Viability of UTAU for large (commercial?) projects

[Kiyoteru]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing a lot of people trying to do various big vocalsynth projects. Things like wanting to make Vocaloids, Alter/Egos, Festival singers, and so on. Sure, it can be interesting to try something else, and experiment with it. But what makes UTAU so bad for big projects? Why is UTAU always just a prototype?

No matter what you want to make your big vocalsynth project with, you have to invest a lot of time and effort into creating a very high quality product. You have to start with great equipment, get skilled people on your team, and effectively market it. Of all the vocalsynths out there, I'd say that UTAU is among the best. There's also our huge, supportive community, always teaching, learning, and breaking new ground. It's really a perfect choice for success, especially considering that you don't have to spend any money just to get started.

Maybe the reason that people look down on UTAU is because of its high accessibility. Virtually anyone could use it, so there's lots of work out there made by unskilled users that makes it seem bad. Vocalsynths with a restricted development base have quality standards. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping other people from making something better than what you can. But that isn't an issue if you're just trying to create something good, and you're not trying to compete with people.
Maybe another reason is that, if you use something other than UTAU, there's a feeling of exclusivity or "specialness" about being involved. Like it somehow elevates you, even if the resulting vocals sound worse.

This is probably a little controversial, but I think a really prime example is VoxWave's ALYS. She sounded amazing as an UTAU. She was a popular character, and we've already seen that she succeeded. I really think that ALYS could have been a wonderful commercial UTAU. But instead, we ended up with a lower quality Alter/Ego. While Alter/Ego is easier to learn how to use, it doesn't offer you the same control that UTAU would have offered.

Though Xia Yu Yao's voicebank isn't commercial, I think she's an example of a successful UTAU project. Heck, I even took a photo with a promotional cosplayer at a major convention, at her own booth. Not your average artist alley keychain.

There isn't really a precedent for this kind of thing in the overseas community. In fact, I've heard in the past people saying that all UTAU voicebanks should be free of charge, because the program is free to download. (It's shareware. You're most likely meant to pay for the key.) I want to see a group who can pull it off. I want people to understand that UTAU is most definitely a viable option, but maybe we need to see their resounding success first in order to be inspired.

 

[SOHBlue]

I agree completely and I've left numerous long replies on how I adore UTAU and the community. I've wanted to give back to it and do great things with it, supporting many UTAU creators along with my own work even though I don't make UTAU myself. For the most part, I think it may be because of such accessibility that things become rather scattered.

There are many different reclists, different skill levels among users and as I've said before, UTAU takes many skills to go all the way. There's a lot to learn and with so many different methods and techniques and voicebanks it can likely be overwhelming.
Yes, it's great you can "make your own Vocaloid" in a way, but unless you have a lot of friends with all the tools needed to make a great character design+voicebank+PV-or you can magically do it all yourself in good time-you're more or less left to stumble around and figure things out slowly like with most skills learned.

Leading to you mistaking many UTAU for the wrong gender and not knowing there are no Ls in Japanese and not always being able to tell between covers and originals or new UTAU and old and aAAAaaaAAA-

So in short, UTAU is rather demanding. You have to really love it and have faith in it, you can't have little patience or time and most young users aren't very patient and most older have work to take their time. (Plus there's this Hellish place on Earth called school that young ones are forced to go to, you know. Spooky.)
That leaves a lot of people simply not being able to do too much at once and the most you end up seeing is covers with a new UTAU's artwork over a popular Vocaloid song vid.
(I'm not knocking any of these things, by the way, I have little room to talk now since I haven't made anything yet besides free UTAU drawings for others. TwT
I'm just saying that at the end of the day, this is most one can do on their own and even that takes hours or even days or weeks depending on what you're trying to achieve. I'm looking at you, multipitch/multilingual bank creators with different append designs! ;P)

There is potential, absolutely and I really admire the users that use their breaks in their day to look around and see what they can do to either have more fun or make something easier for everyone. It's great. If it weren't for those people I doubt UTAU would have made it this far, but that can be said for everything.

Almost-midnight-rambling aside, I don't think UTAU is just Vocaloid for the poor and bored, absolutely not, but it's not as easy as having bigger and more wealthy people to back your idea and make the most out of it. Often group projects are done for fun and again, when everyone has spare time. And if I may speak for other creative minds-ideas change often. What seems cool and possibly successful now can just be seen as cringey and not worth it later. Especially with new reclists being made *cough*arpasing*cough*.

