What makes a bad UTAU cover?

Jackalope713

Momo's Minion
I was pretty curious, I have a question, What makes a bad UTAU cover? It's being a Plug and Play cover? Or it's the quality?
 
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Kiyoteru

UtaForum power user
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Quality is subjective. Everyone has different musical tastes and preferences, and as creators we all have different goals and skill sets. You can't necessarily say that something is objectively bad. But if you're evaluating something against a specific criteria, you can identify ways that it can be improved to reach those criteria.

Are you looking for help on how to achieve your own goals with UTAU covers? Not sure what goals to aim for? Maybe we could describe our personal goals for our own covers, the times that we've struggled, and what we did to overcome those difficulties. Ultimately, it's better to form your own vision for what you want to create than to try and please other people. (Unless, of course, you're being paid to create something on behalf of someone else. Then it's a combination of your own standards and the client's expectations.)
 

HulderBulder

Retired User
Retired User
Defender of Defoko
As kyoteru said, many aspects are up to each individuals preference and tastes. However, I think a majority of people will agree that off timing of the vocals to the music is not pleaseant to listen to.
Plug & play doesn't make a cover bad, nor does the voicebanks quality. It ultimatly comes down to mixing imo, as it greatly affects the results.
 

Cyberbison

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
If the building blocks, the fundamentals of music are crooked accidentally, I'd call it bad. If the timing is off, the listener is easily left to wait if the vocals either shift on time or will they completely fall off tempo. Having your vocals off key makes the cover hard to listen to. Also the loudness of the vocals should match the instrumentals, not be too loud or get lost under the music.
 

Nohkara

Pronouns: He/him
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
I agree with the previous messages that vocals being very off time, key or tempo are subjectively considered bad.

I would add that personally I think that the voice type and it’s vocal range should fit somewhat with the song genre and range as well. Like human singing voices, each UTAU have an ideal vocal range and music genre where they shine in.

Of course, nothing is cast iron (most part) like you can play with flags or use different resampler to give a different voicetone to fit better with the music. Most of the “magic” happens in DAW (and VST plug-ins) when mixing. Even if you’re mediocre with tuning UTAU, you can do a lot more in DAW and make the cover sound nice!
 

Namumi

Teto's Territory
It's can be both of the quality of VB and UST.

If your VB already in good/best quality ,Bad UST isn't the problem at all cuz we can tuned and fixed it to make it fit with UTAU voicebank.
For the quality of voicebank I think this one is the most important. If the quality of VB isn't good enough (such as too much noise wrong pronunciation or each volume of the vocal files aren't balance)
This cause is really affect to the cover a lot!! So, before recording UTAU VB, we should check our microphone first that it still can be use for recording VB.
The oto.ini problem - if the vocal files is quite good enough,only re-oto or edit some files in the correct way then the UTAUloids can be sing more fluently and smooth.

The last stage is "Mixing vocal and instrument" together - I'd like to explain only the important things that are "timing and volume of voice and music"

For the timing we must beware this !! if we miss about timing although it only "a little miss" the cover would become really bad. So we must listen to the original song(any song that we wanna make cover) thoroughly until we sure that when the vocal will start at which minute/sec. or just listen to the rhythm of music we can know that when the vocal will start.
And the volume between the vocal and music - The vocal should not too loud(It would become an accapella instead) or lighter than music try to make volume of the vocal and music match and balance together.
 
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Big_B

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
Hewoo!
\^3^/

I agree that taste is subjective, but I believe this is not a good answer. I guess that, maybe, you did this question to get a "more solid" idea about what a good cover is, so you can follow this idea when you're doing your covers. So instead of saying what a "bad cover" is, I will tell you what "bad cover" means to me.​


I like more realistic covers and songs (Although I'm not really against electronic sounds). Here is an example:



This cover from Kyaami is insane! Obviously, this is too hard to achieve, but for me this is an amazing cover. So, by comparison, a bad cover would be the extreme opposite. And to define what this extreme opposite is I like to follow these categories:

- - Technical issues​


Here is where we can find the Off timing that everyone is talking about. When an utau isn't synchronized with the song they're singing it really makes my ears hurt. It's so strange when I'm hearing a cover where the song is faster than the voice, or vice versa, that this type of cover turns into a no no instantly to me.

Another problematic in this category is what mispronunciation. I understand that it can be hard for some utau's creators to record, but if you're doing a voice bank (Unless if it's not accidentaly) in a certain language do your best to pronounce their phonemes as "right" as possible. I see a lot of covers where the utau sings with english "r" instead of the japanese "r" and it makes me crazy. I'm really not a huge fun of mispronouncing.


- - Pitch​


I'm not a fan when utaus are singing in an extremely higher or lower pitch, or a pitch where it makes them starts to sound really distorted.

It happens specially when people try to be too emotional, so they put their utaus way too higher and makes the cover hurt my ears. It's bizarre.


- - Too robotic voices​


Some voices has this robotic sound in it or this Squirrel sound, it really makes me stop hearing it almost instantly. Obviously, there are some exceptions (Like Defoko, I love her voice), but usually I'm not a big fan of utaus that doesn't sound like a human.

It also is influenced by how the values of preu and overlap are placed. If they aren't properly setted it can make transitions between notes something really bad to hear. Also, beware of frequency map. I already downloaded some vbs where I needed to oto it again just because the author didn't make the frequency map for some resampler (Or for any resampler at all -3-).


- - Bad Mixing​


This can totally make me hate a cover. I already heard covers where people used so much of some plugins that made my ears tired very quickly.

- - Don't use harmony or don't use it properly​


Not every time, but with some covers I would like more if the author used more Harmony, or at least tunned it with same care as they did with the main ust.

I think everything that Namumi said I said too. The best way to approach your question is questioning yourself "What I would like to hear?", "What pleases me?" . Answering these questions will make you drive yourself towards what you really think is a good cover and little by little you will attract attention from people that agree with what you believe is a good cover.

Anyway, when you see yourself with one of these "subjective" questions the best way to answer them is thinking about yourself, who you are and what you like. Although other people can like other stuff, what is really important is what you like. I hope I helped...


~^3^~See ya~^3^/
 

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