RUBY (VOCALOID4)


 * This is an article about the Ruby software for the VOCALOID4 engine.

2013
Anders was originally put into contact with Syo for his work with UTAU and knowledge on phonetics.

Development on Ruby started in December 2013 with only Prince Syo working on her, until Anders joined development half a year later. At some point during this year, or later in production, Syo searched for companies that could support Ruby. PowerFX, Zerio-G and Crypton expressed interest in the project, it became that Crypton woudl not allow much creative freedom at all. Zero-G and PowerFX where the best choices as Anders had worked with both. Anders remarked that at no point was anyone promised any control over the final design and that it was his decision to choose PowerFX.

2014
On September 19th, 2014, Syo revealed that he and Anders were working on a VOCALOID. Later that day, a voice sample was posted for Ruby. She was confirmed to have an American voice provider.

As of now, there is no confirmation that PowerFX has any affiliation with Ruby. Only VocaTone is known to be currently involved.

Ruby was originally going to be due before Christmas of 2014, however, PowerFX confirmed that she would be postponed.

On October 30, Natasha Allegri posted pictures of concept art requested by VocaTone a few months earlier. At the time, it was not confirmed whether this concept art would be used in Ruby's final design, or whether Allegri would be the official artist. It was revealed that another artist had been also requested to submit concept art for consideration.

In November Syo mentioned that the vocal was created to sound like "standard American English".

2015
On January 23, 2015, a sample covering EmpathP's Witness was discovered. However, Syo revealed that this was from early in production, stating that Problem  is a more up to date sample of her voicebank. Syo expressed a desire to create at least two voicebanks for Ruby to take advantage of VOCALOID4's cross synthesis capabilities, but was unsure due to the doubled workload.

Syo noted that Ruby didn't use the same script as CYBER DIVA. It was revealed that Ruby uses a script created from scratch, designed to be an improvement on the older YAMAHA script used for YOHIOloid.

Syo had the VOCALOID4 engine installed by Feb 4th 2015. It was commented that they would most likely collaborate with PowerFX.

Syo commented that she has r-consonant and r-Sil as a diaphones. He was thinking about adding aI-r-_ and aU-r-_ as triphones would make them sound natural.

During Feburary Syo began to comment on Ruby's pronunciation, including new words added to Ruby's dictionary. Syo had finished adding the 300 most common words and was now looking to add random words to her dictionary such as "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "milf".

The following words were added:
 * "Anime" "Manga"
 * "Sasuke Uchiha"
 * "Girugamesh"
 * "Naruto" and the names of other Vocaloids were added.
 * Someone requested the names of every Pokemon being added to her dictionary; in response Syo added "Pokemon" and "Pikachu", but declined to add more.
 * "Queef"
 * "Syo"
 * "Obama", "Beyonce"
 * "Otaku"
 * "Schlong", "schlongs"
 * "Hunty" and "Hunties"
 * "Twink" and "Twinks" was added but not "cummies".
 * The words "Krunk" and "Schwasted" were added.
 * Since X-rated words had already been added to Vocaloid content, "pornstar" and "pornstars" were added to her dictionary.
 * A comment was made regarding how she could now pronounce "pendeja".
 * "Chipotle"
 * "YOLO"
 * balegdah

It was mentioned humorously that Ruby could now say many 'terrible things'.

In one of the developer's more atypical comments, Syo noted that VOCALOID's dictionary represents fajita as "f V dZ i: t V". Syo talked about considering adding triphones to certain sounds to make the diaphones sound more natural. He stated that he wished they could give Ruby an "X", sound so she could pronounce words like "bach" and "lock" correctly. He commented that English was the only Germanic language which did not pronounce the "gh/ch" sound any more, describing how "right" and "laugh" would sound if they were still pronounced the same way as old English. Syo joked on their twitter account that Ruby can now pronounce the word "ew" correctly. This was achieved by adjusting the dictionary and adding a triphonetic data related to the word. Syo later described how difficult it was to get an English vocaloid to pronounce the word "idea" in just two syllables. Ruby was also being set up to pronounce "fire" and "hour" in one syllable. The comment was also made that to change to an alternate sound, you can add "2".

It was confirmed that Ruby originally had a Japanese voicebank, but this was scrapped due to increased workload after the transition to V4, and the possibility of having to pay for a licence for each. The extra workload was owed to the increase in triphonetic data, in addition PowerFX was only willing to pay for one English vocal. However, Syo noted that other voicebanks can be added depending on the success of Ruby's first release. Syo also confirmed that some of Ruby's recordings had recently been redone to improve them so they sounded similar to her Japanese voice. Syo also agreed that the Japanese vocal sounded better overall. Syo confirmed PowerFX wants to see how well the English voicebank sells before adding any additional vocals.