In conclusion, UTAU is great, but with such a diverse community and accessibility, things often change faster than creators can keep up for big, months to year long projects.

*Passes out and whispers an apology for the lack of cats or memes in this long reply, points to title*

 

[cubialpha]

I think the number one technical thing that turns teams trying to compete with Vocaloid away... is the lack of an input dictionary. Honestly.

Second, I think it's the stigma of having low-quality voices. After all, much of the Vocaloid fandom is kind of stuck in 2009-2012 limbo, listening to the same songs, and happening upon old UTAU content. If only we could reach the bigger mainstream fans with voices like Renri.

 

[partial]

I think one of the bigger downfalls to consider is just about everyone into UTAU is also into Vocaloid, which probably makes UTAU be seen as just stepping stone or a substitute to fill in for a Vocaloid until a user eventually gets one. A lot of UTAU users want a Vocaloid more than anything, and basically just settle for UTAU. Which is sad. I was that way, some 6 years ago.

Now having various Vocaloid vocals and an even greater number of UTAU vocals, I can say that despite UTAU being more manual, it offers a lot more versatility. But Vocaloid content generally crushes UTAU content, just because of the brand name. I think users generally are discouraged to try anything new with UTAU out of fear of it being buried by other things - which, imo, is a valid fear. There's always a lot happening, whether it's new voicebanks or reclists or resources. But for someone to work on creating a large UTAU project, there's risk that it will never be seen - and it's hard to impress the UTAU community, given the amount of things that have already been done.

But when someone talks about making an Alter/Ego vocal or a Vocaloid vocal, it gathers a lot more attention than it would if they talked of making a multipitch, multilingual UTAU voicebank. Another reason I think people steer away from UTAU projects is because, well, anyone can do it. Anyone can make a new reclist or recording method. But with commercial brand names comes exclusivity, probably empowering the individual with the idea that because they're trying to make this Vocaloid or A/E or whatever, they're better than the rest.

And there's nothing wrong with trying to make a Vocaloid - but it's true to say a lot of people who want to do so are very young, have no funds, and really no clear goal as to what type of Vocaloid they want to produce nor any sort of team to get things moving. They're immature, which I think also factors in to why they don't want to work with UTAU - if they make a successful Vocaloid, they can say they did it. Not everyone can.

 

[Arissa]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing a lot of people trying to do various big vocalsynth projects. Things like wanting to make Vocaloids, Alter/Egos, Festival singers, and so on. Sure, it can be interesting to try something else, and experiment with it. But what makes UTAU so bad for big projects? Why is UTAU always just a prototype?

No matter what you want to make your big vocalsynth project with, you have to invest a lot of time and effort into creating a very high quality product. You have to start with great equipment, get skilled people on your team, and effectively market it. Of all the vocalsynths out there, I'd say that UTAU is among the best. There's also our huge, supportive community, always teaching, learning, and breaking new ground. It's really a perfect choice for success, especially considering that you don't have to spend any money just to get started.

Maybe the reason that people look down on UTAU is because of its high accessibility. Virtually anyone could use it, so there's lots of work out there made by unskilled users that makes it seem bad. Vocalsynths with a restricted development base have quality standards. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping other people from making something better than what you can. But that isn't an issue if you're just trying to create something good, and you're not trying to compete with people.
Maybe another reason is that, if you use something other than UTAU, there's a feeling of exclusivity or "specialness" about being involved. Like it somehow elevates you, even if the resulting vocals sound worse.

This is probably a little controversial, but I think a really prime example is VoxWave's ALYS. She sounded amazing as an UTAU. She was a popular character, and we've already seen that she succeeded. I really think that ALYS could have been a wonderful commercial UTAU. But instead, we ended up with a lower quality Alter/Ego. While Alter/Ego is easier to learn how to use, it doesn't offer you the same control that UTAU would have offered.

Though Xia Yu Yao's voicebank isn't commercial, I think she's an example of a successful UTAU project. Heck, I even took a photo with a promotional cosplayer at a major convention, at her own booth. Not your average artist alley keychain.

