Megurine Luka

Megurine Luka (巡音ルカ) was the third Japanese Vocaloid2 from Crypton and released on January 30, 2009. Her surname combines Meguri (巡, circulate or around) and Ne (音, sound), while the name Luka invokes the homonymous Japanese words of "nagare" (流, flow) and "ka" (歌, song) or "ka" (香, scent); thus making "songs to all around the world as scent spreads." Yū Asakawa (浅川 悠) provided the voice for the "cool, somewhat mysterious" character.

History
Unlike its previous two characters, Crypton advertised Luka's 3GB vocal database as "Japanese/English bilingual" and chose her name to express its hope that she will transcend borders and cultural barriers. Luka was designed by the Japanese illustrator Kei, who had previously created the designs for Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin and Len. However, unlike previous mascots in the series, her costume is not based on a school uniform.

Only a few days after her release, many songs were produced. On the 70th Weekly Vocaloid Ranking (February 2, 2009), many of Luka's songs appeared in the Top 30, knocking the very popular "Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru" and songs produced by ryo (with the exception of "Melt") right out of the Top 30. "RIP=RELEASE" had taken the #1 spot, and had earned a total of 843,233 points, making it the song with the highest one-week score.

Append - the Future of Luka?
Luka is the next member of the character Vocal series to be Append, however Crypton has not confirmed if she will have Append just yet.

Usage for Music
The Vocal Character series were designed to be a set of vocals with particular charistics about them. Due to her bilingual coding, her "moody yet husky female voice" carries over into both languages and was designed to handle moodier genres like Jazz. Overall, Luka serves to bridge the gap between both languages and has proven to be her appeal as a vocaloid. She serves as an ideal vocaloid for English speaking users planning to use Japanese vocaloids and vice versa for users who are not so used to speaking English and planning on using English Vocaloids. Since she speaks both languages, Luka is able to partner with both Japanese and English vocaloids respectfully. Both voicebanks can be used in conjunction with each other, allowing users to switch between the languages as needed.

When installing Luka, it is important to pay attention to the release dates of Vocaloids you plan to install after her. Older and newer versions of the Vocaloid 2 software engine can occasionally cause conflicts. Luka has both language engines, so she can cause conflicts between Vocaloids of either language. A user can fix this problem if it occurs simply by installing the Vocaloids in release date order, Luka is noted to be the most likely Vocaloid to produce this conflict.

Note as well that when installed, she will be set on her Japanese voicebank by default, users will have to switch from "Luka_Jap" to "Luka_Eng" in the vocal selection menu. This catches many new Vocaloid users out who have never experienced using the Vocaloid software before or have never had to switch between vocals.


 * Comparison between the Vocaloid and voice provider

Japanese
Luka is one of the more smoother Vocaloid2 voicebanks and is not as choppy sounding as her predecessors. Luka's Japanese dictionary is extensive and on par with previous Japanese Vocaloids and there are no known problems with that part of her program. Also, as a Japanese vocaloid, she has all of the phonemes that are often missing from English vocaloids such as the 5 breathing phonemes ([br1]-[br5]). It is reported that she may produce a lisp-like sound on some notes however, she still maintains a more mature tone then previous Character Vocal Vocaloid 2 era voicebanks, and is much softer then Miku and the Kagamine Vocaloids.

The overall downside of Luka is that she is considered to be low in versatility, having a more limiting voicebank then the other Character Vocal series before her. Because of this, she is considered an advanced Vocaloid, partly because you need some experience in being able to tune the Vocaloid software to make it more flexiable then it is, although this is only half the reason for her being considered an advanced Vocaloid.

English
She has all the English phonemes that English vocaloids have in her voice databank. However, despite the inclusion of english she was not intended for a world wide release and was aimed mostly at the Japanese users, a number of reported problems are present in her voicebanks from English users in the west. It has been reported that she does not seem to have many distinct vowel related diphongs in her sample library in her English voicebank, making her voice less smooth then other English capable Vocaloids when some phonetics are used together. In other cases, she may not have enough distinction between the phonetic sounds in her samples that she does have to distinguish one pronunciation from another. She also has only the main/common words in her dictionary, so users not used to more complicated English words may have some difficulty when they come across them, however, an extra data library of English words for her English dictionary is available.

Her voicebank may be considered "sub-standard" to other English capable Vocaloids and her overall results will depend on the user. She is not unusable and still can be used for English songs just the same as any other English capable Vocaloid. There are also no major report glitches with her voicebank as some of the other English capable Vocaloids and her sample quality is considered good despite her flaws. As a bilingual Vocaloid, she has superior capability of the English language than the Japanese only vocaloids. If need be, less than confident users can use an another English capable vocaloid to aid in fixing her dictionary flaws or help to harmonise her results so she appears smoother.

Because of the fact she came with English, users wanting to use her for her fullest potential also need to know how to know a certain level of english to begin with otherwise they will only ever be able to use her Japanese side of her voicebank. This is the other reason for her being considered for advanced users of Vocaloid. As of a note, most of the songs produced using her voicebanks are primary done in using her Japanese voicebank and the most common usage within the Japanese fandom of her English voicebank is for short English insertions in Japanese songs.

Trivia

 * She is often given a sexier approach than previous vocaloids. This is owed to both her age and having the body of an adult.
 * According to KEI, who was asked to illustrate her by Crypton, due to her bilingual software, her design was made to be asymmetrical, so from different angles she would look different.
 * Her design incorporates woodwind and brass instruments. The gold curl design on her chest mimics brass instruments and a circulatory organ. The jewel on her throat represents moisture in the air and water drops.
 * While the software was in the alpha stage of development, Crypton were hoping for a voice that sounded sexy, however, due to the level of softness in the results the vocals were unable to sound sexy.
 * Since the trial version had enough vocal capabilities to function as a normal Vocaloid, hackers were reported to have found out how to turned off the limit of 30 days for her 30 day trial versions.
 * Some call her "Ruka" however this is incorrect. Though the romanized version of the word could be either, the English version has been confirmed as "Luka" and since there is no dubbed version to content with, this name remains the only official name in existence for the Vocaloid.