Board Thread:Poll Archive/@comment-24142444-20140208195842/@comment-53539-20150118112106

I never expressed an opinion either which is odd for me as I'm a Engloid fan.

When Wat says your a good vocal, and he is the guy who doesn't tend to comment on non-CFM vocals very often (especially going so far as to address them by name), it carries some weight for me.

When I first joined the fandom after months of lurking, I saw the hype train for Big Al and he was the first English vocaloid with a positive reaction, considering most were being overshadowed, Luka (and therefore instant waifu material) or Sonika (and lets leave it at that). So Big Al was the first time I got to see the western fandom proving it can be positive on English production while resisting the urge to run it down... Until his release then it was all back to the norm proving nothing positive in this fandom seems to last for long. ¬_¬

So basically, Big Al was released during the pitiful Japanese Versus English vocaloid conflict that was going on and there was no way to predict how this was going to go down. Big Al was a personnel favourite because he was the first one I was able to witness people reacting to over time and see the way bias works against vocalodis by snubbing anything lower pitched, branding a voice "ugly" because its basically not like a vocal such as Len.

Also he has been the perfect foil of the Vocaloid stereotyping of anti-Vocaloid fans who BS about it all being about high pitched Japanese females.

He also stood out as a Vocaloid because of his diversity and was a vocal that Japan didn't have meaning Japanese vocaloid users of Vocaloid would turn to him because he was a type they didn't have. It was pretty much Al or bust for a number of years.

Tonio is my favourite because when used right, he is hands down the best male Vocaloid English vocaloid has for the way he captures the beaut of the human voice, nobody uses him and he is difficult to achieve this result. If Big Al had all of Tonio's potential beauty he'd have stayed no.1 pretty much forever. Most vocaloids lean to professional or characteristic, few cover both bases and nobody has done both just as well without having to edit and tinker the voice a little. So for me a "perfect" male Vocaloid is going to be both Tonio and Big Al. :-/

Big Al also doesn't suffer the plucking glitch other vocaloids can suffer, but unfortunately has the croak glitch instead. I'm going to say from experience the crunch glitch is a lot easier to deal with then the pluck glitch because you have virtually no control over that and it tends to stand out when you mix vocals into songs. You can only hide it, you can't always get rid of it and based on raws I've heard of vocaloids, about half of them seem to suffer from it. Thank goodness it was less apparent when it did sound out in V3 as well...

In addition, whenever someone says "english vocaloids are only soft", I can pull Al out as an example of a vocaloid so strong he will drown out other vocaloids if your not careful. Whenever says that English vocaloids have no power types... technically... Al and Ann are power types, but out of the two of them, Al is the only one who is both powerful and "solid" and has a vocal that doesn't collasp so easy(croak glitch aside), yet is also additionally "flexiable" enough for manipulation. When you consider Japanese producer felt it was as if he and Miku came out of the same factory, it stands to reason you have a good vocaloid on your hands.

But as I said... He came out at a time when people were still doing the Japanese versus English thing and handling it as a bigger deal then it ever should have been... TheEngloid V2 vocal represents both the greatest and saddest moment when I joined the fandom and as I explained to Otter, my reason for liking Engloids is based on experience. I wasn't routing for the underdog, I was routing for progress to occur to stop vocaloids being unappreciated and undervalued. Right now my only cases of rooting purely for the underdog is basically Nana (who as I said before is a vocal I have no logically resoning to like as she is the typical type I'd throw in my least favs. least), Korean vocaloids as a whole after SeeU... And Clara/Bruno because who needs them when you have the latest waifu-bait Maika WHO PEOPLE TREAT AS CAPABLE OF DOING NO WRONG.