There isn't really a precedent for this kind of thing in the overseas community. In fact, I've heard in the past people saying that all UTAU voicebanks should be free of charge, because the program is free to download. (It's shareware. You're most likely meant to pay for the key.) I want to see a group who can pull it off. I want people to understand that UTAU is most definitely a viable option, but maybe we need to see their resounding success first in order to be inspired.

I'm very glad you mentioned Xia Yu Yao It's teams like Voicemith that bring out the best utau has to offer. And I think what you said is the reason behind why people of a vast majority don't take utau seriously. It seems less professional, and many are under the profession that utau is a poor man's vocaloid of some sorts and what with all the poor quality voicebanks and the fact that anyone can make an utau only adds to the misconceptions.

It's groups like Voicemith that created Xia Yu Yao that help break the boundaries of what utau is believed be, and brings light to how something amazing like Yu Yao can be created, and her huge success reflects this ^=^ She's like an utau role model, almost.

Then there's groups like Studio Ogien. There was always something about them that made me think about utau a bit more. This group goes out of their way to make models, merchandise, booths for their utau, and in the future, well, they've been working on making a video game featuring their own as well as other utau characters. I've rarely seen people treat it so seriously, so it makes me happy to see that groups like this exist, that producers like Police Picadilly are making utau originals. I think people just need to see how much potential utau has so that when they hear the word they don't think about second-rate Vocaloids or whatever. For years people have been under that impression, caught up on the old, less quality vocals of 2010.

Hopefully someone with admirable credibility will put their heart into the program and show the world how great utau is ^=^ and market it as well as Vocaloid, since that's another factor is utau not being seen as professional like that. Things like concerts, cosplays, merchandise, all that stuff! Sorry for rambling, lol

 

[heta-tan]

In terms of commercial voicebanks, I'm not really sure about the overseas stance so I'll just focus on our part...

I think part of the problem at least in the Western fandom is that it seems most of us are at the age where we can't really go around buying banks, starting large funded projects to make studio quality banks, etc. I know at least for me, I don't have the money lying around to go towards buying voice banks, getting oto or art commission from other people, getting the best equipment etc because I have to worry about buying supplies for school like my textbooks and food.
Another problem is that there are plenty of free banks people use instead and even if there's a demand for a commercial/hard-to-find banks, you can easily redistribute them like Merry's limited time banks or Matsudappoiyo.

Getting away from the UTAU fandom, I think people tend to see UTAU as being sub par because in reality, most banks aren't going to be "Vocaloid" standard because everyone can go and make an UTAU so there's no quality control. There's also no standard reclist for any bank that isn't a Japanese bank so each list has it's own learning curve that I don't think producers wants to go through for every single new type of bank they come across and want to use. Not to mention that it seems most banks being produced are Japanese. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think most outside producers want to work with a bank meant for a language they don't use or have a basic grasp of. Aside from that, the program is much harder to use to get the same results as Vocaloid.

I think think at this point, unless there's a professional company coming out with top-of-the-line bank that uses an equally good reclist and dictionary plugin, I don't think a commercial bank can be too viable in and out of the fandom. I think that's unfortunate but I think we might be heading in the right direction with list such as arpasing I just wish it uses x-sampa and was easier to use but we're getting there and we shouldn't be discouraged.

Sorry if this is really long and doesn't make sense ^^'

 

[Nohkara]

It's nearly impossible to companies or teams to police that none redistribute their commercial voicebanks... It's really easy to redistribute any VB for really short time but still not caught. IDK about A/E but in Vocaloid, it has better "security": that long number thing you know? UTAU doesn't have that kind of technology.

Other thing is that we absolutely need some kind of lyrics plug-in for no-Japanese VB. Like, you could just write in one note "cute" and it automatically converts in to "kjut". For hard core UTAU users it not huge deal but people who aren't used to it and don't know X-sampa/VBs Encoding system are likely like "how heck I make this sing?!?!? I cannot just put words?!?!"I think that Delta ENG, Moresampler ENG and Chinese has that kind of plug all ready in but definitely need more! Also, please Ameya: Update UTAU-Synth that it allows 3rd party plug-ins to be able to used in.

And what I kinda hate with no-Japanese VB recording that there's no a "standard" encoding system that is same in all in same language VB - specially in English (VCCV has CZ custom encoding, Delta has X-Sampa based and then Arpasing has it's own etc...). Like, I'm fine with different types CV, CVVC, VCCV, VCV, CVCVCVCCCVCVVVVCCCV whatever but I don't like to learn 9328342654264 different encoding systems for one freaking language, please stick in one like Vocaloid or A/E does: I don't care if it's X-sampa based or not but just in one please.

