UTAU

UTAU, or Vocal Synthesis Tool UTAU (歌声合成ツール UTAU), is a vocal synthesis software which has currently been distributed for usage on Windows Computers and Apple Computers (UTAU-Synth)

About
UTAU is a proprietary vocal synthesizer program unlike VOCALOID and VOCALOID2, which are commercially-sold programs with an accompanying voice bank. Distribution of UTAU began in March of 2008.

UTAU, meaning "to sing" in Japanese, has its origin in "Jinriki Vocaloid" (人力ボーカロイド, translated as "Manual Vocaloid"). It was created by re-editing an existing singing voice, extracting tones as WAV files and, reassembling them. For this purpose, a support program was created. In March 2008, Ameya/Ayame (飴屋／菖蒲) released a free, advanced support tool as UTAU. Now UTAU is a shareware, yet the developer distributes it free in effect and accepts donations.

The program has at least 50 different usable audio files, composed of Japanese syllables. It comes with the company's "AquesTalk" pre-loaded, which allows any user to load their own voice data to be programed for usage within UTAU. However, without the explicit permission of the voice donor, it is a violation of copyright laws. Those laws protect the rights of any vocalist who may not wish for their voices to be used within the program, such as celebrities. Any music made through this program can be used in the commercial sector. The program can be downloaded here. However, it will not run properly on computers which do not support Japanese text or AppLocale.

Some UTAU are commonly put out as "real" vocaloids such as is the April Fool's joke origins of Teto Kasane. Songs using both UTAU and Vocaloid are also not unheard of. Some users have also began to enforce their copyright ruling over their voicebanks; UTAU or fanmade vocaloids who are guilty of plagiarizing a UTAU's name or using a voicebank without permission risk violating UTAU software agreements and voicebank copyright ownerships.

Usage in Music
UTAU is well supported as an alternative to Vocaloid and is favoured in both the Vocaloid and UTAU fandoms as an alternative to pirating the Vocaloid software itself. For those unsure of their handling of Vocaloid, UTAU can also act as a introduction to synethised vocals and aid in making the decision to purchase a Vocaloid.

The reason for UTAU's popularity is owed to some considered major differences between it and the Vocaloid software, which are listed below in the "strengths" and "weaknesses" section. Its for these reasons, there is some debate as to which software is overall better then the Voclaoid software or worst and why it is able to compete with Vocaloid as a result of the sizable gap between what areas both software are covering. UTAU has also earnt a reputation as the closet rival software to Voclaoid for these reasons and in comparison to other rival software it has managed to stay competitive over the course of its existence, whereas other software such as Cantor failed to see continued developement.

UTAU saves the data in .ust format, it is capable of converting .VSQ files into its software file format. Since few software packages can read .VSQ file formatting beside Vocaloid itself, UTAU has been an attractive alterative and partner software to Vocaloid.

UTAU also has the advantage of having its developement occur at a faster pace. It has a plug-in support and users have made a number of plug-ins that greatly improve the softwares handling and experience, this support was establish fairly early in the softwares existence, whereas Vocaloid did not gain this ability until Vocaloid 3 in late 2011 and even now it only offers a limited acces to source code and plug-in support. Updates such as the addition of triphons occured prior to Vocaloid and were present by 2010, whereas Vocaloid did not gain this type of data until 2011 when Vocaloid 3 was released. Even in comparison to Vocaloid 3, the amount of langauges offered is much larger with some vocals abe to do more then 10 languages. For Vocaloid, there are very few Vocaloids with bilingual capablities, and the software only offers 5 languages at the most. Voicebanks practically work with any version of the software, thus issues seen between different versions of Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2 software (such as those displayed by Kaito and Prima) are usually absent.

There are hundreds of vocals for the software and the type of vocals are much broader and cover a varity of different genres and vocal types. Most of these vocals are given out free.

The UTAU software is open license, which means that vocals from other software can be used in conjuction with the software, so long as it complies with the other softwares agreement (Vocaloid cannot be used in UTAU legally for this reason as its licensing is restricted).

When Vocaloid 3 was released, UTAU did not support the new .VSQX file format, though this data could be converted into .VSQ anyway within Vocaloid 3. .ust does not hold as much data as .VSQ and .VSQX files do.

UTAU is not a professional software and while users may argue on its quality in comparison to Vocaloid which is produced as a professional software package. For this reason it overall doesn't produce the same quality results as Vocaloid. This also gives an additional drawback to the software; whereas Vocaloid gives a means for professional singers to release their vocals much safer, with the singers not only getting something out of each sale, but also there is a definate structure to using the vocals with and without the singers consent. However, UTAU itself does not nessecary have this structure there. Therefore, there is less chance of a professional singer, or at least those with a career at stake that may be effected by the release of a UTAU voiebank, to offer up their vocals for UTAU.

The results of this is that it can be at times difficult to find a standard level of quality voicebank, although there are a number of recommended vocals by the UTAU community. The vast majority of the vocals offered for the engine are of poor quality in comparison to the standard of vocals offered by Vocaloid. Though the software offers Diaphonetic and Triphonetic data entries, this does not mean users will use them, whereas the Voclaoids tend to have all the nessecary sounds to produce a standard level of the langauge they sing in. Some voicebanks are put out for humourous resons, so contain sound effects such as dogs barking, rather then human vocals. Differences between voicebanks is often not well documented as many vocals are grey areas either because their creators do not release much information on them, or because their voicebanks are less used. Although the software supports multiple languages, finding quality non-Japanese vocals is often harder particvular with more complex langauges such as English.

The licensing agreements and use of certain vocals varies at times whereas Vocaloid tends to have a more common agreement shared by all studios, with little variations between vocaloid purchases. And while there is technical support for UTAU, for individual voicebanks themselves, in many cases there is nothing offered by the producers of these voicebanks to help with technical difficulties. Also, though most UTAU vocals are given out for free, there are some that need purchasing. Plug-ins also do not nessecary have technical support for them, or will be compactiable with current UTAU versions, so on rare occusions can be "wild cards" to use, more so then with Vocaloid.

What also makes UTAU a particularly hard software to generalise in particular, however, is that due to all these factors it can also be hard at times to judge the overall quality of works produced with UTAU. The quality margain between one producer can be quite large, with a multitude of things at can be factored in to effect the quality of one vocal over another. As a result of many of the issues surrounding UTAU, although the varity of voicebanks offered reaches the thousands, there is a tendacy to fall back onto a few "reliable" voicebanks at times (such as Teto) or just use of the producers own personnnel voicebanks. This also can be the ultimate reason for many users preferring to use Vocaloid over UTAU, because with vocaloid is considered a more stable and reliable release then UTAU overall.

Trivia

 * Those who have tried to exploit a Vocaloid voicebank into UTAU have reported that the results are disappointing, the sound of the UTAU engine and the sound of the Vocaloid engine are very different. An important note is that Vocaloid is not open license and such an act is against the End User Agreement of Vocaloid, although the Macne Series can be exploited this way on the condition the User owns their original voicebank.
 * UTAU offered the ability to create a voice, with the advantage of legally owning the voicebank and controlling how it was passed around. UTAU led to a decrease in fanmade Vocaloids in Japan because their creators did not have this advantage.
 * The best-known voice bank for UTAU is Kasane Teto. She is recognized as the first UTAUloid, if not Utane Uta (Defoko), the default voicebank in UTAU.