Cyber Diva

[WendytheCreeper]

So Yamaha is going to be releasing an English VB by the name of Cyber Diva:

(loving the gold color here, lookin fab)
She has a bunch of demos too!

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I think her release is on February 4th, so she'll be coming out soon! Yay for more V4 vocals!

I feel like lately we've been advancing a lot in English singing synthesis, with both Vocaloid and UTAU. I think it's great that English vocals are improving ^-^

EDIT: The February 4th release date is only for Japan. A download-only version of her voicebank will be on sale for everyone else in the spring(not date yet).

 

[Kiyoteru]

Ah oh my gosh I really really love Cyva!! //But I don't have money for her, cries...

She's pretty much replaced Luka V4x on my wishlist, even though Luka has 2 banks- Cyva's the voice I've always wanted!

 

[na4a4a]

The fact she's an American English voice and is sung is really nice imo.

A lot of engloids sound like their talking =_=
...The generic POP voice that everyone wished for? (for me, a yes)

 

[DraygonChan]

Oh wow, I really love her bank! If only I had the money for her and the program itself... ;n;
I'll get there... someday... maybe.

 

[fmccaddy12]

At first I was like "Lady Gagaloid?", then I was like "Ok, not Lady Gagaloid". But the way that they recorded her, from what I hear, was different from most engloid: While they mostly sacrificed some expression in the voice, it made it more clear and understandable. And from an interview with someone in the Vocaloid project, they said that they spent years trying to make English more smooth and "life like". They made a new script to record with, and while it was hard to sing on the providers part, it definitely made the product, as you can see in the demos. They even hired actual English teachers to make sure what was recorded sounded right, I found that funny.

 

[xseerx]

found her on soundcloud, she sounds AMAZING. I thought that was lady gaga at first XD

 

[MillyAqualine]

She's interesting, both voice-wise and design-wise

However, she sounded quite awkward on some notes =S But still, interesting Engloid (also, I'd like to hear in the future a duet involving SONiKa x CD)

 

[missty]

Oh, she sounds beautiful!
I wish I could buy her.

 

[WendytheCreeper]

At first I was like "Lady Gagaloid?", then I was like "Ok, not Lady Gagaloid". But the way that they recorded her, from what I hear, was different from most engloid: While they mostly sacrificed some expression in the voice, it made it more clear and understandable. And from an interview with someone in the Vocaloid project, they said that they spent years trying to make English more smooth and "life like". They made a new script to record with, and while it was hard to sing on the providers part, it definitely made the product, as you can see in the demos. They even hired actual English teachers to make sure what was recorded sounded right, I found that funny.

I'm so impressed at the amount of work put behind her! They recorded a lot more pitches than what is the norm for Engloids; I think they recorded six?

Having native English speakers listen is important. Those who don't speak it as their first language aren't always aware of the nuances of pronunciation, kinda like how overseas Japanese UTAU are prone to having odd sounding vowels or strange consonants(the rs...) It really helps to have them around to point out what sounds funny.

 

[adriann]

I love the concept, and I really like the voice mascot! They did good in terms of graphic design. Her pronunciation is nice, too, quite understandable. What I don't like is that... So apparently they recorded lots of pitches for Cyber Diva but in most of the demos there isn't really a variety of sound with the voice to show that? If I were a prospective buyer I'd like to know how the voice handles lower and less... nasally? I feel like there is a lot of over-pronunciation happening, but that might just be the tuning style.
ngl, the first I heard of CD in Athena, I thought it was Hatsune Miku's English voicebank tuned really well until I realized the pronunciation was different, haha... I wonder if I'm alone in this! Not that I'm doubting she can sound different, I just think we got a lot of the same from those demos.

 

[WendytheCreeper]

I love the concept, and I really like the voice mascot! They did good in terms of graphic design. Her pronunciation is nice, too, quite understandable. What I don't like is that... So apparently they recorded lots of pitches for Cyber Diva but in most of the demos there isn't really a variety of sound with the voice to show that? If I were a prospective buyer I'd like to know how the voice handles lower and less... nasally? I feel like there is a lot of over-pronunciation happening, but that might just be the tuning style.
ngl, the first I heard of CD in Athena, I thought it was Hatsune Miku's English voicebank tuned really well until I realized the pronunciation was different, haha... I wonder if I'm alone in this! Not that I'm doubting she can sound different, I just think we got a lot of the same from those demos.

I think the thing is, the only people who made demos were Crusher-P, Circus-P, and Utata-P, so we only really got to hear how those guys like to configure their Vocaloids. In my opinion, Utata-P's demos were kinda lackluster in terms of tuning Either way, there's not much to sample from here, especially since they pretty much stuck to only one range and one genre when making demos. I don't know if there'll be more coming up in the next week or so as release comes closer, especially since there aren't too many English producers out there.

I'm thinking we can learn a bit more about the nitty-gritty about how she works once people start buying her and doing weird stuff with her.

 

[MillyAqualine]

Well, they seem to have only gotten one week to make demosfor her so

 

[bold0727]

Well, they seem to have only gotten one week to make demosfor her so

It was 2 different people working on 5 demos.

Crusher - P: 3 Songs
Utatane - P: 2 Songs

 

[Kiyoteru]

Matt and Cien had a week for the demos, but did in 5 days (since at first they didn't know how much time they had)

Utata, I'm not sure.

 

[adriann]

If they had one week to make the demos, I would have rounded up a few more producers then, if I were Yamaha, haha. I wouldn't have counted on just two groups (Utata + Circrush) to make a wide range of demos... I think UtataP at least tried to do different things with their two demos of the voice. I don't think it's quite fair for prospective buyers to have to purchase the voice to see if it can really handle more variety. Which is why, while five is a good number for demos, demos should be able to -demonstrate- what is capable with the product, and it doesn't mean much to have almost all of them be so similar.
Either way, that was really just my complaint on their marketing part- Yamaha could have done a little more research and given a few more producers a chance to show a wider range of usage. Sure, we'll see more use as Cyber Diva gets bought and, well, used.

 

[bold0727]

The only demo I didn't like:

I'll Make You See

<It is completely monotone X|>

 

[WendytheCreeper]

It is quite nice to have some English producers who know English make demos A common complaint of Japanese-produced English voicebanks is that they often didn't have native English speakers/producers make demos, so there would be awkward English usage. Though granted, usually in those cases the English VBs were for voices that were native Japanese(Luka and Miku, for example), so thus their actual demographic was mainly Japanese, thus it didn't really matter to them much. However, this is a professional product pretty much for the English market, so of course they'd have English producers!

 

[Tema]

Plot twist: They're not going to release her outside of Japan until spring, and even then it'll only be the DL version.

 

[WendytheCreeper]

Plot twist: They're not going to release her outside of Japan until spring, and even then it'll only be the DL version.

Well damn if that ain't so. I think I'll update the original post about the release.

There are people suggesting that one could use Tenso to get it earlier or something, but a lot of the debate is about why it's not being released for everyone else until spring. As such, to sum it up, there's a lot of outrage about it(considering how a lot of people feel about Yamaha's practices) and I'll leave it at that.

In the meantime, one could save up for her official release here, though it's a shame that there's no box(unless they change their mind in the meantime).

*hides from backdraft*

 

[MillyAqualine]

Pffff then what's the point about targeting the American market if they keep her to Japan first (and nope, no bias)

@Wendy : well, about the box, ti's because people tend to use more DLs because of immateriality, and also because it's faster to install I guess (without mentioning the fact it is cheaper than getting the boxart with the disk for ovbious reasons)... At least that would explain why they would do that for the moment