VOCALOID2

Vocaloid 2 was the successor to the original Vocaloid engine.

History
The first release based on the Vocaloid 2 engine came from PowerFX with Sweet Ann on June 29, 2007 whose boxart was based on a Frankenstein's monster. This was closely followed by Crypton two months later with the first of their "Character Vocal Series", Hatsune Miku, on August 31, 2007. Zero-G's first Vocaloid, Prima, came out on January 14, 2008 with voice of a Soprano opera singer. Internet Co., Ltd also joined the Vocaloid development with their first Vocaloid Gackpoid on July 31, 2008, whose voice was provided by Japanese international singer Gackt. Gackpoid includes a new program, OPUS Express, for mixing vocal parts with accompaniment or phoneme data. AH Software later released their first Vocaloids on December 4, 2009 bringing the total of studios producing Vocaloids to five. [[in

Crypton Future Media released the first dual Vocaloid Kagamine Len and Kagamine Rin, a Japanese male and female. On July 18, 2008, Crypton Future Media released the updated edition of Kagamine Rin and Len, named "act2". For a period of time, users who had bought the old version were allowed to get the new version for free. On June 18, 2008, beta demonstration songs using the new version were released on the company's official blog. The expansion disc is an entirely different software and does not affect the original Kagamine Rin/Len installation in any way, giving the user options to either use the old or new voice sets exclusively or combine their usage. Crypton Future Media have now retired the sale of their old Kagamine Vocaloid and only the Act.2 version is possible to be bought. This was also the very first Vocaloid update to be done for any Vocaloid.

On April 30, 2010, an updated version of Miku called Hatsune Miku Append was released containing a package of six different tones of Miku's voice: Soft (gentle, delicate voice), Sweet (young, chibi voice), Dark (mature, heartbroken-like voice), Vivid (bright, cheerful voice), Solid (loud, clear voice), and Light (innocent, heavenly voice). This was the first time a Vocaloid has such a release and more Append are reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

Yamaha also began to get involved with the sale and production of Vocaloid's themselves with Lily being the first. Their involvement continued with the VY series, with VY1 Mizki being the first, released in deluxe and standard editions on September 1, 2010. The VY series is a series designed to be a high quality product for professional musicians. The series is also designed with the intention to set a new standard for the Vocaloids for having no face, sex or set voice, but are designed to complete any song.

Other significant releases include Crypton's Megurine Luka, the first bilingual Vocaloid, singing in Japanese and English. Zero-G's Sonika who was developed to being able to speak any language, even though she is primarily an English vocalist. AH Software's Kaai Yuki became the first Vocaloid to use a child's voice. Two studios are known to be working on franchise based Vocaloids. The first is AH-Software who will be doing a Hello Kitty-based Vocaloid in cooperation with Sanrio. Internet Co., Ltd. announced they will be doing a Gachapin Vocaloid "Gachapoid". All such products are listed with the franchise name and "Vocaloid" on the packaging.

An edition of Sonika was released in Taiwan on August 1, 2010. Users can choose to use the original English or traditional Chinese interface, however it does not have a Chinese language input method or a Chinese singing voice. This is the first edition of Vocaloid software widely released to speakers of Chinese.

Additional Notes
Vocaloid 2, while having a more realistic human tone. Many improvements to pronouncitions were made between vocaloid and Vocaloid 2. For example, the word "Now" as spoken by English Vocaloids sounds much smoother, whereas Vocaloid would break it up and sound it out as "No-ow".

The new additions and cleaner engine make Vocaloid 2 overall the superior to its predecessor, although the improved engine results in less voicebanks possibilities as it is less flexible then its predecessor in several respects. The voicebanks however, have more editing options possible than Vocaloid and more varied voices can be achieved. In addition, due to the improvements between Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2, the standard quality Vocaloid 2 is of better quality overall then Vocaloid 2. However, the overall quality of many Vocaloid 2 voicebanks varied greatly due to their numbers, more so then Vocaloid voicebanks. Furthermore, as of the developement of the VY series Vocaloid VY1 and VY2, improvements were made to how the engine worked while still using just the Vocaloid 2 core. This led to improvements to quality during the engines life circle and later voicebanks were smoother then older ones overall.

