Hatsune Miku Append

History
Crypton's next project involving Miku started on Valentine's Day 2009. On 01/08/2009 the first two Appends were confirmed as "CV01-dark-ProtoTYPEβ" and "CV01-vivid-ProtoTYPEβ". Later the names of "dark (soft dark)", "soft", "vivid", and "very_small" had been confirmed.

Both the Miku product and the Append product are sold separately, and the voicebanks of Miku Append are different from the voicebank that the original Miku voicebank has. All the new voicebanks were voiced by Saki Fujita: Soft, Sweet, Dark, Vivid, Solid, and Light. Crypton announced that this is an append disk (an addition which offers extension to computer softwares and is similar to Expansion Packs in English) and users need the original Miku to utilize Miku Append. It costs collectively slightly under the original Miku price. While they had been announced on Miku's second birthday, they were released over eight months later. The different appends are meant to capture the "moods" and were described by Cypton Future Media as "like a rainbow of color" and had been created from vocal performance of her voice provider.

Prior to the release, demos had constantly been put on Crypton's website. These included productions by various Vocaloid producers from Nico Nico Douga. Ryo's "Black Rock Shooter" 2M mix had also been done with one of the beta voicebanks.

Despite the success of Miku herself, her Append did not sell as many units. Following the Kagamine Append release, both the Kagamine and their Append software pushed Miku's Append software into 6th place on Crypton's sales page. Though it returned to popularity soon after, the reaction to the Append has never reached the same level as her original voicebank.

Her append boxart shows her hair colored much more green than her original product, and her outfit is changed to match a varied color scheme over the old almost one color scheme (her blue-green hair color).

Demos
 * vivid-β, soft-β and very small-β Demos

Later, during the Kagamine Append production, Wat mentioned that the "sexy" Append voice had been divided between "Dark" + "Soft" respectively.

Wat also mentioned they had recorded a 7th vocal a "falsetto" voice, however, they have no plans to release a independent vocal such as this as they felt it wouldn't be useful.

Vocalbank Library
The Append voicebanks exist side by side with the original voicebank, giving Miku a total of 7 possible voicebanks to choose from for users with both plug-ins. They require the original Hatsune Miku software to function and are a higher quality voicebanks that render smoother results than Miku's original voicebank. For older Hatsune Miku users this will also act as a method of updating the Vocaloid 2 engine to a newer version, which was sometimes only possible during the Vocaloid 2 era by buying a more updated voicebank. Each voicebank has its own strengths and weakness and the append voicebanks themselves have different ranges, meaning that different voicebanks can be used for different songs.

The difficulty of using each Append voicebank varies, for example, Append; Soft has no optimum differences between its range and tempo compared to the original Miku voicebank, whereas other Appends like Append; Dark are considered a much greater contrast. For these greater contrasting voicebanks more editing may be required for better results. Despite this, compared to the latter Kagamine Append that followed, the Miku Append is overall much easier to use and complies with Miku's own reputation as being one of the easier Vocaloid2 vocals to use. Many of the Append vocals overlap each other, making switching Appends mid-song relatively unnoticeable and with correct use can make Miku sound more realistic compared to just using her original voicebank alone. However, the vocals themselves are designed to give Miku "expression of colour" and like the original Hatsune Miku vocal, they are based on vocal performance and do not produce professional singer results and on occusion do not maintain a natural tone.


 * Comparative verification of 7 Append voicebanks
 * Comparing VY1(β version), Miku Append (Soft), Gumi, Lily


 * -|Miku Append; Sweet =
 * -|Miku Append; Dark =
 * -|Miku Append; Soft =
 * -|Miku Append; Light=
 * -|Miku Append; Vivid=
 * -|Miku Append; Solid=

Demo Version
In December 2009, demo software versions of "soft" and "dark" were released. They did not allow VSQ saving, but did allow .wav rendering, which led to a stream of videos released on Nico Nico Douga. In vol.5 of VOCALOIDをたのしもう, trials of "sweet" and "solid" were also featured.