Syo also revealed that the tester audio clips found in early 2015 were not the original uploads of those samples. Syo explained that they had been removed and someone else had now re-uploaded them. However, there was no objection to them existing so long as everyone acknowledged that they were of early versions of Ruby's vocal and that they did not reflect the current status of the project. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" was explained as a quick test to see how the vocal sounded before production.

On March 12th, an email by Bil Bryant from PowerFX confirmed that Ruby was planned for a future release before Summer 2015.

On March 14, her dictionary was reported at almost 5,800 words.

Syo had also dropped hints that Ruby's voice provider wasn't white, in response to discussion about her design.

On March 19, Syo confirmed that Ruby knew over 5,900 words, and was almost complete. In a tweet the day before, he stated that 100 of these words were randomly chosen. Syo also confirmed that Ruby can say "memes". One of the first words added was "Antidisestablishmentarianism". "Proletariat" had also been added, so was "Communist", once again it was stated "Cummies" would not be added. "balegdah" was also added.

Syo spoke about Ruby, stating that of VocaTone, only Anders was helping with the project. Syo mentioned that he didn't consider himself as part of the VocaTone team and stated that a development "team" did not exist, as it was almost exclusively himself working on Ruby.

Regarding her accent, Syo once more confirmed that it was intended to be a general American voice. He admitted that a little of the provider's regional accent may be present, but if that were so he did not notice it himself. Speaking on the topic of "Problem", Syo noted that there appeared to be a non-rhotic accent because any [@r] was changed to [V] for the song.

On April 4th, Syo stated that due to her Japanese voicebank being cancelled, her vocals will have extra phonemes sort of like SeeU and MAIKA do.

On April 24th, Syo tweeted that Ruby included new phonemes that were recorded to create a more natural sounding American English and that the V4 editor would not use these phonemes by default. It was also noted that the total number of triphones she has per pitch was at least 530. At this point, Ruby's voicebank is nearly finished.

On April 26th, Syo noted on Twitter that Ruby will have the Growl Function and the Rolling R phoneme from the V2 era [R].

Syo also spoke out on a issue about Ruby that involved him as well. He noted that will approach a different company or not release Ruby at all, if the payment deal is not good enough. Syo commented that 10 hours out of his school week was being dedicated to Ruby. The amount of money he would have earn at minimum pay for the 17 months he had worked on her would equal to almost $5,000. The payment that was offered was significantly less. Syo was noted he thought he would be paid via a royalties system, but was offered a lump sum instead. He had also noted that he would likely go for a real job after Ruby was released. Unless Ruby turned out to be a amazing product, he would likely not be involved much in future Vocaloid developments. The overall amount he was offered was a quarter of the minimum wage amount he mentioned, plus a bonus if Ruby sold well. He also said, that the fact others will steal his work bummed him out.

On May 20th, Syo announced some "exciting things" were in the works for Ruby. In addition, PowerFX replied in a e-mail to a fan Ruby is due mid-late summer.

On May 28th, Syo tweeted that Ruby has nearly 600 phonemes per pitch and is a three pitched Vocaloid. He also noted that the 3 layers of pitch were what were taking Ruby so long to be produced and why she had taken an entire year to produce.

On the 10th of June, Syo asked for original songs that he could use for Ruby as demo songs. He gave a week as the deadline. Examples had to be sent in, of which Syo would tell them if the song would be accepted as a demo.

A concept was unveiled at AX2015. Syo reported back on this by saying that he had been promised the final design and had even submitted a final concept by Natasa Allergi to Ax2015 himself and expressed disappointment that he was not allowed final say after all. Due to fan backlash, Anders cleared up any misconcerns and highlighted that Syo was warned several times that PowerFX has last say on any decisions about Ruby. Due to the comment of "whitewashing" the character, as the provider was Latino, he noted that PowerFX were not aware of the provider's race at all. Anders also noted that PowerFX had been sent Misha's design concept, but he could not force PowerFX to use it. In response to a fan e-mail, Bil found the accusations of "white washing" saddening as he was never aware of Misha's race during the development and was aware that the race not being represented could hurt someone. He had also commented that they prefer to hire artists for the design with no contact with the development team, such as done with Big Al and Sweet Ann.

He also reported that due to the failure of Yohioloid it had been decided to change direction for Ruby and aim her at DJs, EDM producers and professional producers. He highlighted that PowerFX are primarily a Sound technology company and focus on Soundation and other soundware products to serve music makers. In another response, Bil commented that Yamaha had already recieved everything related to Ruby. He said that there was nothing wrong with doing their own interpretation on Ruby despite the final design already being in Yamaha's hands.

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