SeeU

SeeU (시유, シユ) is a voicebank for Vocaloid3, the first Vocaloid capable of Korean and the first "Korean/Japanese bilingual" Vocaloid. The voice provider is the artist Kim Dahi (17 year old member of the K-pop girl band "Glam"). Her release was October 21, 2011 (South Korea) and December 16, 2011 (Japan).

History
A demo called I-Fantasy produced by Bang Shi Hyuk (a.k.a. Hitman Bang) was originally released introducing her to the Vocaloid fandom during the Vocaloid3 announcement. On August 30, 2011, her name and appearance were revealed. There will be a limited edition version of her software as a starter pack.

Preorders for SeeU took place on the 14th of October and a community called "CreCrew" is being opened for her. She was released on the 21st with a Vocaloid 3 starter option or without. She also has a limited edition with just her voicebank and a book. SBS mentioned they are keeping the prices down on SeeU. Overseas buyers will have to purchase through eBay. A third demo "Shining Star" was also released.SeeU's release date was announced on SeeU's official site as well as on the SBS Artech_vocaloid twitter page. She was released in Korea on the 21st of October. SeeU was released in Japan on December 16, 2011.

Demo Songs

Korean Demos

 * Run YouTube Broadcast
 * Never Let You Go_Remix YouTube Broadcast
 * Shining Star Youtube Broadcast
 * I=Fantasy Youtube Broadcast
 * Umbrella Youtube Broadcast
 * I=Fantasy Breathing Effect Youtube Broadcast

Japanese Demos

 * 願いを込めて Youtube Broadcast
 * 明日を向いて Youtube Broadcast

Marketing
SeeU was given a moe-esque design and is aimed more specifically to the general and Vocaloid Otaku fandom. A limited edition with illustration book was also produced for her during the 2011 period.

Competition
An art competition was held related to her. According to SBS Artech, the winner receives a limited version of her software and a Intuos tablet, second place will win the normal software package and the Vocaloid 3 editor, and third place will just receive the limited edition voicebank. The winners of the competition were revealed on September 17, 2011. All winning and notable entries appeared in SeeU's newest demo PV. On the 23rd, her official first demo song was uploaded, featuring all the winners and honorable mention artwork.

On November 17, 2011, SBS posted up an UGC competition for SeeU up to January 12, 2012.

Usage for Music
SeeU has both a Japanese and a Korean voicebank, allowing her to switch between the languages where needed. Her voice is light-hearted. SBS claim she is best at singing K-pop.

Due to the difficulties in using her and a number of outstanding issues related to the voicebanks, she is currently considered the most complex / advance Vocaloid, a title once held by Megurine Luka.

Korean
SeeU is able to pronounce any sound that can be written in modern hangul. Unlike previous English and Japanese Vocaloids, coding of SeeU's voicebank is only partially based on X-SAMPA, this is due to the fact that the Korean alphabet, hangul, already functions as a phonetical alphabet. Due to it being impossible to code with hangul font, her consonants are based on romanized hangul and her vowels are based on X-SAMPA. Reception of her Korean voicebank from fans have been widely mixed. Many had commented that it is difficult to understand her vocals as they lack clarity and her pronunciation of words occasionally sounds awkward to native Koreans. However with more people using SeeU, her pronounciation, while still a bit awkward, is not as unclear as previously thought. Some comments regarding her pronunciation are that her ㄹ(r) sounds are too trilled and that she also sounds particularly "English-like," as Japanese do not trill their (r)s. Some reports also state she has a pitching issue, this can be fixed with 3rd party software such as pitching software; she is not the first Vocaloid reported with this issue and it has been reported from time to time with Vocaloids since Miriam.

Prior to her release fans had difficulty in predicting her overall tone. This was due to differences between all early demos prior to her release date having prevented precise analysis of her vocals as each demo had different approaches and techniques on manipulating her voice. Overall, her default tone sounds similar to her Umbrella demo.


 * Korean Phonetics

Despite only being bilingual, SBS enjoy calling her "trilingual" owed to their claim of English capablities, despite this is not the case. Her Korean voicebank has more flexiblity to it than her Japanese voicebank and allows for much greater phonetic manipulation; it is easier to match other languages than previous language libraries allowed. This led to the famous claim by SBS that SeeU could even do English using just Korean, a claim that SBS stick by in the Vocafarre. However, SeeU herself often sounds choppy when attempting to do languages with a very different phonetic system to them, this is due to missing diphthongs needed for smoothness. So the effect varies per user on how well she can pull it off, this also involves also learning how Korean works to make the new language so it is often easier to work with Vocaloids of that language than SeeU. This does not prevent those with advance usage attempting to make the most of her flexible capabilities.

