Megurine Luka


 * For the octopus-chibi derivative, see Tako Luka

Luka Megurine (巡音ルカ / Megurine Ruka) 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 / Asakawa Yuu) provided the voice for the "cool, somewhat mysterious" character.

Vocaloid 2
Her introduction was firstly by code (CV03) and her existence was made known during the Kagamine original release promotions and was intended to be the last of the CV series vocals, on 05/01/2009 the first letter of her surname was revealed with the promise of more information to come. On the 06/01/2009, Megurine Luka was revealed. Like its previous two characters, Crypton advertised Luka's vocal database as "Japanese".

However, like with Rin & Len Kagamine, a second voicebank was shown shortly before her release that gave her capablities to sing in English, this was revealed on the 14/11/2008. At the time of Luka's release, there was a growing interest in English speaking Vocaloids. Luka offered both languages for the price of one to Japanese Vocaloid users giving them the chance to test their skills at English capable Vocaloids. Her English voicebank was produced in a series of experimental recordings, and her vocal provider Yuu herself was not used to the methods used in the recording process. The process took 8 months to produce the voicebank.

Crypton Future Media 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. Demo .VSQ files for "UP" were made able to be downloaded from the Crypton Future Media blog as part of promotion for her release.

Demos
 * Amazing Grace (English demo)
 * Demosong01 (Japanese Demo)
 * Amazing Grace Ver0.9 (English Demo)
 * Afternoon Sunshine (Japanese + English Demo)
 * Demosong02 (English + Japanese demo)

Append - the Future of Luka
Luka is the next member of the character Vocal series to receive an append. Recording began early 2011 for Megurine Luka Append. Confirmation has come through that she will be updated next after Meiko. Kaito will follow Luka. The appends for both her and Meiko were later reported as coming along much quieter than other updates.

The first commercial use of the Luka Append is on the album "VOCALOID民族調曲集", she sings the song "星空と雪の舞踏会 (Zeal mix) / このり". The VOCALO APPEND album later used beta voicebanks of Luka's Append.

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

Voice Sample
 * 【Megurine Luka Append, KAITO】Poison Apple & Cinderella, Lost Destination【Sample(β)】 YouTube Broadcast
 * 【Megurine Luka Append】 Starry Sky and Snow Ball 【Zaoling Mix】Nicovideo Broadcast YouTube Broadcast
 * 【Megurine Luka Append】Poison Apple & Cinderella (Full ver.) Nicovideo Broadcast YouTube Broadcast

Append move to Vocaloid 3
The vocals for the vocal libraries were expected back in the Vocaloid 2 era and recording was completed long before the Append itself was offically confirmed. Since Vocaloid 2 is now retired this will be released for Vocaloid 3.

Crypton Future Media are currently considering a cost effective way to add English voicebanks.

Marketing
Unlike previous mascots in the series, her costume is not based on a school uniform. 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. Despite the inclusion of English, Megurine Luka was not aimed at a world wide audience and was aimed at the Japanese producers.

US Debut
Along with Miku's US debut, other Vocaloids from the Character Vocal series made their debuts alongside her. Megurine Luka appeared alongside Miku in the Los Angeles concert.

Megurine Luka 3D
A 3D data pack for the software Shade 12 Basic was announced as Megurine Luka 3D. The software pack contained data and a 3D model for the 3D animation "Corruption Garden" made using the software. The pack is now available in English. A Blu-Ray featuring the PV was also made for sale on the 8th of June 2011, the video was created by IKEDA. This is the only such pack for the 3D software package so far for a Vocaloid character It includes four complete sets of clothing, pre-set poses and more.

Figurines


Luka has several figurines based on her. Exclusively figurines were sold during the 2009 Treasure festa event of Megurine Luka. During the 2009 and 2010 seasons she appeared in the Good smile racing figurine sets. A special "Toeto" figurine was also made based on the PV "Toeto".


 * For more Figurines see Template:Nav Figurines

LincEnglish
LincEnglish is currently collaborating to make use of Megurine Luka and Hatsune Miku's abilities to do English and their voicebanks will be used to teach Japanese kids "English". The lessons are "comming [sic] soon" according to the advertisement.

