers 4y ago

kirbyfan64sos 4y ago
Given how many problems V5 incurred, I wonder how V6 compares, but also how its reception is going to be...
khanan 4y ago
But... but... Melodyne..
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Melodyne is (really great) pitch correction/vocal editing software, while Vocaloid is a vocal synth.
deng 4y ago
As much as I want to dislike this, after hearing some examples, I must admit that it has made quite some progress since the laughable first versions. Of course it falls apart quickly if you hear it solo, but I can absolutely see this used widely for placeholder vocals or background/contract music. And of course in Japan - can please someone explain to me why Japanese electronic musicians seem to be obsessed with artificial singing, although it usually sounds like Mickey Mouse through autotune?
- saynay 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, because it allows one-man production teams. A single person can do everything, without needing to find a vocalist. It allows them to try more stuff quicker and easier, and anything that happened to get popular ends up covered by vocalists anyways (and the producer gets to sell those rights).
  - lidavidm 4y ago
    And a popular enough producer can 'go pro' (n-buna -> Yorushika, or Hachi -> Kenshi Yonezu).
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  I believe it is the democratization of music. Hatsune Miku songs are written and produced by fans. You don’t need to be able to sing, or record instruments. Everyone can join. From Wikipedia: > In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written under the name Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name.
  - deng 4y ago
    Well yes, but from what I can tell, it's a very Japanese phenomenon. This hasn't really caught on in other countries, as far as I know.
    - lidavidm 4y ago
      China has Luo Tianyi, Miku and co have had concerts in the US, and Miku was slated to perform at Coachella: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hatsune-miku-coachella-933263/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hatsune-miku-c... (Admittedly, those are not unlikely all offshoots of the anime/manga/etc. fandom though.)
    - numpad0 4y ago
      It's Nico Nico Douga/nicovideo.jp. There is a unique community and reward mechanism that values technical achievements far more than it does for presentation, and that I think is forcing creators to go way past in skills than what YouTube and many other social media demands. That culture comes as an extension to Japanese anonymous BBS(2ch/futaba), and I find content from those communities to bear abnormally better quality compared to those from the Internet outside.
    - redwall_hp 4y ago
      I can walk into Walmart, FYE or Hot Topic and walk out with Hatsune Miku merchandise. You can't even say that for many popular anime franchises (only stuff like Naruto or Dragonball that's been popular for decades). I've even been to small fan run projection concerts. Vocaloid music has a huge following in the US. It's just a subculture thing and not part of the mainstream sphere...which is a good thing.
- lidavidm 4y ago
  It's kind of an acquired taste - it works better for some kinds of music than others. But I admit I can't stand the English voice because that sounds more obviously wrong to me. I'm not sure you can paint the Japanese music industry like that? It's more like, this gives indie songwriters an easily accessible tool.
  - deng 4y ago
    > I'm not sure you can paint the Japanese music industry like that? I didn't mean to. I was just wondering why Vocaloid is so popular specifically in Japan.
    - lidavidm 4y ago
      Ah ok, sorry. No clue there, other than the software also being developed there.
    - kyazawa 4y ago
      I think J-Pop in general tends to create interest through composition (fast and complex chord changes, syncopated melodies with lots of movement) compared to Western pop, which tends to create interest through vocal performance. The characteristics of J-Pop mesh really well with Vocaloid where the voice itself is not that interesting to listen to but you have more composition possibilities for fast tempos or wide pitch ranges that wouldn't be possible with a human singer.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  There are also other versions of similar tech like Cevio (https://cevio.jp https://cevio.jp) which can handle both singing and speech. It can sound a lot more realistic and has the 'gimmick' of making voicebanks for various popular people in Japan. Often the differences in the software generated result compared to the person's voice are down to their tuning preferences rather than technical limitations (on a side note, Cevio uses RNNs while IIRC the original Vocaloids used to concatenate voice clippings and smooth out the transitions using some fourier space tricks, I'm not aware of how modern Vocaloid works but it wouldn't be too surprising if they too use deep learning). It initially became a thing in Japan because Japanese has fewer phonemes than most mainstream languages, so it was easier to make. Then it gained popularity for the cute characters and the freedom it gave to people who would go on to be music composers. Many popular Japanese composers got their start making and uploading Vocaloid songs on Youtube/NicoNico. On top of that, they have had a series of well designed rhythm games on several platforms for decades now which were pretty popular. These days they have a fairly popular mobile gacha/gambling game too. Nostalgia is probably also a big driving force since many people grew up with either the music or the games. These days it's still pretty popular within the anime fanbase outside Japan. Pre-Covid there used to be a vocaloid concert series every year which would alternate between Europe and US tours. The reason it hasn't gone too much more mainstream is likely that English and related languages have thousands of phonemes, so making a good voicebank is significantly harder.
nine_k 4y ago
It's refreshing that the demo in the video is done not on a Mac but on a Windows machine.
_chu1 4y ago
The unintentional marketing effect of the Vocaloid characters (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len) is phenomenal. I want to buy and use Vocaloid itself just because those characters are cute
- krapp 4y ago
  It's very intentional.
  - _chu1 4y ago
    50/50, I'm sure they would've liked the characters to catch on with people, but they grew way more than I'm sure Yamaha ever thought they would internationally even. Weebs everywhere love Miku and don't even know she's from audio software by Yamaha
    - smegsicle 4y ago