Japanese
She had a Japanese voicebank included as well as a Korean. Her Japanese was never demonstrated until her release. Reports on her mention that her phonetics have a little Korean accent and is a little unclear in her "ts-" and "r-" sounds. In terms of usage, her consonants are slurred and she gets off-pitch very easily, especially with hand-drawn vibrato. During pitching, she tends to soften her consonants greatly. She has particular trouble sounding the "s-" phoneme. Quality-wise, she is similar to the Kagamine Rin / Len ACT2 voicebanks. She is also unable to hold a consonant by itself, a common problem noticed in Vocaloid1 software. As with Megurine Luka, those capable of using Japanese voicebanks can at least make use of her software package.


 * Japanese Phonetics

Notable SeeU Songs

 * Youtube List/SeeU Songs

Reception
Out of the Vocaloid 3 releases, SeeU has had quite a bit of interest in her pre-release form because she was the first Korean Vocaloid. Despite a general praise for her design and vocals, there have been some pre-release complaints.

Mostly, her demos have proven to be the single most controversial issue about her. While it is not uncommon for auto-tuning software to be used for demo songs SeeU's demo "i-Fantasy" has been criticized for heavy use of auto-tuning software to the point where some argue it is impossible to actually tell how good the Vocaloid 3 engine is or really hear how her vocals truly are. When demos of Vocaloid 3 Megpoid, Mew and Akikoroid-chan surfaced, comparisons were done and SeeU sounded remarkably realistic compared to them which won her merit. However, it was revealed after a fan reduced the vocals on her demo until only the backing was left that a real vocal was used alongside the Vocaloid voicebank. Both the real singer and Vocaloid voicebank had been blended together to make the song smoother, in theory this hid any robotic results her voicebank produced. The result of the reduction revealing the use of a human singer can be heard here (if you have trouble 0:52-0:59 is most obvious point a human can be heard).

The demo has been rated a misleading song by veteran fans within the overseas fandom. However, despite the heavy criticism, the song has been very popular and has already seen a large number of covers by other Vocaloids. Her next demo and her official "1st demo" "Run!" was more focused on the voicebank and SeeU was able to be heard more clearly as a Vocaloid. The issue with this song, however, was that the pitch was dramatically different to i=fantasy. Further more, the second demo song "Never Let You Go" displays yet another pitch range, though more on par with i=fantasy, was also different to "Run!". The constant change of tone of SeeU caused some backlash by fans, who complained that you could not hear the true SeeU voice. Later, a clip without the auto-tune was released.

Furthermore, there were concerns about SBS's early claims of being able to recreate English with the Korean voicebank, when it has been pointed out that Korean doesn't have all the phonetics for English.

SeeU was also subject to pro-Crypton fans within the overseas fandom who disliked the idea of Korean Vocaloids. However, this was nothing new and this kind of treatment was also found already in anti-English Vocaloid fans. Also, within the Japanese fandom there has been a lot of reported hate spread on Nico Nico Douga and 2chan, which has left her hitting a hard pre-release start. It has been pointed out, it is harder to judge an unreleased Vocaloid let alone one for a new version of the software, although the criticism towards the inconsistency with the first set of demos has been her hardest issue amongst fans.

Of all the Vocaloid 3 voicebanks, SeeU has grabbed some of the biggest attention seen thus far in the overseas fandom, however in the Japanese fandom overall she hasn't caught much attention.

Trivia

 * Her name is read as "See you" as in "I see you". According to SBS, this is one of several meanings of her name.
 * About her design:
 * Her cat ears/nekomimi are speakers
 * Her neckband is a CD player
 * Soundwaves light up on the rectangle at her flat-shoes
 * There's a pause button at the back of her clothes
 * There's a power button at the ribbon on her neckband

Notable for...

 * First Korean capable Vocaloid
 * First Vocaloid by SBS Artech
 * First female Korean Vocaloid
 * First female Vocaloid by SBS Artech