I am amazed that no one in this forum has started a thread about the amazing ZOLA project. While the art is still a debate among most users/fans.... the vocal product which is the one that matters is amazing. Three great male voices that work perfectly together.
This song is an ending theme from the anime Ranma 1/2
While I'm severely disappointed that none of them are very deep and instead are up there in the VY2/KAITO V3/YOHIOloid/Kiyoteru range (We need more/any KAITO/Gakupo V2 range, even V3 range), I'm overall pleased.
Is anyone sure yet of which voice is who? I like the face of YUU the most, all of their clothes are funny (But hey it's Yoshitaka Amano so no disrespect), and I'd really like it if he was the voice I liked most (Back in the initial voice demo from late April, the third voice was my favorite).
Yeah, I felt voice 1 and voice 2 were very similar, but different enough. And the fact that they're all going together into one normal priced product is awesome. And that they're Vocaloid's 10th birthday gift.
I see good potential in them. (I'll just always be a bit sad in how they're all high males with moderately powerful voices aside from Voice 3, which is slightly raspy).
Watch as no one uses them ever. :/ I will be really disappointed if that happens. I can't say for sure that I like them and I can't say for sure that I don't. I'm somewhere in the middle. Though the image is just terrible, both design wise and art wise, the voices seem okay. I really only like the strongest voice, being not too fond of softer voices usually myself.
There's one thing I'd like to quote from that: "Amano had said that the concept art is just concept art, and that final character designs are to be a collaborative creation between him and all the illustrators who end up drawing ZOLA, much like how VOCALOID songs operate."
Setting that aside, this is definitely one of the best-sounding male Vocaloids I've heard so far and Yamaha's worked hard to achieve that. Hopefully, we'll see a lot songs made using these voices when it comes out hopefully in June.
I just wanted to add the last demo. It was released days ago, but for some reason, the forum didn't let me post it when I created the thread. This is a more elaborated demo.
Telling you from where it is from would be so dumb.
My opinion on their voicebanks' potential now that they're out:
Well, ZOLA's been released for a bit now. After listening to a few producers use them (I was extremely disappointed with Samfree, very very disappointed), I think I've mentally come to the conclusion that while they may easy to just put down notes and make sing (Hey, for some Vocaloids that actually isn't easy *stares at how off tune Miki is sometimes* ), in order for them to REALLY shine it'll take someone of skill to use them. Like Frutella and Ciel skilled. I can hear that their voices are good quality, but Vocaloid doesn't make them sound as nice as they could, at least will casual usage. If someone did nice hand-drawn vibratos on them I'm certain they'd sound AMAZING.
and on a personal preference note, i think wil's is most unique and interesting, followed by yuu, and then kyo i'm really unsure about, he reminds me too much of all the already out vocaloid males
Now, aside from that mental rantage, there's the matter of their multiple designs for the complainers.
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130622083709/vocaloid/images/4/41/Additional_boxarts.jpg
These were various promo boxarts. You can download the designs here:
http://zola.net/material/index.html
I like CARNELIAN's and ideolo's designs best personally (CARNELIAN's Kyo, ideolo's Yuu, and a tie on Wil because both are interesting, my opinion on them). KEI's...I don't think KEI should draw guys, it looks really odd to me.
AND THE COOLEST THING ABOUT THEM, finally, THAT'S RELEVANT TO UTAU PEOPLE
On that Material page, if you hit the Voice tab, you can apparently download their voice samples. Yes. You can download their samples. And put them into UTAU. Revo has already done so with Yuu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHrdJko1d7E
This was made from his talking samples apparently.
So very cool! You can't distribute the banks of course, so everyone would have to do it individually, but it has neat potential. Look forward to seeing them in UTAU by other people? XD
It'd be fine to distribute it I'm guessing. But would everyone be able to use it at all? It would entirely depend on the samples. I haven't downloaded them, so I don't know how they're structured. They're probably not like CV, and if they're like VCV I have no clue how they'd be. I was thinking people would be forced to cut and save the samples to make it as they'd like. So unless you can figure out some kind of system to make off of the samples automatically as they are, a common oto.ini probably won't work.
*had thought of this pretty heavily earlier*
He's made a voice for Kyo now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwNS4j--9pA
I like their voices in UTAU for the most part. XD
Though he's saying he's having trouble finding certain samples for certain syllables, so I'm guessing that VCV is a bad idea.
If you get one done, definetly post it, I'd love to hear it!
You could maybe try opening the sounds in Audacity and batch processing and exporting them with the standard sound setting?
You do that by File > Edit Chains, make what you want to happen, happen, then File > Apply Chains and choose the folder/samples you want to apply it to.
I really like it, it must have taken a lot of work! At some points it sounds like there's a high modulation value but I'm guessing that's perhaps just from the samples?
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