      like their targeted advertising collaboration with dominos, known to be the favored pizza of audio professionals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s
      - astrange 4y ago
        Being true to who you are makes all your dreams possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8
      - krapp 4y ago
        Related (and of interest to HN) - the effort to save the Hatsune Miku Dominos app[0], the quest to track down Scott Oelkers, President of Dominos Pizza Japan (featured in the ad)[1] and interview [2]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs
    - 4y ago
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
mjr00 4y ago
Vocaloid has the name brand from being old, and Hatsune Miku, but at this point Synthesizer V has completely blown it out of the water. SOLARIA[0] in particular came out in January and, to my ears, sounds significantly better than any of the demo tracks for V6. There's also been a number of AI voicebanks for SynthV like Natalie that came out in the past few months which have sounded way better than the V6 demo tracks. Vocaloid was the only real competitor in vocal synths for so long they completely stopped innovating. Very IE6-esque. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf2a2so86uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf2a2so86uw
- hooverd 4y ago
  I do wonder if Vocaloid is like Xerox now. People will hear a SynthV produced song and think "wow, cool Vocaloid".
- zigzag312 4y ago
  I agree. And Synthesizer V v1.8.0 has just been released with diffusion probabilistic models, which improve the quality even further.
  - mjr00 4y ago
    Wow, nice, thanks, I hadn't seen that yet. The DPM demo sounds awesome. I absolutely love that Synth V is still pushing things forward, despite already being so significantly ahead of the competition.
    - zigzag312 4y ago
      There's a mega-thread about Synth V with numerous demos on vi-control forum[1]. The progress Synth V has made in just one year is really impressive. [1]: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/synthesizer-v-vocaloid-haters-might-want-to-check-this.115973/ https://vi-control.net/community/threads/synthesizer-v-vocal...
- hatsunearu 4y ago
  This is quite frustrating to see as someone who has been in the Vocaloid fandom since '08 and maintains a pretty sizable Vocaloid community. The "realism" of Vocaloid is not exactly a priority--a lot of people enjoy the robotic sounding voice. Making ridiculous statements like "blow it out of the water" really rubs me the wrong way of the typical techbro looking for objective KPIs instead of what the general vibe of the fandom. To me, this is like saying "DAWs blows physical instruments out of the water because it can create a lot more sounds!"--you're right, but you're totally missing the point. Here's a KPI: nobody is making music from Synthesizer V, and it's not exactly very popular. > Vocaloid was the only real competitor in vocal synths for so long they completely stopped innovating. Very IE6-esque. This is probably the only fair argument here. The Vocaloid editor has always been quite difficult to use, and recent competitors in that space has made improvements to it. Hatsune Miku's new release moves away from Vocaloid in favor of a Piapro/Crypton voice engine with a better editor, for instance.
moth-fuzz 4y ago
The new V6 vocaloids even with the AI expressiveness still sound very much like vocaloids. There's a specific timbre to the way they pronounce certain vowels or do odd formant shifts that always comes through that I'm unsure of if it's intentional or not - on one hand it's very signature, on the other hand it doesn't sound quite as 'realistic'. As far as the iconic characters go, they're moving to an entirely different engine (Piapro NT) anyways, so I wonder how future works created using them will sound.
- mjr00 4y ago
  Agreed. I wonder how much of it is intentional; one of the common complaints I see from Synth V users is that none of the voice banks, except maybe Eleanor Forte, have that synthetic, "vocaloid-y" sound. Maybe they know they can't compete on realism, so they're leaning into the signature sound?
  - hooverd 4y ago
    Solaria sounds like a well tuned Vocaloid.
    - joe-collins 4y ago
      Solaria can be very good. There's a song, Dawn by Circus-P, that I've used on a few occasions to startle people with its apparent authenticity. It exhibits an unnatural range, but there are only a couple of moments (unfortunately, near the start) where the pronunciation sounds clearly artificial if you know what you're listening for.
- hooverd 4y ago
  Huh, even really good tuning has that quality. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxIuAWX7Ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxIuAWX7Ws
- megiddo 4y ago
  Check out Synthesizer V with Eleanor Forte. Synth V is extremely fast and the output is shockingly good with some tweaking - good enough to be indistinguishable for many people.
ArtWomb 4y ago
Hacking on GPU Wavelets at the moment for time series. Multiresolution autocorrelation seems like it should be near instantaneous. And then, that opens up not just pitch correction, but "shifting peaks" ;) Efficient Pitch Detection Techniques for Interactive Music https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~pdelac/PitchDetection/icmc01-pitch.pdf https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~pdelac/PitchDetection/icmc01-pit... New Phase-Vocoder Techniques For Pitch-Shifting, Harmonizing and other Exotic Effects https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/LaroD99-pvoc.pdf https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/LaroD99-pvoc.pdf
boomskats 4y ago
Ya ya ya. I am lorde. Ya ya ya. (I think they missed a trick not using Randy Marsh[0] for their marketing) All jokes aside, I will throw serious money at the first streaming service that implements an 'autotuned' tag, and lets me filter anything tagged with it out of my stream. Like, $100 a month. Maybe more. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMJ5GSC37g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMJ5GSC37g
- mjr00 4y ago
  > I will throw serious money at the first streaming service that implements an 'autotuned' tag, and lets me filter anything tagged with it out of my stream. Well, I hope you don't like listening to any music made after ~2010, then. Melodyne is completely standard for any modern vocal processing, in all genres of music.
  - boomskats 4y ago
