To me the joy and beauty of vocal synthesizers has always been that they don't sound real and exploring that to create artistic expression that can't be achieved by human voices, so seeing them become more and more realistic is disheartening, almost? Especially since a lot of artists make the same voice banks sound so different and have their own personal charm. I'm glad that people will be able to make things that sound realistic, but I'm worried that songs that intentionally play out of sounding as realistic as possible will be sidelined, discouraged, no longer created, impossible to find, or unsupported by fans of vocal synthesizers. I don't want things to just push towards being as realistic as possible. There is beauty in how everyone's usage of the same voice banks sound different. There is beauty in the lack of realistic sounding vocals in vocal synthesizers.
TETO KASANE AI SYNTH V Q&A FOR PEOPLE WHO DONT KNOW WHAT ANY OF THIS MEANS
People are talking about the insane Teto News and I feel like as the resident vocal synthesis dork i wanna clarify some things with her new voicebank so. Here we go:
Q: Is she a VOCALOID now?
A: no, although this will be her first premium, professional voicebank, it is not on the VOCALOID engine. Teto will be on Synthesizer V and will feature as an AI voicebank
Q: What is an AI voicebank? Is it techbro stuff?
A: not at all, AI voicebanks are voicebanks that are not only recorded with samples given by a voice provider, but are trained on the provider's singing as data to help the voicebank have a more natural sounding synthesis, and this allows it to tune itself too. Voice providers are paid for this work and give consent for it to be used, it isn't built on stolen work or time.
Q: Will her previous UTAU banks dissapear? Do we HAVE to pay for Teto now?
A: No, although in the case of some previous VOCALOID banks voice providers of UTAU banks were asked to delete distribution of their UTAU banks as they were now voicing a premium bank, this seems to be a thing of the past and also only an issue that would occur for VOCALOID voicebanks and their providers, Synthesizer V has a few banks that were previously UTAU banks that are still in distribution, so it is likely Teto's previous voicebanks will remain too.
Q: How much would Teto SynthV cost?
A: around $80, which is standard for most third party character voices for the engine. If you wish to get her just digitally however, I recommend getting her through DLsite as there are frequent discounts and coupons there. I preordered teto for £51 after my coupon discount there (note; this site also sells adult doujin, be careful where you tread)
Q: Do I need Synthesizer V to use her SynthV bank?
A: yes. Specifically you would need Synthesizer V Pro, which is a paid version of the programme. This comes to about $151 from the Dreamtonics website, and you can get any one of the currently avalible dreamtonics own voicebanks as a bundle with it.
(Edit, old answer kept for transparency) you CAN use the standard, non pro version of synthV, you will just be unable to use any of the AI functuonality of her voicebank, alongside other limitations.
Q: why do you care so much about answering these hypothetical questions
A: cause the alternative is having to see misinformation spread about one of the things i am extremely autistic about.
Anyway feel free to drop me any questions if u have any.