bulk questions

[Mystycl]

ok so... to start off, my 10th anniversary using of utau is approaching soon in late may/early june! this also means it is nearly my utauloid's 10th anniversary! id like to finally get her act 3 together; its been a WIP for nearly 7 years.
to put it simply, i was still in school when i began working on act 3 and was never able to stay consistent with it for a few reasons. a few times i did record all the samples but... they often were never the quality i wanted. they werent anything terrible, but just were not what i wanted, even with editing.

so my first question is... is the quality of the voice samples that important? of course the recordings need to be past a certain level of clarity, but past what level would you consider it to be "this is great but any better would just be the icing on the cake" ? more or less, i am very self-conscious of the clarity of my recordings and while i know i can basically never reach ritsu levels, something like milk is my dream. i unfortunately only have my laptop and phone microphones to use; while ive wanted to get a more ""professional"" mic exactly for this reason, i have not be in the situation nor environment.
secondly, i really want to get my utau's 3rd act done. i need some assistance keeping up on it and... probably oto'ing. maybe even artwork...

ultimately, i really want to get my bank done. its her 10th anniversary and ive had covers in mind for ages! ive also had other banks planned but feel i need to get this one done first. i could use some tips on quality/clarity, staying up on myself recording multiple pitches and appends, and keeping up when i reach the oto phase.

maybe i should just do it, regardless of quality? im not sure...

 

[SneezyEevee]

I get what your saying. I’ve spent 3 years so far trying to create my own Utau. Not as long as you’ve spent, but I still understand how frustrating it can be to have a goal but keep having setbacks and disappointments.
I had to scrap 80% of my recordings because of background noise, clicks, pops, and plosives and I’ve considered giving up on her altogether, but I know I can’t do that because I’ll surely regret it. Keep this in mind: the harder it is and the more obstacles you experience and eventually conquer, the more worth it and valuable the outcome will be. I’m essentially back to square one but I have some tips from having learned from the first go around.

1.) if you have more than one set of pitches recorded for a multipitch bank, try separating them into individual folders. Then oto them one set at a time. Like you might have to register each folder after another and oto them separately. Then when you’ve finished otoing each one to your content, make one final folder to drag and drop the files and oto.ini files into that one. Make sure the folders themselves don’t get compiled in there. Then delete the extra banks from Utau to make room for your real one. This seems like a lot of work, but I found out that if I work on each pitch set individually, I won’t get overwhelmed by everything else and panic from the sheer amount of otoing.

2.) when otoing, in the frequency map editor, if you copy the average freq number of all freq files of a sample and paste it on the top and bottom numbers, select all and average it, it will greatly improve the crusty engine noise. You don’t even have to mess with the dotted line cause that takes forever

3) when recording, try having a big bottle of water to keep your mouth from drying out. I say a big bottle cause that’s a lotta recording lol and put the mic away from your mouth a little to reduce plosives

 

[Mystycl]

I get what your saying. I’ve spent 3 years so far trying to create my own Utau. Not as long as you’ve spent, but I still understand how frustrating it can be to have a goal but keep having setbacks and disappointments.
I had to scrap 80% of my recordings because of background noise, clicks, pops, and plosives and I’ve considered giving up on her altogether, but I know I can’t do that because I’ll surely regret it. Keep this in mind: the harder it is and the more obstacles you experience and eventually conquer, the more worth it and valuable the outcome will be. I’m essentially back to square one but I have some tips from having learned from the first go around.

1.) if you have more than one set of pitches recorded for a multipitch bank, try separating them into individual folders. Then oto them one set at a time. Like you might have to register each folder after another and oto them separately. Then when you’ve finished otoing each one to your content, make one final folder to drag and drop the files and oto.ini files into that one. Make sure the folders themselves don’t get compiled in there. Then delete the extra banks from Utau to make room for your real one. This seems like a lot of work, but I found out that if I work on each pitch set individually, I won’t get overwhelmed by everything else and panic from the sheer amount of otoing.

2.) when otoing, in the frequency map editor, if you copy the average freq number of all freq files of a sample and paste it on the top and bottom numbers, select all and average it, it will greatly improve the crusty engine noise. You don’t even have to mess with the dotted line cause that takes forever

3) when recording, try having a big bottle of water to keep your mouth from drying out. I say a big bottle cause that’s a lotta recording lol and put the mic away from your mouth a little to reduce plosives

wow, ive never heard any tips related to the frq files. i hope that could help a ton

 

[SneezyEevee]

Oh and another thing, I don’t think that the quality has to be perfect, as long as the clicks pops and plosives are kept to a minimum you should be fine. Those are easily avoided by just keeping your mic a few inches away and maybe even using a sock to put over
Ive listened to Milk covers and ritsu covers and imo they’re not totally cronchless either.
Imperfections in the recordings can really add character to the bank and humans in general don’t sing perfectly either without some sort of auto tune.
I bet your Utau is going to sound amazing when you get finished with it and I hope to hear a sample sometime soon. Keep up the good work!

Post automatically merged: Apr 16, 2022

wow, ive never heard any tips related to the frq files. i hope that could help a ton

It really helped me a lot lol
Like one second my Utau sounded like a crunchy mess and then I averaged the freq files and it sounded really smooth. The difference was like night and day