    > in all genres of music I get where you're coming from. I remember Celemony announcing their polyphonic tuning engine a little over a decade ago, and remember buying it as soon as it came out and re-tuning a load of Imogen Heap tunes and loving it, in something like Reaper v2. I know how prevalent Melodyne is, I know the commercial and production related justifications for its use. But I also know for a fact that this is not the case 'in all genres of music'. Sometimes, I want to listen exclusively to music with real vocals. I love the first CHVRCHES album, it's one of my favourite albums of the last decade. As it happens, it took me ages, a couple of years, to figure out that the reason I liked it as much as I did was the lack of autotune. I (ironically) figured this out when they released their second album which _did_ utilise autotune. I never made it all the way through listening to that second album.
    - mjr00 4y ago
      I guarantee that the music you're listening to that has "real vocals" has used Melodyne, you just don't notice it. Even if the artist themselves thinks they didn't use it, if they worked with a professional mixing/mastering engineer, they likely did vocal correction without the singer's knowledge. You may as well say "I don't listen to music that uses EQ" or "I don't listen to music that uses compressors."
nbzso 4y ago
La la la. What a mess. First all the music industry will collapse under A.I. lords, and then maybe people will start to search human made music. All the stats about the rise of the old music are supporting my claim:) Young people, invest in your talents, with analogue processes in mind. This will be a huge market.
- hooverd 4y ago
  It takes talent to make Vocaloid tracks sound like more than another riff on World is Mine.
- nulld3v 4y ago
  I always thought the main appeal of Vocaloid was it's signature robotic sound. If you want to synthesize more realistic sounding voices there are better options.
  - redwall_hp 4y ago
    And it's an instrument like any other. It doesn't magically write lyrics and a melody for you, it doesn't mix, and it certainly doesn't sound great without a good ear for the different parameters and EQing. It takes a lot of skill to make music with vocaloid.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  Yeah, if you're not rich enough to be able to hire a full choir and orchestra, you don't deserve to write songs for more than one person.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > First all the music industry will collapse under A.I. lords The purpose seems as usual to get rid of as many human musicians/singers they can so that everything can be made by a single person (or AI in a few years), therefore saving money. In a different context, the transition from multi elements bands to one man bands with keyboard, then finally karaoke, in many cases is motivated by costs as well.
abetusk 4y ago
Can someone point to a good open source alternative for vocaloid? I know of Sinsy [0] but I couldn't get it working. eCantorix [1] is very old and rudimentary (it uses espeak underneath [2]). Searching just now I see OpenUtau [3] but I have no experience with it. Seems crazy there isn't a good FOSS solution for this. [0] http://www.sinsy.jp/ http://www.sinsy.jp/ [1] https://github.com/divVerent/ecantorix https://github.com/divVerent/ecantorix [2] https://espeak.sourceforge.net/ https://espeak.sourceforge.net/ [3] https://github.com/stakira/OpenUtau https://github.com/stakira/OpenUtau
- sporkl 4y ago
  I haven't used it much but OpenUtau (under active development) has been nice. Cross-platform, automatically handles internationalization issues, and the phenomizer system is very nice. Works well with the free multilingual Kumi Hitsuboku voicebank[0]. Also has integration with NNSVS (neural net based vocal synthesizer) and the entire UTAU ecosystem. I would say this is the good FOSS solution! [0]: https://cubialpha.wixsite.com/koomstar https://cubialpha.wixsite.com/koomstar
- fullstop 4y ago
  My daughter has both OpenUtau and Vocaloid 5. She tends to use OpenUtau more, although I don't know why.
  - hatsunearu 4y ago
    the vocaloid editor is notorious for being really hard to use.
- userbinator 4y ago
  GNUspeech can sing too: https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/extra-synthesis-examples/pat-a-pan.html https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/extra-synthesis-example...
- bearmode 4y ago
  OpenUtau is the main one if I recall correctly, used to be really into this stuff as a teenager. Not sure how things have changed in the 15ish years since
regular 4y ago
kyazawa 4y ago
I went from Vocaloid hater to fan in the span of this year. There are Japanese Vocaloid producers who are pushing the boundaries of pop music in a way that wouldn't be possible with a real singer. I've never come across anything like this music in the West. Definitely an acquired taste. My Vocaloid song recommendation: Ungray Days by the producer Tsumiki. Tsumiki creates a sharp, aggressive sound that is disagreeable at first but really addictive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E
- Semaphor 4y ago
  > disagreeable at first but really addictive. Nope, certainly stays disagreeable to me. I wonder what makes people enjoy weird stuff in so many different ways. I might not like this, but I enjoy white noise artist Merzbow [0] or breakcore from Drumcorps [1] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przphi3RjeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przphi3RjeE [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXEzn43VITM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXEzn43VITM
  - antiterra 4y ago
    I think people who have never heard Merzbow are likely going to misunderstand your post as being dismissive rather than understanding of either opinion. As a small form of resistance to the surveillance state I partake in, I have taught kids to ask any nearby personal assistants to play woodpecker #2 and they find it hilarious.
- empressplay 4y ago
  This is a geeky song I did in English using Vocaloid singers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k8EOBL75o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k8EOBL75o Not great, not terrible.
- oidar 4y ago
  Ungray Days slightly reminds me of oneohtrix point never.
  - 4y ago
oolonthegreat 4y ago
now I know what simcard nano uses for their radiohead covers! I have always wondered where did those vocals come from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApL1d_OQYk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApL1d_OQYk4
inputError 4y ago
pantulis 4y ago
Cannot help but remember the lyrics of "Video Killed the Radio Star" They took the credit for your second symphony / Rewritten by machine and new technology
midislack 4y ago
Is there any Vocaloid music that isn’t cheesy pop music? I know of some by Hosono, that’s about it.
- dtn 4y ago