Voicebank Libraries

 * Megurine Luka has songs in the Nico Nico Douga Hall of Fame
 * Comparison between the Vocaloid and voice provider
 * Comparison between her Japanese and English voicebank
 * A tutorial for Luka can be found here

Megurine Luka (CV03)
The bilingual Megurine Luka product was the most advanced Vocaloid software released during the Vocaloid 2 era. It was designed for expert users, offering both languages Vocaloid 2 was able to handle (English and Japanese). Users do not have to use both vocals, though in mastering both it gives the user a much greater advantage over using either voicebank alone.

Both vocals were sold together at the same price as past CV series vocals, making her cheaper to purchase then buying a Vocaloid solely built for English seperately, with the added bonus of removing the risk Producers faced of buying software they may never be able to use due to the language barrier. By default, her software will be set on its Japanese vocal and Producers will have to manually select her English one. She does not have an English interface, although this is possible to resolve. Despite including English within her package, Crypton Future Media did not offer technical support during the Vocaloid 2 era for that particular voicebank library, but did offer help for the Japanese voicebank library.

The Vocal Character series was designed to be a set of vocals with particular characteristics about them, her vocal description is that she is "moody yet husky female voice" and she was designed to handle moodier genres like Jazz. Luka is one of the smoother Vocaloid2 voicebanks and is not as choppy sounding as her predecessors in the CV series. 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.

At a optimum known vocal range of #D5, both Megurine Luka and Sonika joint hold the title of second highest Vocaloid 2 vocal, the highest being joint Hatsune Miku and Prima at #E5.

Her Japanese voicebank library can also be used to strength the English one on words such as "fee" or "lie." Because of the overall tone stability of the Japanese voicebank, using both the English and Japanese voicebanks to write an English song may give better results than only using the English voicebank.

She is also unrealistic sounding like other CV series Vocaloids as the focus is on her voicebanks performance not its singing results. She had overall less versatility than previous Vocaloids and her soft vocals can create issues with pronunciations and clarity.

Despite the myth surrounding the Japanese vocal stating otherwise, it does not produce better quality English results then her English Voicebank can. This is down to two reasons. The first is down to the fact the Japanese language does not have a full set of phonetic and diaphonetic data for English to replace it. The second that since it is primary a Japanese voicebank, it is made with Japanese sounds, not English so produces a heavier Japanese accent then then her English one with less defination or differences on various sounds. So while it is good for making some English sounds match closer, it does not have the full capablity to replace this voicebank entirely and even at the best of this voicebanks capablities it is not smooth.

It also expanded her language capabilities and gave higher quality results than using her Japanese voicebank for English, as previous Japanese Vocaloids were faced with. Her samples are relatively clean and do not need as much cleaning up as other English capable Vocaloid 2 voicebanks to remove unwanted feedback results and she is overall easy to use. She is the only other English capable female voicebank in the Vocaloid 2 range besides Prima to have breaths included in her voicebanks. The recommended optimum ranges for the English voicebank are also identical to that of the Japanese voicebank, meaning in theory they will both will work for similair types of music. The same characteristics that are held by her Japanese vocaloid voicebank are also likewise held for her English, so she can maintain her moody vocal even in English, meaning users can switch languages during the song without loosing the vocals qualities by doing so.

Just as the Japanese voicebank can be used to strength the English one, the English one can be used to strengthen the Japanese one. The advantage of this is that English Vocals can sound more natural for their larger variation in tone.

Like with the Japanese voicebank, her soft vocals cause issues with clarity and versatility. It has been reported that she does not seem to have many distinct vowel related diaphones in her sample library in her English voicebank, making her voice less smooth than other English capable Vocaloids when some phonetics are used together. Her Japanese accent's strength results in some sounds lacking distinction at all. Her English dictionary is more limited than other English capable Vocaloid 2 voicebanks. Most editing will therefore be fixed on improving her language capabilities to increase the quality of the results, as the quality of her English results is not always on par with other English capable Vocaloids. Luka English is therefore often rated by English Vocaloid users as the overall weakest English Voicebank library of the Vocaloid 2 era and in her raw vocal state tends to sound the most robotic overall.

