Sweet ANN (VOCALOID2)


 * This is an article about the Sweet ANN software for the VOCALOID2 engine.

Early Development?
While the exact date of her development is unknown, several clues existence that suggest Sweet Ann may have been headed for a VOCALOID release. PowerFX were known to have joined the production of VOCALOID vocals in 2002, after Zero-G's entered production in the UK autumn. PowerFX's involvement was initally not announced until later, leaving vagueness on when production began on Sweet Ann's early development.

A image in the instruction manual for VOCALOID shows a image with Sweet Ann's codename of "JODIE" featured as the name of a voicebank, "JODIE" being identified as a reference to Sweet Ann's provider "Jody". "TARO" and "HANAKAO" are also names seen alongside "JODIE" in the VOCALOID manual, were the codenames for KAITO and MEIKO. "JODIE" had also been sighted in Ann related information to do with her VOCALOID2 version.

A demo was also included on Sound on Sound website with other VOCALOID demos featuring a unknown female Vocaloid that sounds much like VOCALOID2 Ann. Wed, 25 Jun 2003 was the date the file was last modified on the site, with the file first being shown, the file was first entered in Sound on Sound May edition of 2003.

Official announcement
Sweet ANN, along with Prima and BIG AL, first appeared at the NAMM March 2007 event. ANN was later announced to the general public in May for a release, just weeks away from her release date.

PowerFX took steps when Sweet ANN was to be released. They advertised her by creating a MySpace page and uploaded demos "Alove and "Sweet ANN Vs Kitto" to YouTube. Due to time restraints, the VOCALOID2 software was released without public beta testing with both Sweet ANN and Hatsune Miku being released with relatively little testing done to their VOCALOID2 software.

After Sweet ANN's appearance, VOCALOID fell mostly into obscurity in the west due to a change in the trends of the music industry, with the focus of the indie music being taken away from sites like MySpace. This was the circle VOCALOID had mostly been aimed at in the west, although VOCALOID was not the only software to be affected by this change and music software in general was hit by the change of styles. Sweet ANN was the last of the English capable VOCALOIDs to receive great attention by reviewers for a while and the last VOCALOID to be greatly noticed prior to Hatsune Miku's rise to fame.

2011 Taiwanese Exportation
On 01/04/2011 PowerFX's website went down. When it reopened on April 6, 2011, both Sweet ANN and Big Al were sporting a new look.

On April 8, 2011 a PowerFX employee noted that the designs seen on the PowerFX website of both Big Al and Sweet ANN were that of a Taiwanese distributor of PowerFX products and were not the official designs of Big Al or Sweet ANN.

According to PowerFX, they put the Taiwan boxart on their website to try the oblong shape as they preferred it and were thinking about switching to this shape for their VOCALOID products. The boxarts placement was temporary until they could run a Sweet ANN / BIG AL competition, however they noted the fandom had insisted that boxart be on the page and had to switch back.

Later demo songs "Carry on", "U belong to me" and Shu-tP's classic song "Night of the Magic" were released by E-Capsule. Later Sweet ANN and BIG AL were featured in the song "At your side 2010". Other songs include "Everlasting Love".

Voicebank Libraries

 * See "Sweet Ann Issues" at Vocaloid Otaku forums for help on improving Sweet Ann. 
 * -|Sweet Ann =