Do you think UTAU working on a Chromebook would ever be possible?

RaccoonButler

Founder of The Church of Mawarine Shuu
Defender of Defoko
It's a long shot but technologically, do you think a Chromebook compatible, probably browser-based version of UTAU be possible at all ever?
 

Kiyoteru

UtaForum power user
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
UTAU itself? Nah, ameya hasn't done anything for a few years.

Renoidplayer is entirely online, though. It uses specifically configured soundfonts as voicebanks, and has a few already on the website. (so you don't need to make your own)
http://www.g200kg.com/renoid/
 
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na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Full blown Utau?

Considering the amount of processing power and such I don't think it would be practical.
It's probably technically possible but the chances of someone making the attempt would be slim to none.
Since utau is written of windows it would have to be made completely from the ground up (including the resampler and such) to work on it and chances are the actual rendering would have to be cloud-based...which actually was a thing in the past to a limited extent.
It'd be very limited, very clunky, and slow at best.

You could always just run windows on a chromebook though, that's generally an option.
 

rmL

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
From a technological standpoint, it is possible but as mentioned by the people above me, chances for it are REALLY slim unless Amaya either updates the program or better yet, publishes the source code to the open for anyone to improve or modify (fork). One of the probable approaches for a browser-based vocal synthesizer would to have the processing done on a remote server so that the web app can be run on almost any device. But again, It's an uphill climb from there.

Still, it would be awesome if such a thing exist in the future though. Imagine being able to start a project on let's say your Chromebook, even your phone or tablet and finishing it on your desktop computer. I would love to see the day that can become possible!
 
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na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Wow this thread is old lmao.

Btw if you own a certain model you can chroot it and install Ubuntu. From there you can either use Wine or a Windows virtual machine to run Utau.

And if you are really lucky you might have a model that runs windows okay.

So if you're technical enough and are okay with the slow performance it can technically work. But realize the storage will be slim.
 
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rmL

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
Whoops, didn't notice the date there when I stumbled upon this thread lol (was still half-awake and on mobile)

Btw if you own a certain model you can chroot it and install Ubuntu. From there you can either use Wine or a Windows virtual machine to run Utau.

And if you are really lucky you might have a model that runs windows okay.

So if you're technical enough and are okay with the slow performance it can technically work. But realize the storage will be slim.

That would work if the Chromebook is powerful enough and yeah, that's really stretching it if you have no other devices to work UTAU on/

Someone is currently developing a browser-based UTAU replacement already.
http://utaforum.net/threads/melodia-editor-utau-in-a-browser.15867

Well then, I'll hop over to the Melodia thread then.
 

Tenkoh

As lazy as can be
Defender of Defoko
When it comes to web apps, there are a lot of restrictions imposed by the browser that significantly limit the app's capabilities. That's a good thing, because it stops malicious websites from, say, deleting system32. On the other hand, it means that all web apps that need to handle files must use a not-so-elegant solution, which might not be as intuitive for the user.

For example, lets take a hypothetical UTAU replacement that runs locally, without a rendering server. The most obvious problem would be the resampler and wavtool. It is theoretically possible to get a resampler that runs as fast as the Windows ones by using WebAssembly, although that is still experimental.

But even if there was a fully working resampler in JavaScript or WebAssembly, it would still have to access the voicebank and temp files. How would that be possible if the web app can't access the file system? One alternative would be to ask the user to manually select the voicebank folder, which allows the browser to read (not write) to it. From here on, all file operations would be done in memory, which would require modifications to the resampler/wavtool code.

While Chrome does have an API that allows access to a small portion of the file system, most browsers do not implement that feature, which brings us to the next issue: cross-browser compatibility. People usually see web apps as wonderful cross-platform alternative to programs that can only run on a specific operating system. However, not all browsers implement the entire HTML5 spec, and some extend it with browser-specific features. So in order to make your web app run everywhere, you must either dumb it down or use polyfills, which add to the size of the app.

Since all file operations must be done in RAM, less powerful devices might not be able to keep up. That's why I went for cloud based rendering in my project. There are no restrictions as to what files the server can access, so by uploading your voicebank, the server can just use regular Windows resamplers to render the output. It can also run these tasks in parallel, for multiple users. In this scenario, the main performance bottleneck would be the download speed of the finished file(s), which can get quite heavy.

Long story short, it is possible to have an UTAU-like program on a Chromebook that runs locally, but it would require a powerful one and wouldn't be as intuitive. If the rendering is done on the cloud, then it could theoretically work perfectly on any device, being limited only by the connection speed.
 
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