What would your standards for a commercial UTAU be?

RaccoonButler

Founder of The Church of Mawarine Shuu
Defender of Defoko
Of course they have to be well-oto'd and have clear recordings, but even when that's the case, people usually don't bother with Utau that cost money. Usually because there are other ones that are free that have the same vocal qualities and are usually just as good.

What would an Utau need to be to entice you to pay money for it?
 
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Madam Meisaki

Certified Nohrian Scum
Defender of Defoko
I honestly wouldn't pay for an utau- but that's just my broke-ass.
I feel that it would probably need to have at least two coding types (like having CV and VCV) and possibly multipitch. Idk since I wouldn't consider buying an utau, my standards are probably high as hell. A pleasing design and a well-thought-out character does help, I would think.
 

Jeffrey

local hiatus'er
Defender of Defoko
a unique coding type. like a complete CVCVC (CV + VCV + VC) Multilingual Multipitch MultiAppend VoiceBank. Of course, you also need a wonderful voice to do those.
 
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sailor _ravioli

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
tbh i would never pay money for an utau unless the money went to a greater cause or the profits made would be donated to an organization or for fundraising purposes for a school club or smth (if that makes sense)
it would need to be well oto'd and have clear recordings as well as many different samples etc (multiple breaths, vocal fry, end breaths and all that jazz)
i dont discriminate by recording type but if it's CV it has to be well done
 
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HoneyPai

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko
Since I would never personally buy an Utau because as you said, there are quality utau for free, some even higher quality than a commercial bank.
But if I were to pay, you bet yo sweet booty that utau better be recorded in a studio, multipitch, possibly multilingual and have a unique coding. And to add on to that, I'd have to say to me, it can't just be a digital download, I'd feel better about purchasing an utau if I got a physical copy or like something tangible as a collector item
 

sailor _ravioli

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
tbh i would never pay money for an utau unless the money went to a greater cause or the profits made would be donated to an organization or for fundraising purposes for a school club or smth (if that makes sense)
it would need to be well oto'd and have clear recordings as well as many different samples etc (multiple breaths, vocal fry, end breaths and all that jazz)
i dont discriminate by recording type but if it's CV it has to be well done
to add on i also agree with what HoneyPie says that it cant just be a digital download it has to come in a boxed version or with a collectors item
 

LunarConstruct

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
Being someone who is very low on money usually and is selling my voicebank (kinda) i think there are a lot of things you would have to do to make your voicebank sellable
Merisdae (my UTAU) is free-to-download, but a physical boxed version can be bought as well. I would rarely buy a voicebank (because i'm poor af, which is why i'm selling mine) but if I did it would have to be a boxed version. Paying for a digital download of something that you can get pretty much anywhere else in the community for free seems a little silly, no? Unless it is crazy good with multipitch multilanguage multiappend, i wouldn't pay for a download tbh, which is why I made the download for Merisdae free. (even tho merisdae is those things hint hint hint)
Give me exclusives or give me death!!! jk jk j kj k:wink:
 
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na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
High quality, good range, not recorded on cheap equipment, versatile, have consistent updates, have a very solid oto, have a way to report bugs if any are found, have actual contactable support....etc etc etc.
There may be high quality Utau for free but a paid voicebank should by default have very high standards since they want to hopefully make back what they invested.



Edit: aslo I disagree with "super mutliappend, multilingual, multipitch" etc etc.
Only what is required and reasonable, there is no point in having 20 appends if they all sound the same (unless you are going for subtly which is actually hard to achieve) and there is no point in having..s.ay...15 pitches.
We are working with Utau's technical limitations after all lol.

Funny though, Utau is a much cheaper tool to get in to that say...VocaloidCevioAlter_Egoetcetcetc...and yet it's held to much higher standards that even the stuff that costs over $200. Go figure.
 
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WendytheCreeper

(>☉ ͡ヮ☉<)
Defender of Defoko
The obvious deals would be high quality recordings, an oto equipped to withstand most situations, enough pitches to cover the human voice range without going overboard...

In addition, I think a commercial UTAU should compatible with various systems and resamplers, should be in a language I will actually use, have a polished and professional presentation and be flexible in usage. Also yes, boxed version would be totally cool, tho not required since I'm like...a hoarder of crap XD

There may be high quality Utau for free but a paid voicebank should by default have very high standards since they want to hopefully make back what they invested.

