Board Thread:Off-Topic Discussion/@comment-1676371-20180513053832/@comment-53539-20180610180604

Actually, the extra phonetics while allow for a closer sound don't replace a full voicebank. Maika is missing plenty of sounds she needs for full English, but has enough for Japanese. The issue is also because the sounds that match Japanese were made for Spanish, she does have issues with accent at times.

Back in the days of Sonika, the issue of languages was raised and it was noted that Vocaloid has a limitation on sounds it can house. It limited things at least back in V2, and the more sounds a voclaoid has the more issues with the voicebank it can have even now, though I don't understand the reasons behind this at all. Only Vocaloid3 could support some extra sounds. Something about lag or vocaloids handling was mentioned, that's all. Its also too expensive and would take too long to produce a vocaloid with a large enough voicebank to do all languages when in most case most only need X amount. This is why most vocaloids stick to the language-only phonetics because its cheaper and adding phonetics often is pointless. I will not, when we say "every sound", it includes clicks, whistles and whatnot as there are languages that use clicks and whistles, as well as hums and other sounds that are used for speech.

Regardless, if you don't have every single sound, then the voicebank would still be outclassed by a voicebank from the correct language. Maia also lacks triphones for Japanese so even though she has most of the sounds, isn't going to be quite as good as an actual Japanese vocaloid. At the end of the day, Maika is indeed a overstated vocaloid because people use her voicebank like its this magic "can do any language". When its not, any language she can do, a vocaloid of language can do better.

So yeah she isn't a Godscend and shouldn't be treated like one, which people do. Even with non-Catalan sounds and Spanish sounds, these don't replace a full vocal, just allow her to go a bit further then Clara or Bruno, and weren't enough to save Spanish Vocaloids. at the end of the day she was built mostly for Spanish and though has extra phonetics... They really shouldn't be overstated and if she had a actualy Japanese voicebank, it would knock socks off her Spanish + extra voicebank because it would have all the correct phonetics, diaphonetics and triphonetics for Japanese. Ditto the same for English, whereas right now she doesn't have all of these things.