Megurine Luka V4X


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

History
Note; it is currently unknown how the final package of Luka's V4 update + Append vocals will be released; all information is currently being held here until further information is found.

Megurine Luka Append: 2010
Megurine Luka is the next member of the character Vocal series to receive an append.

Wat confirmed he was considering an "aggressive Whisper" vocal for her.

In December 2010, tests were run on Luka's alpha expression voice. However, it was not as sexy as Wat had hoped. Wat was also surveying the quality of the vocal.

Confirmation of production order was MEIKO > Megurine Luka >> Kaito.

Megurine Luka Append: 2011
The first commercial use of the Luka Append was by Konori on the album VOCALOID Minzoku Chou Kyokushuu (VOCALOID民族調曲集), where she sings "Hoshizora to Yuki no Butoukai (Zeal mix)". The VOCALO APPEND album later used a beta voicebank of Luka's Soft Append.

In July, Wat reported that MEIKO's and Luka's progress was coming along quietly.

In a twitter on the 12th July 2011, Wat mentioned doing test in relation to a Luka "Soft" append.

Wat tweeted on the 1st Dec 2011, noting that all previous demos had originally been rendered with the VOCALOID2 engine, and things were being redone for the VOCALOID3 engine.

A video with samples from the VOCALO APPEND album was uploaded on December 17, 2011.

Megurine Luka Append: 2012
Crypton confirmed that they're going to add Japanese and English Voicebanks to her V3 appends, although are still trying to work out how to make them cost effective.

Megurine Luka V3: 2013
Wat confirmed that Luka and MEIKO are planned for release on VOCALOID3, but no estimated release was set at this moment.

In November 2013 it was confirmed that Luka's V3 version is in the process of being tuned. It is reported to sound the same as the VOCALOID2 vocal, but less painful to listen to.

Later in December, Wat continued to speak of Luka. He mentions the new standard vocal is calm, a second vocal has more of a flashy flare about it and a 3rd is a more breathy vocal intended to be sexy. Their focus was a vocalist with a varied tone.

On the 26th of December 2013, Wat mentioned having worked with Luka's recording and thanked Asakawa for her patience. The day before, Wat mentioned recording the sound "spell" (the 50 sounds needed for Japanese) using a customized list rather then the standard Yamaha "Spell". At the end of 2013, Wat mentioned he was currently working on the personality of each Kagamine and Megurine vocal. Wat also mentioned working on a feminine SOFT-like voice, but felt the bass was not good enough and it needed adjustments. Wat mentioned he had done some experimental recording on the second half of 2013.

Megurine Luka V4X: 2014
In January, it was mentioned that a "POWER" vocal was being produced. Comparing Luka's new vocal, MEIKO Power and Rin's Power Append (VOCALOID2), Wat mentioned these forceful vocals always maintain a strong feeling, even compared to the reduced wavelength of Rin POWER's V2 vocal. Wat also mentioned there were annoyances with Luka's "elegant tone of voice" in the new vocal. After a week of editing Kagamine Rin's vocal, Wat mentioned it was time to go back to working on Luka.

Luka V3 was given a website in January 2014, the only data contained within the page at the time was the 3 main features of the upcoming release. At the bottom of the page it mentioned that details were to be released soon. Wat mentioned on Luka's anniversary that there was a shift from α and that the β version was now under construction. The vocal was under experimental techniques and was being scrutinized during its development. The adjustments being made to Luka's V3 vocal gave her more expression within the vocal. Wat mentioned that in regards to to the "core" sound of Luka, that, the VOCALOID team (consisting of 3 producers, a sound engineer and project director) met up for discussion every 3 weeks for debate on the progress for further adjustments to be made to the product. They have been aiming to make the vocal more flexible.

Wat mentioned on the 31st of January that checking the characteristics of Luka's voice and the vowel/consonants was the focus being the #C5 range, mentioning the print outs of Luka's data were mounting up on his desk at the time. Wat also explained what he meant by increasing the expressiveness of Luka's voice, and that it did not refer to a falsetto vocal, but the allowance of extreme pitches. At the end of Jan, Wat mentioned that they were working on the things mentioned on her teaser site. They were considering the forms of past Appends and there were changes going on to the Databases of each vocal and that the forms that past Appends took may not be the best.

Wat had mentioned thickness of vocal was one of several focuses, bass, vocal range were all being worked upon while trying to keep them sounding natural. Crypton was working on a new method of recording the Luka vocal that was proving successful. It was mentioned that Luka, Rin and Len were all being worked upon at the same time. Later, Wat tweeted that Luka's new voice is maybe too thick.