This is very important to consider and I agree! Considering how pricey recording equipment alone can be (consider: mic, accessories, studio, audio interface...), much less money that goes towards marketing(artwork, demo song, if you're not doing those on your own; advertising), a commercial UTAU is very difficult to pull off, especially when, yes, there are lots of free, high quality voices already available.

Which makes me question: will a commercial UTAU ever be feasible/profitable to the average user? Or will that be kept to the realm of the corporations, simply due to how the community has grown(too much free competition)?
 
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JAY

Tea Enthusiast
Defender of Defoko
- The voice has to have a good tone and high quality sound. This doesn't mean you have to record in a studio or be a professional singer, but I'm not gonna pay for something when there are other better free options, ya feel me?

- VCV or CVVC. CV banks are good as free demo banks to basically be like "imagine if this was VCV wow" but CV shouldn't be sold. If I can record a CV in 20 mins and oto it in another 20 then why would I buy it?

- A good design. Seriously, I don't want to buy another Miku copy. There are six main Vocaloids and I don't need any more of them.

- Make it unique! What about your voicebank is so special that makes me want to buy it rather than downloading a free one of the same caliber?

- A GOOD OTO. PLEASE. FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING.
I'm not saying it has to be perfect in any sense. All I'm saying is that if it's not well configured, it's not worth my money. The best thing you can do is make a user friendly product. I know my oto isn't the best, but I also know that it's usable without being edited. I've seen some commercial banks that have bad otos and that you can't use without doing dumb amounts of editing, and that's not a product I want to buy at all.
 
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Kitcat190

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko
||On a personal level, I'd never buy a commercial bank. Nor have I even bought a vocaloid or any other styled bank||

On a technical level, there needs to be the obvious:
  • Otos
  • Voicebank configuration type (vcv, cvvc, ect.)
  • Language capabilities
  • Voicebank quality
  • Usage quality with any given resampler, or utau version
  • Difficulty level on how to use it
  • And appeal(design ect.)
But I think a lot of people are overlooking some other key factors of what a successful voicebank would be, such as (yet not limited to)
  • The voice it's self
Does the voice sound unappealing, is there issues with pronunciation, does the tone sound like a dying frog, is it too breathy vs too strong, is there not enough tone variety available for download
  • Who voiced the bank
Is the voice provider an actual singer, are they known for singing/appearing in any sort of media, are they known for something else within the community like making music-working on programing, are they musically inclined. What do we know about them?

Basically, the opportunity cost of making a commercial utau bank is not in the favor of most, if not any user. Seeing as you're essentially buying a bank from someone at random, who isn't professionally working with any type of music branch, for a program that has many many many high quality voicebanks for free, and is also not that reliable compared to other programs. (no quality control, that's not a company, it's just a user)

"with vocaloid there is a degree of quality control set up by the company and a standard to go off of. when it comes to utau, there wouldn't be any set quality control for banks, and the already existent standard applies to non commercial banks and is of a much lower quality than those would expect to pay for something"-blackbird yo


With that being said, you better bet this voicebank is voiced by someone I love, cherish and listen to on a daily basis.(Meaning it better be a nice sounding voice) The bank better be as high quality as possible, work with everything I throw at it(resamplers, languages ect.), be available as a hard copy, and have quality control and a reliable source. I'm not just about to spend money on just anything. Hope this long and possibly redundant reply was helpful
 
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JAY

Tea Enthusiast
Defender of Defoko
||On a personal level, I'd never buy a commercial bank. Nor have I even bought a vocaloid or any other styled bank||

On a technical level, there needs to be the obvious:
  • Otos
  • Voicebank configuration type (vcv, cvvc, ect.)
  • Language capabilities
  • Voicebank quality
  • Usage quality with any given resampler, or utau version
  • Difficulty level on how to use it
  • And appeal(design ect.)
But I think a lot of people are overlooking some other key factors of what a successful voicebank would be, such as (yet not limited to)
  • The voice it's self
Does the voice sound unappealing, is there issues with pronunciation, does the tone sound like a dying frog, is it too breathy vs too strong, is there not enough tone variety available for download
  • Who voiced the bank
Is the voice provider an actual singer, are they known for singing/appearing in any sort of media, are they known for something else within the community like making music-working on programing, are they musically inclined. What do we know about them?