 

[SOHBlue]

It's nearly impossible to companies or teams to police that none redistribute their commercial voicebanks... It's really easy to redistribute any VB for really short time but still not caught. IDK about A/E but in Vocaloid, it has better "security": that long number thing you know? UTAU doesn't have that kind of technology.

Other thing is that we absolutely need some kind of lyrics plug-in for no-Japanese VB. Like, you could just write in one note "cute" and it automatically converts in to "kjut". For hard core UTAU users it not huge deal but people who aren't used to it and don't know X-sampa/VBs Encoding system are likely like "how heck I make this sing?!?!? I cannot just put words?!?!"I think that Delta ENG and Chinese has that kind of plug all ready in but definitely need more! Also, please Ameya: Update UTAU-Synth that it allows 3rd party plug-ins to be able to used in.

And what I kinda hate with no-Japanese VB recording that there's no a "standard" encoding system that is same in all in same language VB - specially in English (VCCV has CZ custom encoding, Delta has X-Sampa based and then Arpasing has it's own etc...). Like, I'm fine with different types CV, CVVC, VCCV, VCV, CVCVCVCCCVCVVVVCCCV whatever but I don't like to learn 9328342654264 different encoding systems for one freaking language, please stick in one like Vocaloid or A/E does: I don't care if it's X-sampa based or not but just in one please.

YESSSSSS I agree! (With the security part too, but mostly with a lack of a standard and lyric plugins.) Reclists get so long and complicated with other languages, especially English. Yes it's a pretty tough language to work with, but having many methods is frustrating.

 

[Kiyoteru]

In terms of commercial voicebanks, I'm not really sure about the overseas stance so I'll just focus on our part...

I think part of the problem at least in the Western fandom is that it seems most of us are at the age where we can't really go around buying banks, starting large funded projects to make studio quality banks, etc. I know at least for me, I don't have the money lying around to go towards buying voice banks, getting oto or art commission from other people, getting the best equipment etc because I have to worry about buying supplies for school like my textbooks and food.

I get that point. The idea is, though, that trying to do a large project would cost a lot of money for any vocalsynth you choose. So if some team managed to have all the right equipment, etc. already, then they don't need to spend more, like for Vocaloid licensing. It doesn't make sense to go for Vocaloid in that case.

But Vocaloid content generally crushes UTAU content, just because of the brand name. I think users generally are discouraged to try anything new with UTAU out of fear of it being buried by other things - which, imo, is a valid fear.

But when someone talks about making an Alter/Ego vocal or a Vocaloid vocal, it gathers a lot more attention than it would if they talked of making a multipitch, multilingual UTAU voicebank.

Yeah, starting out with a vocalsynth that's already "different" probably saves a lot of effort in marketing! But I wish there was stronger commitment. We first heard that ALYS was going to be a Vocaloid, but that changed to CeVIO and then to Alter/Ego, which really gave the impression that VoxWave didn't know what they were doing at the time. So if someone tries yet another Kickstarter Vocaloid and says they'll make an UTAU as a backup in case they can't get enough funds... Well, if you're going to make an UTAU, why not just commit to it in the first place?

Perhaps the most succesful team for a commercial UTAU or similar project is a company that already does vocalsynth stuff. IIRC, Voicemith was affiliated with the company that resold Engloids in Taiwan. If Zero-G decided to update Miriam, but as a high quality English UTAU, I'm certain it would go well.

It's nearly impossible to companies or teams to police that none redistribute their commercial voicebanks... It's really easy to redistribute any VB for really short time but still not caught. IDK about A/E but in Vocaloid, it has better "security": that long number thing you know? UTAU doesn't have that kind of technology.

Then again, there's the fact that companies sell sample packs all the time. Like instrument recordings, or musical loops. These are virtually the same as an UTAU bank- just a folder with a bunch of audio files. There doesn't seem to be any security there, except in how someone accesses it initially, but after that it's free to quietly share. It's sad that people will ignore licenses that spell it out for them, that they aren't meant to redistribute samples unmodified. Though if the group or company that produced it is well respected and trustworthy, then maybe people will be less likely to do that kind of thing.