  Mikgazer is a pretty popular shoegaze album. There's plenty, but they're a bit harder to find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPYqrVDlc_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPYqrVDlc_4
- Cloudef 4y ago
  Yuyoyuppe, Utsu-P, Okame-P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sybi0z3Eltw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sybi0z3Eltw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2hfzn66P4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2hfzn66P4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSGCpxkJsVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSGCpxkJsVI
brap 4y ago
It took me like 5 minutes to understand what the product does. Why do so many landing pages NOT TELL YOU WHAT THE DAMN THING IS? Are we just expected to know? >VOCALOID6 is an AI-based technology created by Yamaha to fully support the musical expressiveness of creators from all perspectives, offering an even more natural singing voice than ever before together with unprecedented freedom to express your vocal ideas. This product lets you express your ideas on the spot in vocal form while producing music. What does this even mean? It reads like GPT-3 output.
- Lammy 4y ago
  It's software that sings for you. You may have seen the stable of characters marketed around the software, like Hatsune Miku https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSnKX7kAgIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSnKX7kAgIc
  - brap 4y ago
    Thanks, I did figure this out eventually, I’m just frustrated that it took me watching the video and scrolling through the landing page for a while until I got it. “Software that sings for you” is a great explanation, which should have been right there at the top of the landing page instead of that endless stream of buzzwords.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- user- 4y ago
  Ever heard of Hatsune Miku? https://youtu.be/jhl5afLEKdo?t=65 https://youtu.be/jhl5afLEKdo?t=65 Its just voice synthesizing
- lmm 4y ago
  "This product lets you express your ideas on the spot in vocal form while producing music." sounds pretty direct to me. If they'd said "this is a voice synthesizer" you'd complain that they were just expecting you to know what that is.
mastazi 4y ago
Youtuber "Doctor Mix" recently used it for a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, it was interesting watching how he put it to use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkgxhK91kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkgxhK91kk
yoro46 4y ago
6?! Last time I checked anything Vocaloid it was barely on 3 and most people were still using v2 vocaloids. I'm getting old :(
IvanGoneKrazy 4y ago
The (now) Netflix series "Bee & Puppycat: Lazy In Space" features a character (Puppycat) who's voiced by Vocaloid.
IAmGraydon 4y ago
That demo video sounds like a complete mess. I have no idea about the product, but that is one terrible first impression.
Open-Sourcery 4y ago
I agree with a lot of people in this thread, vocaloid music can be really great and a lot of the great music takes advantage over the slightly robotic or unusual sounds it can produce. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M92c6pl10u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M92c6pl10u0). But it almost never actually sounds human, my favourite example is very good but still not quite there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QoqcsrRgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QoqcsrRgc) I have recently found Synth V, which uses AI trained on a singer and it can produce shockingly good results. It can also still used to produce similar sounds to vocaloids as well. Here are some of my favourite Synth V covers and songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU_CG_FF6WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU_CG_FF6WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKOSQGKn5Cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKOSQGKn5Cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShG8Ij6_Hbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShG8Ij6_Hbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXv_vKX6Y-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXv_vKX6Y-0
- hatsunearu 4y ago
  The near-universal understanding in the fandom is that Vocaloid is a not a replacement for human voice, nor is it really aiming to be some sort of faithful emulation of it; rather it is "its own thing", like how a Piano isn't an emulation of human voice, nor is a DAW a replacement for a guitar or whatever.
  - Open-Sourcery 4y ago
    But for those that wanted an artificial singer, as far as I know there weren't really any more realistic sounding alternatives. It's nice now that instead of spending so much effort tuning vocaloids to sound realistic there is an alternative. And knowing the limitations of vocaloid never stopped anyone from trying. Mitchie M is a great example.
labrador 4y ago
I don't like Nickelback because of the vocal processing. It annoys me. I watched the vocaloid.com video. It also annoyed me. It pretends to emotion but lacks it.
spyder 4y ago
Huh, it was cool when vocaloid was released but at this point I would expect more with all the different AI improvements available. For example DiffSinger sounds better (but not perfect). It's using diffusion model like the popular AI image generators. I cannot find English demos but these are not too bad: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av599316695/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/av599316695/ (unmute the player) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ0wNFZGECo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ0wNFZGECo (bad mixing but the voice is still better than vocaloid) code and huggingface demo: https://github.com/MoonInTheRiver/DiffSinger https://github.com/MoonInTheRiver/DiffSinger https://huggingface.co/spaces/Silentlin/DiffSinger https://huggingface.co/spaces/Silentlin/DiffSinger and other techniques (demos at bottom): https://r9y9.github.io/projects/nnsvs/ https://r9y9.github.io/projects/nnsvs/ Of course these are not complete user friendly softwares but I would expect Vocaloid would have something like these implemented.
- bearmode 4y ago
  Vocaloid isn't really meant to sound real, though. At least, that's not what the users or fans particularly care about.
ge96 4y ago
Random comment Saw a cool device recently (it's old) called Pocket Miku
masteruvpuppetz 4y ago
My daughter discovered this music genre a year ago and ever since we're listening to vocaloids in the car. It's alright but being non Japanese speakers, we don't really feel what the true experience this genre really is. Maybe that'll change in future when more people make music.