Basically, the opportunity cost of making a commercial utau bank is not in the favor of most, if not any user. Seeing as you're essentially buying a bank from someone at random, who isn't professionally working with any type of music branch, for a program that has many many many high quality voicebanks for free, and is also not that reliable compared to other programs. (no quality control, that's not a company, it's just a user)

"with vocaloid there is a degree of quality control set up by the company and a standard to go off of. when it comes to utau, there wouldn't be any set quality control for banks, and the already existent standard applies to non commercial banks and is of a much lower quality than those would expect to pay for something"


With that being said, you better bet this voicebank is voiced by someone I love, cherish and listen to on a daily basis.(Meaning it better be a nice sounding voice) The bank better be as high quality as possible, work with everything I throw at it(resamplers, languages ect.), be available as a hard copy, and have quality control and a reliable source. I'm not just about to spend money on just anything. Hope this long and possibly redundant reply was helpful
You said everything that I was too lazy to say LMFAO PRAISE
 
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na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
My standards: just don't

I honestly thought the whole stupid fad was over, guess not.
It's only a "fad" if you are taking it non-seriously and doing for the lolz. But there are people who are actually taking it seriously and want to bring something good.
not to start an argument but: not everything can be free. If people want to make a commercial bank and they are actually going to take it seriously and make it good then by all means. Now if they are just selling their bank for the lolz and it's total shit then imo they shouldn't bother because they aren't trying.
 

Blackbird

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
not to start an argument but: not everything can be free.

I don't think the point people are making is because they are being cheap, it's because there is no real incentive to buying a commercial bank. you could argue that a commercial bank might have a higher standard quality but there is no guarantee for this because most utau banks are made in non-ideal conditions. So it seems to me (and i largely agree for the most part) that the reason most people are against a commercial utau bank is because it seems unnecessary to spend money on something that may not even be guaranteed than something they can get for free of about equal levels of quality.

(sorry for arguing it, but you kinda made a red herring fallacy so i wanted to point out why people were commenting)
 

na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
EDIT: spoilered after the fact
My idea of a proper commercialized Utau bank would be recorded in more ideal conditions, not next to an A/C or in what sounds like an echo chamber.
Because if money is involved, the person making the product better not be making crap. Otherwise it's pointless to purchase it.
It absolutely needs to be good or else there is not point in it being sold.
~
The same can be said about software:
People often say "why buy this software when an free alternative exists?" but the trade-off of getting something for "free" could be several possible things.
For one, there may be discrepancies. Maybe some of that "software" works fine but the features you wanted to use are actually really buggy or only half there. Second, when something is free it's often given "as is", meaning that if something is broken or it does work for you then there is no guarantee it will ever be fixed. And a third example I could think of is permanence. It may be here today but it could be gone tomorrow or the author just vanishes without warning and that software is left to rot.

But that doesn't mean that free "software" is a bad choice and that you should not use it, it just means that for some people the paid software would be better for them. No one forces you to buy something and you always have the choice. As consumers it's great that we have options, if we don't want to then we don't have to!
Don't want to buy Microsoft Office, just get OpenOffice! Need a feature that OpenOffice doesn't have or just want reliability? Then you are one of the people who will prefer Microsoft Office.

(of course I'm not saying paid anything is automatically good either, there is some baaaad paid stuff out there.)

Tbh, Commercial Utau is a total shit-show because people act like it's a game, like involving money is a joke? And it's really disappointing. The reason people think so negatively about it is because no one has actually sat down and taken even the least bit seriously. So many people have just made shitty, unusable, noisy banks, and then just went ahead and thought "lol I'm going to make money with this" but never really had any intentions of ever taking it seriously and making it good.

I said "not anything can be free" not as a means to a cause (end) or as automatic justification, just as a "some stuff isn't going to be free, it's inevitable".