Due to the different way of expressing tone, Luka's English voicebank has some tone differences and is slightly more vivid, so users may have to move the sound track to a different octave or key to get the same results as her Japanese voicebank. Also she does not have the capabilities to roll the "R" sound and is the only Vocaloid 2 English capable Vocaloid besides Sweet Ann to not have it. The inclusion of English also meant that Luka had the potential to encounter problems with both English and Japanese versions of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Therefore she had the highest potential to come across problems from the language capabilities and limits of the engine.

There is very little use for the English voicebank in improving the Japanese voicebank, unlike the reverse. However, for non-Japanese and non-english words, the English voicebank has a much better array of phonetic combinations offered to match sounds then the Japanese voicebank and often can be easier to produce smoother sounding results with.

Demo Version
A demo version was offered in the July 2009 issue of DTM Magazine.

V3 Megurine Luka (CV03)
Unreleased

Update of the original Vocaloid2 vocal.

V3 Megurine Luka (CV03);Append
Unreleased

Append voicebank will add additional Japanese vocals, with the possiblity of also including English ones (still in planning stages).

Popularity

 * Google Trends, "Megurine Luka"



Luka was the first Vocaloid to impact Hatsune Miku's popularity. 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.

A independant Vocaloid search on Nico Nico Douga revealed that most Vocaloids had less then 1,000 videos uploaded on Nico Nico Douga in between July 1 and December 15 2011. Luka, however had managed to gain enough views not to fall into this problem. Luka had the 4th highest number of uploads at 2103 videos onto the website. Luka, who had 3855998 views and 301640 mylists in total was the 5th most popular viewed Vocaloid on the site as well. Luka’s 1837.94/143.78 average views placed her as the bottom of the top 6 Vocaloids based on average view counts. However, when the lists of top 6 Vocaloids were sorted based on the mean number, a more accurate reflection of the Vocaloids popularity, Luka did not make the top six.

Trivia

 * 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 turn off the limit of 30 days for her 30 day trial versions.


 * Some call her "Ruka" or "Luca" 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.


 * Luka can be heard in the original musical score "Arisen Anew" from a Homestuck  album called AlterniaBound.


 * An old trick within the Western vocaloid fandom is to have Luka and Sonika sing together when using English. If correctly done both voices will blend together, the advantage of this is both Vocaloids effectively hide each others flaws.


 * There has been some noticable concerns with the information on her from the Mikunopolis website;
 * On the Mikunopolis website Luka's profile contains the statement; "In the past, creating songs with English lyrics had always been somewhat awkward, but Luka is able to sing both in Japanese, English or a mix of the two - a worldwide virtual singer". While it is true it had always been awkward to use a Japanese Vocaloid for English, it only applies to Japanese Vocaloids as there had always existed English capable Vocaloids so the English language had always been easy to access.
 * As mentioned in "Usage for Music", she has a number of issues with her English voicebank that leave some English speakers questioning her English capabilities overall. So ironically while she has the best English level of any Japanese based Vocaloid, just how much lack of awkwardness there is to her vocal results is questionable.
 * Lastly, she was aimed at the Japanese speaking market and was originally not intended to be a world wide release (hence the lack of an English interface).


 * Despite the inclusion of a English voicebank that can more accurately mimick the English language, some Japanese producers still like to use her Japanese voicebank to mimick English. This is because it is often easier for a native Japanese speaker to work with Japanese phonetics they are familair with, rather then with the English ones they are not despite the lesser quality results.  Also this ensures her tone stays consistant throughout the song.


 * Vocaloid fans tried to assign an item to Luka like they had done with past Vocaloids and there was a heated debate on what Luka's item would be. Tako Luka is marked as the end of the "Item War" system where as items were assigned to Vocaloids based on Internet Meme's.

Notable for...

 * First bilingual Vocaloid
 * First Japanese/English bilingual Vocaloid
 * First female bilingual Vocaloid
 * First English voicebank produced by a Japanese company
 * First English voicebank provided by a Japanese provider
 * First newly released Vocaloid to impact Miku's rankings in the Vocaloid ranking charts