VY2

VY2 (stands for "Vocaloid Yamaha 2", also it was codenamed 勇馬, "Yuuma", meaning "Brave Horse") is the second from the avatarless VY series of Vocaloids, produced by Bplats and like VY1 before it, is of the highest quality amongst the Japanese Vocaloid2 engine voicebanks. Nagimiso (なぎみそ) and Kazeno (風乃) undertook the illustration for VY2's package. The Wakizashi was by Nagimiso, the illustration on the inside sleeve was by Kazeno, which was Japanese and SF styled with Tenshukaku (天守閣, Japanese castle tower) and two moons.

History
VY2 was confirmed soon after VY1 and as part of the "VY" series, VY2 shared the same intention as VY1 of being a Vocaloid without set gender, face or voice. Like VY1 was confirmed "Feminine" VY2 was confirmed to be a "masculine" voice type and its release date was set for late 2010.

However, on December 24, 2010, VY2 was confirmed as delayed while quality is improved, it was also confirmed to be specifically a "young masculine" voice. A 15 second demo of the VY2 voice was featured at the Y2×VOCALOID CAFE event in March 2011. On 2011/04/04, a demo song called "Asadoya Yunta" was uploaded into Youtube featuring VY2 singing as the main singer with VY1 as the chorus. On the 14/04/2011, another demo called "Anatani Hana Wo Watashi Ni Uta Wo" was released, both by  Re:nG. Later the song "Toki no sugi yuku mama ni" (時の過ぎ行くままに, As Time Goes By) by Sawada Kenji (沢田研二) was released. On the 19/04/2011 a demo of Cendrillon featuring the singing voices of VY1 and VY2 was finally released.

VY2 was released on 25th April 2011, according to the details of the Vocaloid, the Vocaloid is an attempt to make the vocals sound more realistic and stable. VY2 was also designed to define what a male vocal was and has husky results. VY2 is the 4th Japanese male vocal in Vocaloid2 following Kamui Gakupo, Hiyama Kiyoteru and Utatane Piko's male vocals (Kagamine Len and Gachapoid were excluded from this by Bplats due to their vocals being provided by female vocalists). The voice provider was the youngest male vocal sampled at the time, but Bplats did not wish the voice provider to be known.

iPad and iPhone
VY2 had been released as "iVocaloid" for the iPad and iPhone, and is available in iTunes store.

VY2v3
At the Vocaloid 3 announcement, it was announced that both VY1 and VY2 would be updated and sold with the Vocaloid 3 software. Currently, while VY1 and Mew have been announced as individual bundles for the Vocaloid 3 software, VY2's announcement has yet to be made. However it is said that VY2v3 is currently under development.

Marketing
Unlike past Japanese Vocaloids VY2, along with voicebank partner VY1, have never had an offical avatar established for them allowing a creative freedom that other Vocaloids did not offer. While VY1 had a standard and Deluxe edition, VY2 did not offer such a choice nor did it have a CD release for it.

Due to the professional design of VY2, the vocal often appears in use for aps and equiptment that involves derivative products produced by Yamaha, either by its own or with VY1. However, unlike VY1, VY2 is often added as an additional vocal or alternative one and has yet to head a product using their vocals. Furthermore, when VY2 is used, the vocal often is only made for dowload sometimes after the inital release of the product unlike its counterpart VY1.

VocaListener
They were originally going to attach Net Vocalistener, however this idea was abandoned.

VocaFes Winners
At VocaFes 2011, two winners were announced for VY1 and VY2. This was the result of the competition on how fans view VY1 and VY2. Manbou no Ane won for VY2's design which can be found in her pixiv account while Rimiko won for VY1's design.

Taiwan Release
VY2 is one of the Vocaloids set to be released by e-capsule.

VY2
VY2 is intended for professional musicians and according to Yamaha, is intended to be a high quality voicebank. As a note of the previous Vocaloid VY1, VY2 can be viewed as whatever the user wishes it to be, though the voice itself is a "young masculine" vocal. The tone of voice was intended to convey the image a handsome young male while the voicebank itself was easy to use without heavy modifications. The scripts used for recording the samples were identical to those of its counterpart VY1.

