Voicebank Question

Sumeishi

Teto's Territory
Hello . I'm about to record my first VCV bank after years since recording my CV banks . I was wondering: do people usually put effects on their samples(other than noise removal ) such as compressors , equalizers , etc .?
 

lunari162

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko
You can if you want to! Some people will recommend it, other people won't.
Personally, I only amplify them. You can always EQ/compress when mixing, but I'm also just an "unedited samples" kind of person. I always thought effects would mess with resamplers ^^;
If you wanted to know which sounds better for your bank, you could try having two copies of the VB: one without effects and one with whichever effects you planned to add. That way, you can test both out in UTAU and see if you prefer one over the other.
Good luck recording your bank!
 

Kiyoteru

UtaForum power user
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
By pre-processing your samples, you limit the flexibility of the final end user. For example, you might apply an EQ that makes the vocals sound bright and suited to cheerful pop music. However, this means that the end user will have difficulty using it for any other genre without doing a lot of editing of their own. UTAU is essentially a tool for artificially creating raw vocal lines.
 
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Sumeishi

Teto's Territory
Thread starter
Thanks you all ! I think I'm gonna not process my samples .

I actually have another question but I'm not sure it warrents a new post . Is there an ideal distance between pitches for multipitch voicebanks?
 

Kiyoteru

UtaForum power user
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
The smallest recommendable distance would be a minor third, or 3 semitones apart. This is also commonly used in sampling musical instruments efficiently, as each sample is pitched at most 1 semitone away from where it was originally recorded. On the other end of the spectrum, things like octave jumps (12 semitones) obviously aren't ideal. Ultimately, it depends on the tone of your voice, and the way it changes as it travels up and down your comfortable singing range. If you have a dramatic change in tone (ex. from head voice to falsetto), it's okay to record something as small as 1 semitone away.
At the least, try to record a pitch in the middle of your range, at the bottom of your range, and the upper-middle of your range. Resamplers generally do a better job changing the pitch upwards than downwards, so you'll get better results recording at a pitch a bit lower than the range it's meant to cover.