Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26213067-20150704202401/@comment-25521131-20150705000524

In my opinion, what decides the quality of a Vocaloid voice rides on the traits of the raw vocals, normally, I based this on a number of factors: overall clarity of the vocal, phoneme transitioning or choppiness, correct phoneme pronounciation, "does it need to be edited a lot in order to sound good?", "how does it respond to parameter changes?", distinction of vowel phonemes, tone of voice, and others than I can't think of at the top of my head.

For example, in my opinion, Miku English is not a very good voicebank, as many would agree, and some would disagree - but here's my reasoning for it:

1. She has a very distinct lack of clarity, and honestly is less understandable than her Japanese voicebanks speaking Engrish.

2. Her.Vowel.Phonemes.Are.AWFUL. Miku English has the most nutorious habit of wanting to pronounce an "r" sound in her phonemes, it's like, "Miku, we get it, you can say the English "r" sound, you don't need to sneak it into almost literally every single vowel phoneme". Additionally, although it's not an absolutely horrible problem, out of ALL the Japanese -> English voicebanks, Miku's "r" and "l" sounds are the least distinct, despite her voice provider receiving extensive training on the difference between the two consonants. The only other English-speaking Vocaloid that has a notable problem with differentiating the "r" and "l" sounds is MEIKO English, and that was only because one of her phonemes was assigned to the wrong sound, and it's an easily fixable issue in MEIKO's case - Miku, not so much.

3. Her phoneme transitions are also awful, not much more needs to be said beyond that.

4. Her tone of voice causes problems for a number of reasons: One, it's one of those types of vocal tones where she can't seem to decide whether she wants to be powerful or soft - this is always the most troublesome type of tone, and that's because there are very few types of music she could sing in, and simply doesn't make her fit for many genres. Two, I'm not saying this voicebank had to be all cutesy or exactly like the original V2 Miku, but the tone of voice they DID go with, sounds like mush - you can't have a voice that is "sexy" and "cute" at the same time, they are almost like, polar opposites, once again, the brings to the matter of what kinds of songs this voicebank should be singing; shoud it be more focused on songs similar to that the original Miku sung? Or should it be more directed to songs that call for a more huskier and/or deeper voice? Welp, this voicebank is really good for neither.

5. Miku was known for having a voicebank that could handle fast tempos, and an unnaturally high optimum range - so the English voicebank should reflect this right? Wrong. Since English voicebanks are difficult to develop, I'd give them a break if it wasn't quite as good as the original Japanese voicebank, but holy shit, next to VY2v3 Falsetto, Miku English has the smallest optimum vocal and tempo range of any V3 vocal, and maybe any Vocaloid voicebank ever - and considering they know how to make a quality English voicebank - as demonstrated with Luka, this is pathetic - I mean, did they even give her more than a single pitch?

I won't say more as to my reasoning as to why I dislike this voicebank and my system on how I rate voicebanks negatively, although, I could go on all day, but now I'll switch to a voicebank I think is actually what I would consider a "good" voicebank. Megpoid Gumi English

1. Although Gumi's raspiness somewhat hinders her clarity, overall, for a Japanese -> English voicebank, she is one of the most understandable, and probably has the most reduced Japanese accent out of all the Japanese -> English voicebanks, to the point one might not be able to tell she's Japanese.

2. Her vowel phonemes are generally clear and distinctive, despite sometimes being slightly hindered by her raspiness.

3. This is probably her weakest trait, since she has trouble with certain vowel transitions, as some are split off and choppy. Although, this is usually fixable with enough phoneme editing.

4. Her tone of voice is something of a neutral-soft type, and is clearly meant for ballads and other songs of the like that call for softer voices. On top of that, her voice is versatile enough to fit a number of genres.

5. Her English voicebank is almost completely consistent with her Japanese V2 and Native voicebanks - even going as far as having the same vocal range and tempo range, and is a faithful recreation of her Japanese voicebank into the English language. The tone is consistant enough to where one could switch from the Japanese to the English voicebank and vice-versa without much shift in tone.