The current version of Vocaloid 2 has no reported problems with the current operating systems. Furthermore, as of the release of Vocaloid3, Vocaloid 2 engine voicebanks can now be imported into this newer engine. This improves botht he smoothness and clarity the voicebanks. Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2 are incompatible with each other. Users wishing to have a Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2 voicebanks sing together have to transfer via midi format between the two programs to have the singers sing the same song and then use an additional music/media program to organize the voicebanks into.

Marketing
In comparison to previous Vocaloid era voicebanks, much of the engines success was laid down to heavier marketing.

Though developed by Yamaha, the marketing of each Vocaloid is left to the respective studios. Yamaha themselves do maintain a degree of promotional efforts in the actual Vocaloid software, as seen when the humanoid robot model HRP-4C of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) was set up to react to three Vocaloids—Hatsune Miku, Megpoid and Crypton's noncommercial Vocaloid software "CV-4Cβ"—as part of promotions for both Yamaha and AIST at CEATEC in 2009. Japanese magazines such as DTM magazine are responsible for the promotion and introduction for many of the Japanese Vocaloids to Japanese Vocaloid fans. It has featured Vocaloids such as Miku, Kagamine Rin and Len, and Lily, printing some of the sketches by artist Kei and reporting the latest news on the Vocaloids.

Crypton has been involved with the marketing of their Vocal Series, particularly Hatsune Miku, has been actively involved in the GT300 class of the Super GT since 2008 with the support of Good Smile Racing (a branch of Good Smile Company, mainly in charge of car-related products, especially itasha (cars featuring illustrations of anime-styled characters) stickers). Although Good Smile Company was not the first to bring the anime and manga culture to Super GT, it departs from others by featuring itasha directly rather than colorings onto vehicles.

Since the 2008 season, three different teams received their sponsorship under Good Smile Racing, and turned their cars to Vocaloid-related artwork:


 * Studie, which participated in the 2008 Super GT season and 2009 Super GT season and used a BMW Z4 (E85)#Z4 Coupé (E86). Their car was painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season.
 * Team MOLA, using a Nissan 350Z, and they received sponsors on the final race in Fuji Speedway in the 2008 season. Images of Kagamine Rin and Len was added on their original colorings. The Fuji round, in fact, is still the only Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile race to feature two unique itasha cars competing in a single race.
 * Team COX, participating in the 2010 Super GT season, which uses a Porsche 911 GT3, Porsche 996 GT3 RSR (and will use a Porsche 997 GT3-R). Their car uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative, wearing an orange race queen suit) as their image.

As well as involvements with the GT series, Crypton also established the website Piapro. A number of games starting from Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA were produced by SEGA under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan made" Vocaloids. TinierMe Gacha also made attire that looks like Miku for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble the Crypton Vocaloids.

Initially, Crypton Future Media were the only studio that was allowed the license of figurines to be produced for their Vocaloids. A number of figurines and plush dolls were also released under license to Max Factory and the Good Smile Company of Crypton's Vocaloids. However, as part of promotions for Vocaloid Lily, license for a figurine was given to Phat Company and Lily became the first non-Crypton Vocaloid to receive a figurine.

In regards to the English Vocaloid studios, Power FX's Sweet Ann was given her own MySpace page and Sonika her own Twitter account. In comparison to Japanese studios, Zero-G and PowerFX maintain a high level of contact with their fans. Zero-G in particular encourages fan feed back and, after adopting Sonika as a mascot for their studio, has run two competitions related to her. There was also talk from PowerFX of redoing their Sweet Ann box art and a competition would be included as part of the redesign. English Vocaloids however currently do not sell enough to warrant extras such as seen with Crypton's Miku Append. However, it has been confirmed if the English Vocaloids become more popular, then Appends would be an option in the future.