Vocaloid 6

205 points by brudgers 4y ago

kirbyfan64sos 4y ago

Given how many problems V5 incurred, I wonder how V6 compares, but also how its reception is going to be...

khanan 4y ago

But... but... Melodyne..

CharlesW 4y ago
Melodyne is (really great) pitch correction/vocal editing software, while Vocaloid is a vocal synth.

deng 4y ago

As much as I want to dislike this, after hearing some examples, I must admit that it has made quite some progress since the laughable first versions. Of course it falls apart quickly if you hear it solo, but I can absolutely see this used widely for placeholder vocals or background/contract music. And of course in Japan - can please someone explain to me why Japanese electronic musicians seem to be obsessed with artificial singing, although it usually sounds like Mickey Mouse through autotune?

saynay 4y ago
As far as I can tell, because it allows one-man production teams. A single person can do everything, without needing to find a vocalist. It allows them to try more stuff quicker and easier, and anything that happened to get popular ends up covered by vocalists anyways (and the producer gets to sell those rights).
- lidavidm 4y ago
  And a popular enough producer can 'go pro' (n-buna -> Yorushika, or Hachi -> Kenshi Yonezu).
wodenokoto 4y ago
I believe it is the democratization of music. Hatsune Miku songs are written and produced by fans. You don’t need to be able to sing, or record instruments. Everyone can join. From Wikipedia: > In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written under the name Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name.
- deng 4y ago
  Well yes, but from what I can tell, it's a very Japanese phenomenon. This hasn't really caught on in other countries, as far as I know.
  - lidavidm 4y ago
    China has Luo Tianyi, Miku and co have had concerts in the US, and Miku was slated to perform at Coachella: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hatsune-miku-coachella-933263/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hatsune-miku-c... (Admittedly, those are not unlikely all offshoots of the anime/manga/etc. fandom though.)
  - numpad0 4y ago
    It's Nico Nico Douga/nicovideo.jp. There is a unique community and reward mechanism that values technical achievements far more than it does for presentation, and that I think is forcing creators to go way past in skills than what YouTube and many other social media demands. That culture comes as an extension to Japanese anonymous BBS(2ch/futaba), and I find content from those communities to bear abnormally better quality compared to those from the Internet outside.
  - redwall_hp 4y ago
    I can walk into Walmart, FYE or Hot Topic and walk out with Hatsune Miku merchandise. You can't even say that for many popular anime franchises (only stuff like Naruto or Dragonball that's been popular for decades). I've even been to small fan run projection concerts. Vocaloid music has a huge following in the US. It's just a subculture thing and not part of the mainstream sphere...which is a good thing.
lidavidm 4y ago
It's kind of an acquired taste - it works better for some kinds of music than others. But I admit I can't stand the English voice because that sounds more obviously wrong to me. I'm not sure you can paint the Japanese music industry like that? It's more like, this gives indie songwriters an easily accessible tool.
- deng 4y ago
  > I'm not sure you can paint the Japanese music industry like that? I didn't mean to. I was just wondering why Vocaloid is so popular specifically in Japan.
  - lidavidm 4y ago
    Ah ok, sorry. No clue there, other than the software also being developed there.
  - kyazawa 4y ago
    I think J-Pop in general tends to create interest through composition (fast and complex chord changes, syncopated melodies with lots of movement) compared to Western pop, which tends to create interest through vocal performance. The characteristics of J-Pop mesh really well with Vocaloid where the voice itself is not that interesting to listen to but you have more composition possibilities for fast tempos or wide pitch ranges that wouldn't be possible with a human singer.
dotnet00 4y ago
There are also other versions of similar tech like Cevio (https://cevio.jp https://cevio.jp) which can handle both singing and speech. It can sound a lot more realistic and has the 'gimmick' of making voicebanks for various popular people in Japan. Often the differences in the software generated result compared to the person's voice are down to their tuning preferences rather than technical limitations (on a side note, Cevio uses RNNs while IIRC the original Vocaloids used to concatenate voice clippings and smooth out the transitions using some fourier space tricks, I'm not aware of how modern Vocaloid works but it wouldn't be too surprising if they too use deep learning). It initially became a thing in Japan because Japanese has fewer phonemes than most mainstream languages, so it was easier to make. Then it gained popularity for the cute characters and the freedom it gave to people who would go on to be music composers. Many popular Japanese composers got their start making and uploading Vocaloid songs on Youtube/NicoNico. On top of that, they have had a series of well designed rhythm games on several platforms for decades now which were pretty popular. These days they have a fairly popular mobile gacha/gambling game too. Nostalgia is probably also a big driving force since many people grew up with either the music or the games. These days it's still pretty popular within the anime fanbase outside Japan. Pre-Covid there used to be a vocaloid concert series every year which would alternate between Europe and US tours. The reason it hasn't gone too much more mainstream is likely that English and related languages have thousands of phonemes, so making a good voicebank is significantly harder.

nine_k 4y ago

It's refreshing that the demo in the video is done not on a Mac but on a Windows machine.