No noise filterations were applied to the voicebank, allowing it to retain a natural sound to it. VY2's demo producer wrote a short commentary of the Vocaloid. According to the producer, VY2's voice is placed between Kamui Gakupo and Hiyama Kiyoteru's vocal ranges. VY2 can produce a low tone of voice much easier then past Vocaloids, the only male Vocal to date that could match VY2's tone was Gackpoid. Both VY2 and the Gackpoid software hold the title of second lowest known optimum vocal range in Vocaloid 2 at #A1, the lowest being English Vocaloid Big Al at #G1. #C2 was listed as VY2's best tone.

In the demo song "Toki no sugi yuku mama ni" it was noted that all other Japanese male Vocaloids were insignificant for this song and that VY2 was the only vocal that did not sound bad when used for it, leading the producer of that song to simply give up trying to use the other Japanese male Vocaloids. A suggested vocal range was supplied, giving users an idea of where on the piano roll VY2 should be used, unlike VY1 who was left for users to discover. As with VY1, improvements were included, with the inclusion of a faint breath element to make the vocals sound more realistic, which was not present in VY1's voicebank.

VY2 had the very last version of the engine made for commerical sale in the Vocaloid 2 era, therefore in theory VY2 was capable of fixing any past issues with versions of the Vocaloid 2 software. So long as VY2 was installed last issues like those caused by installing Vocaloids with older engine versions over newer ones, such as the most famous case of Prima, would easily be resolved by his installation.

According to the producer who worked on the demo one weakness was that the phonetics あa with れre becomes a げge sound, but this is fixed by dividing the tracks or modifying the tone of the voice. Like with VY1, some users find it difficult to visualize the singer without a mascot character to base their songs on. With a Optimum tempo and range given for VY2, this gave Producers a sense of direction - but less sense of discovery.

Demo
A trial version of this software was featured in VOCALOIDをたのしもう Vol.7 along side trials of VY1v3 and Vocaloid 2 vocal Hatsune Miku.

VY2v3
Unreleased

VY2v3 is an improved vocal that is upcoming for the Vocaloid 3 software.

Popularity
VY2 was better received than VY1 because the concept of the VY series had been better understood at the time. The producer who created his demos declared that VY2 was the best Japanese male Vocal of the Vocaloid series boasting a quality none of the previous male vocals could reach.

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. However, based on average views, VY2 came second in the report with an average of 3972.28 views per video (and 314.21 mylists). Although part of the reason for this high average was owed to the popularity of songs such as those by the producer “Ieno Urade Manbouga Shinderu-P", which upset the average results due to their high view count when most VY2 videos did not recieve such attention.

Trivia

 * VY2 also was met by some with the same joke that was previously brought up after Big Al and Tonio's late releases, that male Vocaloids (if one regards VY2 as "male") have a tendency of being late, known as Big Al's Syndrome.
 * Because of the Wakizashi, VY2 ended up overlapping with Internet Co., Ltd's Gackpoid Vocaloid, Internet co., Ltd joked that the two Vocaloids should do battle with each other.
 * VY2 was originally going to have other items for his boxart such as clothing. However, it was felt that these items were too personal and would only end up giving too much design. Thus, opting for the Wakizashi makes the Vocaloid ambiguous to any design.
 * In the western fandom, the term "Big Al's syndrome" got applied to VY2 due to being a masculine vocal.  This was because he was expected in 2010 but ended up being released in 2011 after a delay. However, VY2 did not recieve so much fuss as previous "male" Vocaloids did.
 * Many Vocaloid fans mistake the codename of "Yuuma" as being the softwares offical name, some fans also mistake the contest wining image "Roro" as the offical image. The correct name of this product is "VY2" and the contest was not to pick an offical avatar for the product, thus VY2 still remains avatarless.

Notable for...

 * Highest quality Japanese masculine vocal for Vocaloid
 * First masculine vocal type of the VY series