In late March, both POWER and WHISPER vocals were mentioned as being checked upon.

On July 11, Asakawa tweeted that they are "Recording Luka in a very interesting way", and she said that she will be posting pictures of the recording process when the time comes.

On August 23, Wat tweeted that Luka's phonemes were entering final tuning. The next day, he tweeted that the design rough draft was nearly ready and he was progressing with the sound brushup.

It was mentioned that they had to work backwards with VOCALOID to bring out the characteristic sex-appeal of her provider's vocal.

Wat later mentioned that Luka was made mostly in-house with help from people in the US. He mentioned that the new Luka voice had been worked upon to fit in with Yamaha's sound system. It was mentioned that he had to constantly remodel the VOCALOID database.

On September 12, Wat tweets about recruiting people for Japanese and English VSQ data to show off Luka's high and low range. Information about Luka V3 will be made available at Miku Expo 2014 held in New York. On October 1, the band that would be featured at the MikuExpo practiced with Luka's voicebank using lyrics written by, who is known for her English translyrics and covers of VOCALOID songs.

On October 9th, a demo for Luka was revealed at Miku Expo, as well as her projected release date of the First Quarter of 2015, and Wat released a tentative silhouette of Luka V3 on Twitter. Also, Wat explained that next mont he would go into detail on why Luka was delayed this long and mentioned she works well with a new function.

In late October, PowerFX's Bil Bryant revealed that their new vocal Ruby was due out before December 2014. However since VOCALOID4 was due release soon, they were holding her back. In light of this, Wat was asked about Luka's status. The title of the product was mentioned and it was noted in light of this Wat had referred to Luka as "New Luka" and was, at the time, not called "Luka V3".

On November 1st, "POWER" was mentioned again, this time Wat mentioned removing noise interference.

On November 7th, Cryptons' site was updated to reveal new information about Megurine Luka's update. It was confirmed she was being produced for the V3 engine, and would come with the new E.V.E.C ("Enhanced Vocal Expression Control") feature which works with Japanese vocals. This allows the user to vary the vocal expression on each note, adjusting the power and softness of the enunciation. It also contains various breath sounds.

Later, Wat announced that he would update Luka with more news the following weekend. Wat apologized for keeping fans of Luka waiting, but Luka featured new innovations. This news consisted of several things Wat discussed related to Luka Append and E.V.E.C. and their developments. Wat mentioned there was trouble with the variety of choices to use with E.V.E.C. and decided to go with POWER/SOFT/CUTE/WHISPER/CLOSED, while POWER2/POWER3/FALSETTO/DOUBLE/HUSKY/DARK were reported as being troublesome voices to deal with. They had to balance out cost and effectiveness of all 9 vocals within. Wat also mentioned that several voices sound close to each other and listed them as: WHISPER/HUSKY、CLOSED/DARK、POWER/POWER2, all of which were recorded without fail. FALSETTO/DARK required much work. POWER's impact on the other vocals was great, but has much less effectiveness on DARK and FALSETTO and was described as annoying. The use of DARK within E.V.E.C was poor and barely "Luka-ish" according to Wat. When he spoke of Luka Append itself he said that Japanese Luka's DARK append was also hard to balance and gave him less concerns than with the soft/bored tone of Luka English.

Upon the VOCALOID4 announcement, it was reveal that the site had been temporary set up and she would actually be released for the VOCALOID4 engine as "Megurine Luka V4x". Her vocals were changed to "Japanese; Soft/Hard" and "English; Straight/Soft", when her V3 version was said to receive £Japanese/Power/Soft/Cute/Whisper/Closed/English. E.V.E.C was finally confirmed to allow access to samples from vocal "colours", this was based on the original "voice of colours" that the Character Vocal series Appends had intended to follow. The extra Append vocals that the "colours" that are included in E.V.E.C. are POWER, WHISPER, CUTE, SOFT, HUSKY and FALSETTO.

In late December, Wat mentioned that Luka was focused with variation of "breath", in contrast to the Kagamines strength of tension.

Megurine Luka V4X: 2015
On the 9th of Jan, 2015, an updated list of the E.V.E.C vocals were shown. The listed vocals were now "Power 1", "Power 2", "Whisper", "Native", "Cute", "Husky", "Soft", "Dark", and "Falsetto".

It was tweeted on January 30th that Luka would have a demo released on the following day. It was also mentioned that she was delayed 20 days later than what they had in mind initially. The demo was confirmed to utilize her English voicebanks and will be using a song that featured Luka's VOCALOID2 version.

Voicebank Libraries

 * -|Megurine Luka =