_chu1 4y ago

The unintentional marketing effect of the Vocaloid characters (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len) is phenomenal. I want to buy and use Vocaloid itself just because those characters are cute

krapp 4y ago
It's very intentional.
- _chu1 4y ago
  50/50, I'm sure they would've liked the characters to catch on with people, but they grew way more than I'm sure Yamaha ever thought they would internationally even. Weebs everywhere love Miku and don't even know she's from audio software by Yamaha
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    like their targeted advertising collaboration with dominos, known to be the favored pizza of audio professionals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s
    - astrange 4y ago
      Being true to who you are makes all your dreams possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8
    - krapp 4y ago
      Related (and of interest to HN) - the effort to save the Hatsune Miku Dominos app[0], the quest to track down Scott Oelkers, President of Dominos Pizza Japan (featured in the ad)[1] and interview [2]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs
  - 4y ago

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

mjr00 4y ago

Vocaloid has the name brand from being old, and Hatsune Miku, but at this point Synthesizer V has completely blown it out of the water. SOLARIA[0] in particular came out in January and, to my ears, sounds significantly better than any of the demo tracks for V6. There's also been a number of AI voicebanks for SynthV like Natalie that came out in the past few months which have sounded way better than the V6 demo tracks. Vocaloid was the only real competitor in vocal synths for so long they completely stopped innovating. Very IE6-esque. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf2a2so86uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf2a2so86uw

hooverd 4y ago
I do wonder if Vocaloid is like Xerox now. People will hear a SynthV produced song and think "wow, cool Vocaloid".
zigzag312 4y ago
I agree. And Synthesizer V v1.8.0 has just been released with diffusion probabilistic models, which improve the quality even further.
- mjr00 4y ago
  Wow, nice, thanks, I hadn't seen that yet. The DPM demo sounds awesome. I absolutely love that Synth V is still pushing things forward, despite already being so significantly ahead of the competition.
  - zigzag312 4y ago
    There's a mega-thread about Synth V with numerous demos on vi-control forum[1]. The progress Synth V has made in just one year is really impressive. [1]: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/synthesizer-v-vocaloid-haters-might-want-to-check-this.115973/ https://vi-control.net/community/threads/synthesizer-v-vocal...
hatsunearu 4y ago
This is quite frustrating to see as someone who has been in the Vocaloid fandom since '08 and maintains a pretty sizable Vocaloid community. The "realism" of Vocaloid is not exactly a priority--a lot of people enjoy the robotic sounding voice. Making ridiculous statements like "blow it out of the water" really rubs me the wrong way of the typical techbro looking for objective KPIs instead of what the general vibe of the fandom. To me, this is like saying "DAWs blows physical instruments out of the water because it can create a lot more sounds!"--you're right, but you're totally missing the point. Here's a KPI: nobody is making music from Synthesizer V, and it's not exactly very popular. > Vocaloid was the only real competitor in vocal synths for so long they completely stopped innovating. Very IE6-esque. This is probably the only fair argument here. The Vocaloid editor has always been quite difficult to use, and recent competitors in that space has made improvements to it. Hatsune Miku's new release moves away from Vocaloid in favor of a Piapro/Crypton voice engine with a better editor, for instance.

moth-fuzz 4y ago

The new V6 vocaloids even with the AI expressiveness still sound very much like vocaloids. There's a specific timbre to the way they pronounce certain vowels or do odd formant shifts that always comes through that I'm unsure of if it's intentional or not - on one hand it's very signature, on the other hand it doesn't sound quite as 'realistic'. As far as the iconic characters go, they're moving to an entirely different engine (Piapro NT) anyways, so I wonder how future works created using them will sound.

mjr00 4y ago
Agreed. I wonder how much of it is intentional; one of the common complaints I see from Synth V users is that none of the voice banks, except maybe Eleanor Forte, have that synthetic, "vocaloid-y" sound. Maybe they know they can't compete on realism, so they're leaning into the signature sound?
- hooverd 4y ago
  Solaria sounds like a well tuned Vocaloid.
  - joe-collins 4y ago
    Solaria can be very good. There's a song, Dawn by Circus-P, that I've used on a few occasions to startle people with its apparent authenticity. It exhibits an unnatural range, but there are only a couple of moments (unfortunately, near the start) where the pronunciation sounds clearly artificial if you know what you're listening for.
hooverd 4y ago
Huh, even really good tuning has that quality. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxIuAWX7Ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxIuAWX7Ws
megiddo 4y ago
Check out Synthesizer V with Eleanor Forte. Synth V is extremely fast and the output is shockingly good with some tweaking - good enough to be indistinguishable for many people.

ArtWomb 4y ago

Hacking on GPU Wavelets at the moment for time series. Multiresolution autocorrelation seems like it should be near instantaneous. And then, that opens up not just pitch correction, but "shifting peaks" ;) Efficient Pitch Detection Techniques for Interactive Music https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~pdelac/PitchDetection/icmc01-pitch.pdf https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~pdelac/PitchDetection/icmc01-pit... New Phase-Vocoder Techniques For Pitch-Shifting, Harmonizing and other Exotic Effects https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/LaroD99-pvoc.pdf https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/LaroD99-pvoc.pdf

boomskats 4y ago

Ya ya ya. I am lorde. Ya ya ya. (I think they missed a trick not using Randy Marsh[0] for their marketing) All jokes aside, I will throw serious money at the first streaming service that implements an 'autotuned' tag, and lets me filter anything tagged with it out of my stream. Like, $100 a month. Maybe more. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMJ5GSC37g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMJ5GSC37g