Does that make sense or not much? I know this post is kinda a mess but I hope what I'm trying to say comes across clearly.
you people need to stop hating on other people's decisions, this is why you can't get along. :-)
Maybe go out, reflect, and think of how to maturely discuss topic without trashing on everyone that opposes you and doesn't meet your specific ideas.
We all have different opinions, deal with it and stop treating other's like it's a crime. We can agree to disagree.
If you are disrespectful to others then don't get upset when you get disrespect in return.

(let's get back to the actual discussion/topic of this thread! Sorry guys/OP, I feel as though I knocked it off it's rails.)
 
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수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
IMHO Any voicebank that's to be sold better have...
- The highest quality attainable within the developer's means (I don't condone going broke by getting a loan just to afford studio time, professional recording equipment, etc. but... I won't take you seriously either if the best you can spend is a snowball, nessi, or yeti. The voicer should know their budget and get what is objectively the best they can buy within that budget)
- Compatibility, no matter the format (if you're running mac, make sure your files decompress in windows without filenames breaking, make sure you have romaji and hiragana in the oto)
- An oto that doesn't require fixing - or very minimal (tiny little errors happen - that's to be expected from our fellow humans and can be forgiven, but if my CV-lite sounds smoother than your VCV/CVVC/CV+VV/VCCV/whatever, then why should I invest my time or money? Looking at you, Macne Series)
- A language that's worth using. That's not to say that any given language can have no value, but one should take heed with the idea of selling a bank that's in a language that few people work with/speak on a regular basis in the community (such as... idk... Lithuanian?). At the same time, no one will see the value in buying a bank where the language is all too common (Japanese) and there are HQ free alternatives. The language(s) a planned bank is proposed to be able to work with matters in the long run.

I'm not against the idea of sold voicebanks, but I think they should be worth the dollar invested. Even if all someone sells is a simple CV+VV, a few appends, and a few omake, I'll pay for it if it's the best sounding bank that can be made within those particular limitations. You can make a multi-pitch, multi-append, multi-lingual bank if you please, but if it sounds like a dying cat and full of white noise, then what's the worth of it?
 

Zoku

making doper vocaloid music than the rest
Defender of Defoko
I think that it should be noted that it's stupid to think of buying a commercial UTAU that sounds worse than, let's say, Yamine Renri. You'd be an absolute fool.

@Blackbird your reply points out a common misconception in the general community--the common idea that UTAU can only be a certain level of quality so it can't be sold. There are several voicebanks that are much better than (quote) "utau banks ... made in non-ideal conditions" that deserve to be sold. People already paid money for something like Sonika and Ruby and Arsloid, both of which can arguably be easily named some of the worse quality Vocaloids out there. They are at least $50. I'm sure that people would be willing to pay $5 for something that would likely be much higher quality. (those last few statements were in response to the following sentence: "spend money on something that may not even be guaranteed than something they can get for free of about equal levels of quality")

(I'm also sorry about arguing this, but you made a generalization that isn't necessarily true.)
 

Blackbird

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
(I'm also sorry about arguing this, but you made a generalization that isn't necessarily true.)

naw that's fine, if you feel it's something to point out then it's all good.

I wasn't trying to generalize the quality of all utau banks, but to point out that there is no guarantee of quality when it comes to commercial banks made by self-funded amateur productions. There could be someone who has the money and time to book time at a studio and go through the appropriate measures to get a recording to it's utmost level of quality. However because many of the people proposing commercial banks do not have to meet a certain standard of quality outside their own particular interest it leaves the field open for many commercial banks to be at varying levels of quality regardless of what possible buyers might be interested in. My point in saying all of that was to point out to sarcaustic why people have misgivings about the concept of commercial banks, because from his previous response i believe he misunderstood what other people were saying.


Also, I want to stress that i'm not saying this to argue for or against commercial banks but to point out people's reasoning since it appeared to be misunderstood in my eyes.
 

Cheese

cured meat enthusiast
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Honestly.........I don't even have standards for this kind of thing ,considering there will probably be a free UTAU that's of arguable quality or better. In the eight years that UTAU's been a thing there's never really been a commercial UTAU that's been unrivaled by a free one, and I'm doubtful that'll ever change.

I guess if I'd had to think of my "standards" though I'd want a commercial UTAU to be high quality and have a good character design/brand, as well a unique voice- which is something many UTAU fail to have all of.
 

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