VOCALOID2

Vocaloid 2 was the sequeal to the orginal Vocaloid engine.

About
The first release based on the Vocaloid 2 engine came from PowerFX with Sweet Ann on June 29, 2007 whose boxart was based on a Frankenstein's monster. This was closely followed by Crypton two months later with the first of their "Character Vocal Series", Hatsune Miku, on August 31, 2007. Zero-G's first Vocaloid, Prima, came out on January 14, 2008 with voice of a Soprano opera singer. Internet Co., Ltd. also joined the Vocaloid development with their first Vocaloid Gackpoid on July 31, 2008, whose voice was provided by Japanese international singer Gackt. Gackpoid includes a new program, OPUS Express, for mixing vocal parts with accompaniment or phoneme data. AH Software later released their first Vocaloids on December 4, 2009 bringing the total of studios producing Vocaloids to five.

Crypton Future Media released the first dual Vocaloid Kagamine Len and Kagamine Rin, a Japanese male and female. On July 18, 2008, Crypton Future Media released the updated edition of Kagamine Rin and Len, named "act2". For a period of time, users who had bought the old version were allowed to get the new version for free. On June 18, 2008, beta demonstration songs using the new version were released on the company's official blog. The expansion disc is an entirely different software and does not affect the original Kagamine Rin/Len installation in any way, giving the user options to either use the old or new voice sets exclusively or combine their usage. Crypton Future Media have now retired the sale of their old Kagamine Vocaloid and it is now no longer possible to buy the software from them. This was also the very first Vocaloid update to be done for any Vocaloid.

On April 30, 2010, an updated version of Miku called Hatsune Miku Append was released containing a package of six different tones of Miku's voice: Soft (gentle, delicate voice), Sweet (young, chibi voice), Dark (mature, heartbroken-like voice), Vivid (bright, cheerful voice), Solid (loud, clear voice), and Light (innocent, heavenly voice). This was the first time a Vocaloid has such a release and more Append are reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

Yamaha also began to get involved with the sale and production of Vocaloid's themselves with Lily being the first. Their involvement continued with the VY series, with VY1 Mizki being the first, released in deluxe and standard editions on September 1, 2010. The VY series is a series designed to be a high quality product for professional musicians. The series is also designed with the intention to set a new standard for the Vocaloids for having no face, sex or set voice, but are designed to complete any song.

Other significant releases include Crypton's Megurine Luka, the first bilingual Vocaloid and Zero-G's Sonika who was developed to being able to speak any language, even though she is primarily an English vocalist. AH Software's Kaai Yuki became the first Vocaloid to use a child's voice. Two studios are known to be working on franchise based Vocaloids. The first is AH-Software who will be doing a Hello Kitty-based Vocaloid in cooperation with Sanrio. Internet Co., Ltd. announced they will be doing a Gachapin Vocaloid "Gachapoid". All such products are listed with the franchise name and "Vocaloid" on the packaging.

An edition of Sonika was released in Taiwan on August 1, 2010. Users can choose to use the original English or traditional Chinese interface, however it does not have a Chinese language input method or a Chinese singing voice. This is the first edition of Vocaloid software widely released to speakers of Chinese.

Unreleased products

 * Crypton has a "Project if..." with a mysterious, child-like voice.
 * PowerFX are working towards other Vocaloids.