mjr00 4y ago
> I will throw serious money at the first streaming service that implements an 'autotuned' tag, and lets me filter anything tagged with it out of my stream. Well, I hope you don't like listening to any music made after ~2010, then. Melodyne is completely standard for any modern vocal processing, in all genres of music.
- boomskats 4y ago
  > in all genres of music I get where you're coming from. I remember Celemony announcing their polyphonic tuning engine a little over a decade ago, and remember buying it as soon as it came out and re-tuning a load of Imogen Heap tunes and loving it, in something like Reaper v2. I know how prevalent Melodyne is, I know the commercial and production related justifications for its use. But I also know for a fact that this is not the case 'in all genres of music'. Sometimes, I want to listen exclusively to music with real vocals. I love the first CHVRCHES album, it's one of my favourite albums of the last decade. As it happens, it took me ages, a couple of years, to figure out that the reason I liked it as much as I did was the lack of autotune. I (ironically) figured this out when they released their second album which _did_ utilise autotune. I never made it all the way through listening to that second album.
  - mjr00 4y ago
    I guarantee that the music you're listening to that has "real vocals" has used Melodyne, you just don't notice it. Even if the artist themselves thinks they didn't use it, if they worked with a professional mixing/mastering engineer, they likely did vocal correction without the singer's knowledge. You may as well say "I don't listen to music that uses EQ" or "I don't listen to music that uses compressors."

nbzso 4y ago

La la la. What a mess. First all the music industry will collapse under A.I. lords, and then maybe people will start to search human made music. All the stats about the rise of the old music are supporting my claim:) Young people, invest in your talents, with analogue processes in mind. This will be a huge market.

hooverd 4y ago
It takes talent to make Vocaloid tracks sound like more than another riff on World is Mine.
nulld3v 4y ago
I always thought the main appeal of Vocaloid was it's signature robotic sound. If you want to synthesize more realistic sounding voices there are better options.
- redwall_hp 4y ago
  And it's an instrument like any other. It doesn't magically write lyrics and a melody for you, it doesn't mix, and it certainly doesn't sound great without a good ear for the different parameters and EQing. It takes a lot of skill to make music with vocaloid.
YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
Yeah, if you're not rich enough to be able to hire a full choir and orchestra, you don't deserve to write songs for more than one person.
squarefoot 4y ago
> First all the music industry will collapse under A.I. lords The purpose seems as usual to get rid of as many human musicians/singers they can so that everything can be made by a single person (or AI in a few years), therefore saving money. In a different context, the transition from multi elements bands to one man bands with keyboard, then finally karaoke, in many cases is motivated by costs as well.

abetusk 4y ago

Can someone point to a good open source alternative for vocaloid? I know of Sinsy [0] but I couldn't get it working. eCantorix [1] is very old and rudimentary (it uses espeak underneath [2]). Searching just now I see OpenUtau [3] but I have no experience with it. Seems crazy there isn't a good FOSS solution for this. [0] http://www.sinsy.jp/ http://www.sinsy.jp/ [1] https://github.com/divVerent/ecantorix https://github.com/divVerent/ecantorix [2] https://espeak.sourceforge.net/ https://espeak.sourceforge.net/ [3] https://github.com/stakira/OpenUtau https://github.com/stakira/OpenUtau

sporkl 4y ago
I haven't used it much but OpenUtau (under active development) has been nice. Cross-platform, automatically handles internationalization issues, and the phenomizer system is very nice. Works well with the free multilingual Kumi Hitsuboku voicebank[0]. Also has integration with NNSVS (neural net based vocal synthesizer) and the entire UTAU ecosystem. I would say this is the good FOSS solution! [0]: https://cubialpha.wixsite.com/koomstar https://cubialpha.wixsite.com/koomstar
fullstop 4y ago
My daughter has both OpenUtau and Vocaloid 5. She tends to use OpenUtau more, although I don't know why.
- hatsunearu 4y ago
  the vocaloid editor is notorious for being really hard to use.
userbinator 4y ago
GNUspeech can sing too: https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/extra-synthesis-examples/pat-a-pan.html https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/extra-synthesis-example...
bearmode 4y ago
OpenUtau is the main one if I recall correctly, used to be really into this stuff as a teenager. Not sure how things have changed in the 15ish years since

regular 4y ago

kyazawa 4y ago

I went from Vocaloid hater to fan in the span of this year. There are Japanese Vocaloid producers who are pushing the boundaries of pop music in a way that wouldn't be possible with a real singer. I've never come across anything like this music in the West. Definitely an acquired taste. My Vocaloid song recommendation: Ungray Days by the producer Tsumiki. Tsumiki creates a sharp, aggressive sound that is disagreeable at first but really addictive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E

Semaphor 4y ago
> disagreeable at first but really addictive. Nope, certainly stays disagreeable to me. I wonder what makes people enjoy weird stuff in so many different ways. I might not like this, but I enjoy white noise artist Merzbow [0] or breakcore from Drumcorps [1] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przphi3RjeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przphi3RjeE [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXEzn43VITM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXEzn43VITM
- antiterra 4y ago
  I think people who have never heard Merzbow are likely going to misunderstand your post as being dismissive rather than understanding of either opinion. As a small form of resistance to the surveillance state I partake in, I have taught kids to ask any nearby personal assistants to play woodpecker #2 and they find it hilarious.
empressplay 4y ago
This is a geeky song I did in English using Vocaloid singers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k8EOBL75o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k8EOBL75o Not great, not terrible.
oidar 4y ago
Ungray Days slightly reminds me of oneohtrix point never.
- 4y ago

oolonthegreat 4y ago

now I know what simcard nano uses for their radiohead covers! I have always wondered where did those vocals come from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApL1d_OQYk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApL1d_OQYk4

inputError 4y ago

pantulis 4y ago

Cannot help but remember the lyrics of "Video Killed the Radio Star" They took the credit for your second symphony / Rewritten by machine and new technology

midislack 4y ago

Is there any Vocaloid music that isn’t cheesy pop music? I know of some by Hosono, that’s about it.

