Talk:Hatsune Miku V4 Chinese/@comment-34754462-20181005140448/@comment-53539-20181006113254

Its not just the Chinese, the English is low quality too.

Chinese Miku may have been sold in China, but in truth its meant for Japanese producers. The same was true for English Miku. It was designed for Japanese producers to break into the English speaking market. They still sold it abroad because money is money, but... They made it clear what its design was for.

Miku Japanese is much better because thats where all the money CFM gets for selling the vocal is to be found. The original vocal, however, was LQ, though its because of the point of time V2 Miku was released in. Early V2 vocals were all LQ overall in terms of Japanese Vocaloids, because everything was new and the unexpected successful of Vocaloid hadn't impacted things. The studios didn't have the money to invest too heavily in Vocaloid yet, and they didn't have the experience either. Miku was CFM's first Vocaloid they made themselves so there was the problem for CFM of they didn't have any experience themselves. The same was more or less true also for Internet co., Ltd and they too had to learn stuff, which is why their V2 vocals were also bad despite them being better set up to make Vocaloids then CFM. By the end of V2 we were seeing much better Vocaloids overall and that why HQ V2's appear later in V2.

V3 was like a big reset button and though there is a divide again, its harder to pick out. Lots of new devs with lots of ideas and its harder to judge things for this reason. The standard of quality is higher for V3s then V2s. So when we judge V3 Miku, yes its overall better then the V2 vocal, but so is everyone else. And while she isn't the HQ V3, she doesn't stand out as being too special. The problem is in V3, a lot of newer Vocaloids had begun to lean towards bigger vocal ranges and improvements in other areas, while Miku stayed more or less the same as her V2 ranges. Miku may have been sold with 5 voicebanks, but IA could do much more in her 2 voicebanks then 2 of Miku's could. And this is where V3 becomes the hardest to judge Vocaloids over.

And V4 is just... Confusing. V4 newer recorded vocals have a new style that favors traits over ease to use, so while Vocaloids in V4 that newly appeared have more standout vocals that behave very differently to past vocaloids, and all are harder slightly to use for it. So the newer Vocaloids are better and wort in different ways and that makes them the hardest to judge. Miku V4x also wasn't very bold despite seeing half its vocals get improvements compared to Luka V4x. Take away EVEC and its just bog standard Vocaloid vocals that are slightly improved at a point in time, wherein most new Vocaloids have bigger ranges anyway and/or higher tempo ranges and Miku's V4 vocaloid voicebanks weren't big enough difference without EVEC compared to the V3 era. The biggest improvement was in English V4, but V3 English was bad and is by far the worst non-Japanese voicebank for Miku CFM has done thus far, in short improving on something isn't difficult when its bad to begin with.

Miku has never been the best Vocaloid. At best there is the period between V2 Append and VY1 being released, but their the Appends, not the original vocal. ITs just something that Miku fans have to learn to accept, but definately there is not a doubt that the worst is her non-Japanese vocals. You have to learnt to accept this is not "Miku in X language" but instead accept it as "the X language version of Miku" because this is what it is. CFM is working at best with non-natives, Miku's provider knew no English and possibly the same for Chinese. Sadly non-native vocalists have at many times problems sounding natural, often sounding forced which is Miku's problem. Wat also reported that English vocals while being produced due to the way things are often sound more angry, its likely because we have to stress sounds which puts more tension on certain important sounds. ITs a shame the Chinese Vocaloids are less documented as we have little information on what happened with Chinese Miku.

One last thing is, do bare in mind CFM cheats...We don't always know how they cheat, but we know they do. They re-use samples, modify old samples and put them out as new. The core samples are new and recorded, but there are bound to be short cuts among this voicebank as there are with other CFM voicebanks. This is no big deal as a lot of studios it turns out cheat. As I've noted in the past Speedy, this is why it was notable with LUMi that all of her samples where for Vocaloid, because this isn't always the case for every Vocaloid. Technically, you can see how easy cheat is just by playing with Luka V4x, as the "colours" just change out things like vowels, in short you can create an entirely new result just by swapping sounds. This is why Megpoid V4 also notes the new 5 voicebanks were entirely new recordings. Because that too, can be a rarity among Vocaloid. We shouldn't hold studios against their choice to borrow a sample from another source, because many of our favourite Vocaloids turn out to have had this treatment. But its worth noting it does occur and its not always noted. If they did it to Chinese Miku, we wouldn't know... But... I have a funny idea this time because of how bad the vocal is, they likely haven't because it feels so bad its actually pretty honest for a change. I had this same feeling with V3 English.