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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

by 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.
- mjr00 4y ago
  I didn't mean to sound so negative on Vocaloid. For what it's worth, I'm a producer who used to make songs with Vocaloid (Gumi English) and switched to SynthV this year, so I'm speaking mainly from that perspective. Vocaloid can still make great songs. I'm a big fan of all of the NEXTLIGHT artists (picco, Twinfield, etc) in particular. Certainly not trying to dunk on the fandom or artists. However, I do think that it's a lot more limited in what it can do. The voices in Vocaloid sound quite synthetic, and there's only so far you can go if you're not going for a stereotypical "Vocaloid-sounding" vocal. IMO, Synth V can get pretty close to the Vocaloid sound with Eleanor Forte, but in addition can also produce some much more realistic-sounding vocals, especially with Solaria, Eleanor AI, or the newer Dreamtronics AI voicebanks. People are making music with Synth V! Check out AIKA who has made some amazing songs using Synth V.

by mjr00 4y ago

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.

mjr00 4y ago
I didn't mean to sound so negative on Vocaloid. For what it's worth, I'm a producer who used to make songs with Vocaloid (Gumi English) and switched to SynthV this year, so I'm speaking mainly from that perspective. Vocaloid can still make great songs. I'm a big fan of all of the NEXTLIGHT artists (picco, Twinfield, etc) in particular. Certainly not trying to dunk on the fandom or artists. However, I do think that it's a lot more limited in what it can do. The voices in Vocaloid sound quite synthetic, and there's only so far you can go if you're not going for a stereotypical "Vocaloid-sounding" vocal. IMO, Synth V can get pretty close to the Vocaloid sound with Eleanor Forte, but in addition can also produce some much more realistic-sounding vocals, especially with Solaria, Eleanor AI, or the newer Dreamtronics AI voicebanks. People are making music with Synth V! Check out AIKA who has made some amazing songs using Synth V.