dtn 4y ago
Mikgazer is a pretty popular shoegaze album. There's plenty, but they're a bit harder to find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPYqrVDlc_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPYqrVDlc_4
Cloudef 4y ago
Yuyoyuppe, Utsu-P, Okame-P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sybi0z3Eltw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sybi0z3Eltw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2hfzn66P4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2hfzn66P4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSGCpxkJsVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSGCpxkJsVI

brap 4y ago

It took me like 5 minutes to understand what the product does. Why do so many landing pages NOT TELL YOU WHAT THE DAMN THING IS? Are we just expected to know? >VOCALOID6 is an AI-based technology created by Yamaha to fully support the musical expressiveness of creators from all perspectives, offering an even more natural singing voice than ever before together with unprecedented freedom to express your vocal ideas. This product lets you express your ideas on the spot in vocal form while producing music. What does this even mean? It reads like GPT-3 output.

Lammy 4y ago
It's software that sings for you. You may have seen the stable of characters marketed around the software, like Hatsune Miku https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSnKX7kAgIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSnKX7kAgIc
- brap 4y ago
  Thanks, I did figure this out eventually, I’m just frustrated that it took me watching the video and scrolling through the landing page for a while until I got it. “Software that sings for you” is a great explanation, which should have been right there at the top of the landing page instead of that endless stream of buzzwords.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
user- 4y ago
Ever heard of Hatsune Miku? https://youtu.be/jhl5afLEKdo?t=65 https://youtu.be/jhl5afLEKdo?t=65 Its just voice synthesizing
lmm 4y ago
"This product lets you express your ideas on the spot in vocal form while producing music." sounds pretty direct to me. If they'd said "this is a voice synthesizer" you'd complain that they were just expecting you to know what that is.

mastazi 4y ago

Youtuber "Doctor Mix" recently used it for a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, it was interesting watching how he put it to use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkgxhK91kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkgxhK91kk

yoro46 4y ago

6?! Last time I checked anything Vocaloid it was barely on 3 and most people were still using v2 vocaloids. I'm getting old :(

IvanGoneKrazy 4y ago

The (now) Netflix series "Bee & Puppycat: Lazy In Space" features a character (Puppycat) who's voiced by Vocaloid.

IAmGraydon 4y ago

That demo video sounds like a complete mess. I have no idea about the product, but that is one terrible first impression.

Open-Sourcery 4y ago

I agree with a lot of people in this thread, vocaloid music can be really great and a lot of the great music takes advantage over the slightly robotic or unusual sounds it can produce. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M92c6pl10u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M92c6pl10u0). But it almost never actually sounds human, my favourite example is very good but still not quite there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QoqcsrRgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QoqcsrRgc) I have recently found Synth V, which uses AI trained on a singer and it can produce shockingly good results. It can also still used to produce similar sounds to vocaloids as well. Here are some of my favourite Synth V covers and songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU_CG_FF6WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU_CG_FF6WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKOSQGKn5Cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKOSQGKn5Cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShG8Ij6_Hbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShG8Ij6_Hbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXv_vKX6Y-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXv_vKX6Y-0

hatsunearu 4y ago
The near-universal understanding in the fandom is that Vocaloid is a not a replacement for human voice, nor is it really aiming to be some sort of faithful emulation of it; rather it is "its own thing", like how a Piano isn't an emulation of human voice, nor is a DAW a replacement for a guitar or whatever.
- Open-Sourcery 4y ago
  But for those that wanted an artificial singer, as far as I know there weren't really any more realistic sounding alternatives. It's nice now that instead of spending so much effort tuning vocaloids to sound realistic there is an alternative. And knowing the limitations of vocaloid never stopped anyone from trying. Mitchie M is a great example.

labrador 4y ago

I don't like Nickelback because of the vocal processing. It annoys me. I watched the vocaloid.com video. It also annoyed me. It pretends to emotion but lacks it.

spyder 4y ago

Huh, it was cool when vocaloid was released but at this point I would expect more with all the different AI improvements available. For example DiffSinger sounds better (but not perfect). It's using diffusion model like the popular AI image generators. I cannot find English demos but these are not too bad: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av599316695/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/av599316695/ (unmute the player) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ0wNFZGECo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ0wNFZGECo (bad mixing but the voice is still better than vocaloid) code and huggingface demo: https://github.com/MoonInTheRiver/DiffSinger https://github.com/MoonInTheRiver/DiffSinger https://huggingface.co/spaces/Silentlin/DiffSinger https://huggingface.co/spaces/Silentlin/DiffSinger and other techniques (demos at bottom): https://r9y9.github.io/projects/nnsvs/ https://r9y9.github.io/projects/nnsvs/ Of course these are not complete user friendly softwares but I would expect Vocaloid would have something like these implemented.

bearmode 4y ago
Vocaloid isn't really meant to sound real, though. At least, that's not what the users or fans particularly care about.

ge96 4y ago

Random comment Saw a cool device recently (it's old) called Pocket Miku

masteruvpuppetz 4y ago

My daughter discovered this music genre a year ago and ever since we're listening to vocaloids in the car. It's alright but being non Japanese speakers, we don't really feel what the true experience this genre really is. Maybe that'll change in future when more people make music.