[Utau Synth] Too and Prefix Map help

[Lance]

I know how to correctly oto a CV file, but that's pretty much it...

Can someone teach me VCV, VC, and CVC?
I have all four in my voicebank and I need help xDD

Also, can someone teach me how to set the prefix map?

 

[Kiyoteru]

You can access the prefix map via this button.

This is what the prefix map window looks like.

"Close" - Close the window
"Write" - Save the whole prefix map to the file
"Prefix" - Enter a prefix for the selected key
"Suffix" - Enter a suffix for the selected key
"Set" - Save the prefix/suffix to the selected key
"Clear" - Erase the prefix/suffix from the selected key

Let's say, for example, you want to use a power suffix "_P" on every note from C5 upwards. So you'd select all the keys from C5 on up, enter "_P", and hit the "Set" button.

Then click "Write" to save the whole prefix map.

 

[Lance]

You can access the prefix map via this button.

This is what the prefix map window looks like.

"Close" - Close the window
"Write" - Save the whole prefix map to the file
"Prefix" - Enter a prefix for the selected key
"Suffix" - Enter a suffix for the selected key
"Set" - Save the prefix/suffix to the selected key
"Clear" - Erase the prefix/suffix from the selected key

Let's say, for example, you want to use a power suffix "_P" on every note from C5 upwards. So you'd select all the keys from C5 on up, enter "_P", and hit the "Set" button.

Then click "Write" to save the whole prefix map.

But what does adding that _P suffix even do? Like what does it accomplish by adding a _P rather than a _T or _F or whatever. I dont know the whole list of suffixes ;-; or what they do

 

[WinterdrivE]

^ Nothing. It doesn't matter what suffix you use, as long as the prefix.map and the oto alias match. I could use a;bjdibsdfbasdvjubasdv as a suffix as long as the prefix map says "a;bjdibsdfbasdvjubasdv" exactly and the oto entries are also followed by "a;bjdibsdfbasdvjubasdv" exactly.

[edit]
That said, rather than using nonsense for a suffix, it helps to use something that's related to what that suffix does. in Kiyoteru's example, he used "_P" for Power. For multipitch banks, I usually see the suffix be whatever note that pitch is recorded on, eg C4, Eb3, A#4, etc.

 

[Lance]

^ Nothing. It doesn't matter what suffix you use, as long as the prefix.map and the oto alias match. I could use a;bjdibsdfbasdvjubasdv as a suffix as long as the prefix map says "a;bjdibsdfbasdvjubasdv" exactly and the oto entries are also followed by "a;bjdibsdfbasdvjubasdv" exactly.

[edit]
That said, rather than using nonsense for a suffix, it helps to use something that's related to what that suffix does. in Kiyoteru's example, he used "_P" for Power. For multipitch banks, I usually see the suffix be whatever note that pitch is recorded on, eg C4, Eb3, A#4, etc.

Okay but how do I make the suffix and too alias whatever match... I have no idea how to do any of this...

 

[Kiyoteru]

Let's say you've recorded a soft voicebank and a powerful voicebank. The folder structure would be something like this.

• All voicebanks (folder)
  • This voicebank.utau (folder)
    • oto_ini.txt (file)
    • prefixmap (file)
    • Soft (folder)
      • a.wav (file)
      • ka.wav (file)
      • etc...
    • Power (folder)
      • a.wav (file)
      • ka.wav (file)
      • etc...

When you open the OTO, you'll see all of the wavs listed from both the Soft folder and the Power folder. However, they have the same names. In order to distinguish samples from each other, you'll give them aliases with different names. So the OTO will look something like this.

Soft/a.wav=a_S,1000,0,-600,50,50
Soft/ka.wav=ka_S,1000,100,-600,60,30
Power/a.wav=a_P,1000,0,-600,50,50
Power/ka.wav=ka_P,1000,100,-600,60,30

If you were to enter the note "ka" into a UST, you would have no idea which sample it would play. (Actually, it wouldn't work at all if there was nothing in the OTO named "ka" only.) However, if you labelled your powerful ka as "ka_P" then you can enter "ka_P" into a UST and know for sure that it would give you the powerful sample. The job of the prefix map is to automatically apply a suffix to notes of a certain pitch. For example, if you decide to record multiple pitches. That way, it will use high-pitched samples for high notes and low-pitched samples for low notes, without you having to manually enter suffixes into the UST yourself.

 

[Lance]

Let's say you've recorded a soft voicebank and a powerful voicebank. The folder structure would be something like this.

• All voicebanks (folder)
  • This voicebank.utau (folder)
    • oto_ini.txt (file)
    • prefixmap (file)
    • Soft (folder)
      • a.wav (file)
      • ka.wav (file)
      • etc...
    • Power (folder)
      • a.wav (file)
      • ka.wav (file)
      • etc...

When you open the OTO, you'll see all of the wavs listed from both the Soft folder and the Power folder. However, they have the same names. In order to distinguish samples from each other, you'll give them aliases with different names. So the OTO will look something like this.

Soft/a.wav=a_S,1000,0,-600,50,50
Soft/ka.wav=ka_S,1000,100,-600,60,30
Power/a.wav=a_P,1000,0,-600,50,50
Power/ka.wav=ka_P,1000,100,-600,60,30

If you were to enter the note "ka" into a UST, you would have no idea which sample it would play. (Actually, it wouldn't work at all if there was nothing in the OTO named "ka" only.) However, if you labelled your powerful ka as "ka_P" then you can enter "ka_P" into a UST and know for sure that it would give you the powerful sample. The job of the prefix map is to automatically apply a suffix to notes of a certain pitch. For example, if you decide to record multiple pitches. That way, it will use high-pitched samples for high notes and low-pitched samples for low notes, without you having to manually enter suffixes into the UST yourself.

Ohhh okay so I don't necessarily need a prefix map unless I had multiple voice banks in one folder?


also do I have to make the txt file myself, or will it be made when I finish all the oto?

 

[Kiyoteru]

What you can also do is a setup like this.

• All Voicebanks
  • This voicebank.utau
    • oto_ini.txt
    • prefixmap
    • a_S.wav
    • ka_S.wav
    • a_P.wav
    • ka_P.wav

Then the OTO would look like this.

a_S.wav=a_S,1000,0,-600,50,50
ka_S.wav=ka_S,1000,100,-600,60,30
a_P.wav=a_P,1000,0,-600,50,50
ka_P.wav=ka_P,1000,100,-600,60,30

You'd still set up the prefix map in the exact same way. However, the problem with this method is that you end up with really messy folders. Doing subfolders is for the sake of organization when you're working on creating the voicebank. Only one layer works, though, so you can't put folders inside of folders.

The reason I wrote "oto_ini.txt" is because that is the file that UTAU-Synth creates. The Windows version of UTAU creates an "oto.ini" file but they're nearly the same anyway.

 

[Nohkara]

This is little off topic what you're asking in this post but I drop my tutorial of "how to make Mac UTAU VB compatible for Windows users" in the case that you want to release your VB for public.

If you have no plans to make it public (aka keep it private UTAU) then you won't need to worry about compatibility.

OR

If you want to make it public but the steps to make it compatible feels too hard/stressful but want to release your VB anyway then please write clearly (in UTAU Wiki/Showcase/readme.txt etc) that "this VB is configured in Mac and works in Mac/UTAU-Synth only. No Windows compatible"

I'm saying this just here because I know that many beginner Synth users (like me 4 years ago) was 100% unaware this "issue" and got lot of feedback from that. I think that it's better to know this now than later and all this issues coming out as surprise.