At conventions, Vocaloids continue to be advertised, with Prima being announced at the NAMM event in 2007 and Tonio having been announced at the NAMM event in 2009. A customized, Chinese version of Sonika was released at the Fancy Frontier Develop Animation Festival, as well as with promotional versions with stickers and posters. Sanrio held a booth at Comiket 78 featuring the voice of an unreleased Vocaloid. AH Software in cooperation with Sanrio shared a booth and the event was used to advertise both the a Hello Kitty game and AH Software's new Vocaloid. At the Nico Nico Douga Daikaigi 2010 Summer: Egao no Chikara event, Internet Co., Ltd. announced their latest Vocaloid "Gachapoid" based on popular children's character Gachapin.

Cultural impact
According to Crypton, a popular video with "Hachune Miku", a super deformed Miku, Loituma Girl, holding a leek and singing "Ievan Polkka", presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation. As the recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D computer graphics and 3D computer graphics, and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. The website has become so influential that studios often post demos on Nico Nico Douga, as well as other websites such as YouTube, as part of the promotional effort of their Vocaloid products. The important role Nico Nico Douga has played in promoting the Vocaloids also sparked interest in the software and Kentaro Miura, the artist of Gakupo's mascot design, had offered his services for free because of his love for the website.

In September 2009, three figurines based on the derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from the United States state of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, though it did not reach outer space]]. In late November 2009, a petition was launched in order to get a custom made Hatsune Miku aluminum plate (8 cm x 12 cm, 3.1" x 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus space probe Akatsuki (Planet-C). Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka that goes by chodenzi-P, this project has received the backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). On December 22, 2009, the petition exceeded the needed 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made. An original deadline of December 20, 2009 had been set to send in the petition, but due to a couple of delays in the Akatsuki project, a new deadline of January 6, 2010 was set; by this deadline, over 14,000 signatures had been received. On May 21, 2010 at 06:58:22 (Japan Standard Time), Akatsuki was launched on the rocket H-IIA 202 Fright 17 from the Japanese spaceport Tanegashima Space Center, having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, which looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010.

It is difficult to know how many songs and albums are using the Vocaloid software since song writers must ask permission before being allowed to state specifically they are using a Vocaloid in their songs.

One of the Vocaloid compilations, ''Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku'', debuted at number-one on the Japanese weekly Oricon album charts dated May 31, 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. Another album, Supercell, by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's First Sound Story and Livetune's Re:Repackage, and Re:Mikus also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include the albums Sakura no Ame(桜ノ雨) by Absorb and Miku no Kanzume(みくのかんづめ) by OSTER-project. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album Prism credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda".

As a virtual idol, Hatsune Miku performed her first "live" concert during Animelo Summer Live at the Saitama Super Arena on August 22, 2009. Miku also performed her first overseas live concert on November 21, 2009, during Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore. On March 9, 2010, Miku's first solo live performance titled "Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39's Giving Day" was opened at the Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba, Tokyo.

In the month prior to her release, SF-A2 Miki was featured in the album Vocaloids X'mas: Shiroi Yoru wa Seijaku o Mamotteru as part of her promotion. The album featured the Vocaloid singing Christmas music. Miki was also featured singing the introduction of the game Hello Kitty to Issho!.

A young female prototype used for the "project if..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β".

For Yamaha's Mizki Vocaloid, an album featuring VY1 was created. The album was released with the deluxe version of the program. It includes various well known producers from Nico Nico Douga and YouTube and includes covers of various popular and well known Vocaloid songs using the VY1 Mizki product.

Criticism
In later Vocaloid 2 era Vocaloids, a habit amongst fans began to develop in regards to newer releases. Often Vocaloids Voices and appearances have been compared with current voices and sometimes with viable levels disagreements amongst fans. Fans also began to notice the overall lack of male voicebanks in the Vocaloid 2 era, owed to Kaito's failure in Vocaloid.

PowerFX's Sweet Ann, who had a image that could be used as an avatar but was often mocked, has been hinted to be considered for a competition and a change of boxart, in light of Big Al's satisfactory reaction to his new look.