Sweet ANN

Sweet ANN is a Vocaloid released by PowerFX. She was the first vocaloid created using Yamaha’s Vocaloid2 upgraded software. Her name is a pun based on her origins, meaning that Sweet-Ann = Swe-den and she was sold under as a 'space lounge robo-vocalist sensation'.

She is voiced by "an Australian singer whose artist name is "Jody".

History
PowerFX took steps when Sweet Ann was to be released. They advertised her by creating a MySpace page and uploaded demos (Alove, Sweet Ann Vs Kitto) to YouTube. Due to time restrints, the Vocaloid2 software was released without public beta testing withboth Sweet Ann and Hatsune Miku being released with reletively little testing done to their Vocaloid2 software.

After 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 My Space. 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.

Vocaloid 3 demo
Sweet Ann's vocal was used in the Vocaloid 3 demostration to demostrate the difference between a Vocaloid 2 voicebank that has been imported into vocaloid 3. Her only word sung was "My" in ascending keys across the octaves.

Marketing
She is the first English vocaloid to have a depiction as such on her boxart, although at this point the general idea of a true "avatar" would not be not considered until Miku's release a few months later. She is loosely based on "The Bride of Frankenstein". Her stitches are often mistaken for a choker.

Like Vocaloids before her, she was aimed at professional musicains as there was no established Vocaloid fandom.

Soundation Release
Amongst the releases for Soundations loops and sounds for Christmas 2010 was also included some samples of Sweet Ann and Big Al, a contest was also included with a chance to win both Vocaloids.

2011 Taiwanese design
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.

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 switched 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".

Concerts
Sweet Ann appeared in a concert ( Vocalekt Visions x AniMiku x WVD01 at AOD 2012 ) alongside Gumi, Gakupo and Miku.

She sang 'Headline Love' Feat. Koda-P & Big Al, she appeared in her Taiwan design.

Vocalekt Visions x AniMiku x WVD01 at AOD 2012 =FULL=(Can be noticed around 43:38)

Sweet Ann
Sweet Ann was the first English capable Vocaloid and the first vocaloid voicebank library released for Vocaloid 2. Her voice is an improvement over past female Vocaloid voices Lola and Miriam and is a professional producer aimed voicebank.

Strengths
As her name suggests, her voice is meant to sound "sweet" and she has a variety of uses within music. However, she lacks the raspiness of Lola and is therefore better suited to some genres like pop, rather than styles such as R&B. She also has a distinct accent that can give Ann a "sassy" ring to her voice. She is considered overall one of the easier Vocaloid 2 English Vocaloids to use and in the later half of the Vocaloid 2 era, Sweet Ann became a popular choice for new producers looking to get into English capable Vocaloids.

According to John Walden of Sound on Sound magazine, she was capable of sounding more realistic then the past Vocaloid voicebank libraries and required less work to edit thanks to the improved Vocaloid 2 engine. He commented that Sweet Ann is useful for a range of supporting vocal tasks and praised both Yamaha and PowerFX for their efforts. However, Despite the improvements to the Vocaloid software, Walden echoed words that would become a reoccuring phrase throughout the Vocaloid 2 software era, that despite developements the Vocaloid software was still far from being first class singer.

Weaknesses
She is considered the most dated of the Vocaloid 2 based English Vocaloids; Big Al has more recorded keys than she does resulting in her voice being less smooth than her counterpart. Her accent can make her pronunciations of some words sound odd and swapping phonetics may have to occur to get around the accent, but those able to work with it report she is relatively easy to use. She was one of two English capable Vocaloids released during the Vocaloid 2 period to not have a thrilled "R" sound and had no breath samples.

Popularity
At the time of release, Ann received positive reviews with many praising her "sweet" voice. Reviewers noted that on occasion she sounded realistic enough to not notice she was a virtual singer which was also pleasing to reviewers. Another positive sign was that reviewers had praised the improvements between Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2. This resulted in Ann receiving a good reception upon her release.

In late 2009, prior to the release of Big Al, she was regarded as the second most popular English Vocaloid, first being Prima.

In the Nico Nico Douga International Vocaloid ranking 2010, Ann was the 4th most common Vocaloid in the top 30 rankings, appearing in 3 songs.

A independant Vocaloid search on Nico Nico Douga revealed that most Vocaloids had less then 1,000 videos uploaded on Nico Nico Douga in between July 1 and December 15 2011 with Sweet Ann falling into that category as well.

Trivia

 * Sweet Ann has become so popular with the Japanese audience that there is an MMD model for her. After Sweet Ann's MMD model was created, people began to make other English Vocaloids into models, such as Big-Al, whose model was created by Nukude, along with Leon.


 * Her Japanese nicknames 甘音アン (Amane Ann) means "Sweet Sound Ann", and 甘いアン (Amai Ann) is a play on words. "Amai Ann/An" is the word-to-word translation from English and can be read as "sweet bean paste," a common cuisine in Japan.


 * Sweet Ann can be heard singing in the background of a few of the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Arcade songs, even though she is not a Crypton Future Media Vocaloid.


 * According to PowerFX, their Vocaloids are more like Cyborgs than Androids.


 * Sweet Ann has been described as a "white Lena Horne" by PowerFX.


 * Sweet Ann's Taiwan design is based on a bride and features some steampunk details, possibly from the fact she was based on Bride of Frankenstein.


 * Sweet Ann can be heard singing the words "Helvetica Standard" in the anime, "My Ordinary Life", as well as background music.

Notable for...

 * First Vocaloid 2 ever released
 * First female voicebank for Vocaloid 2
 * First English Vocaloid released for Vocaloid 2
 * First PowerFX Vocaloid ever released
 * First female PowerFX Vocaloid
 * First English Vocaloid to have an "avatar"