Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-74.140.30.74-20180525123536/@comment-53539-20180525133202

Some of the Vocaloids have trials you can try and I would recommend them, see Status. There are several companies who have different demos.

If people tell you any Vocaloid is good for a beginner - ignore them as they don't know what their talking about. SERIOUSLY ignore them. No, really. This is as bad as the advice "if you like a vocaloid just buy it!" because you could end up with a vocaloid you can't use.

You wouldn't start with Sachiko or Prima for this very reason. Long story short each vocaloid, even those with similar sounding vocals, have their own vocal traits and personalities, there are things Yuzuki Yukari can't do but Kizuna Akari can. There are vocaloids who can do soprano range, those who can cover the genre of "ballads" and so fourth. All these little differences means when you slap in the lyric files, don't be surprised if what one Vocaloid masters another falls over.

The Kagamines aren't the best choice and have a reputation. Even if that aside in their V4x range they don't have as many options as Luka or Miku has overall s you end up with two voicebanks that are only half of what they are. You buy English Kagamines for Rin, Len has issues that a newer version needs to fix. At this stage I wouldn't still recommend them, and if your really going for a CFM vocaloid, sadly Luka is a confusing mess for beginning making Miku the best of the group, second place Meiko or Kaito. The only thing about Miku is that she can use XSY with Miku V3, so this is why she is above Meiko and Kaito. Even her English version does XSY with more notably then Luka V4x English and its kinda the only two XSY English options in the CFM range currently.

The issue with the CFM is within any generation they go from among the best to among the worst and there are vocaloids who can just do better then what they do. Their often gimmicky (the CV series vocals Luka, the Kagamines and Miku) or there are just better... I'll give an example recent girl Mirai Komachi has a better stats then any 1 of Meiko's voicebanks, though its too soon after her release to know how well she fairs against others since no one has had time to find her bugs yet. Its a habit to stick with them, because their famous, but they have never been the best of the best of Vocaloid.

Outside of the CFM things aren't much better though... Rana is recommended for beginners, but hasn't got much longevity and eventually you'll want to move on, but she can't XSY. This means her usefulness is limited once you've mastered her. There is the VYs such as VY1 or VY2 that are suitable for professionals and beginners and due to their status, have the longevity Rana lacks. There just is an issues with the lack of beginner recommended vocals as Vocaloid is a software made for professionals. Vocaloid itself is a complex software, perhaps more so then UTAU.

I also note that you should be careful limiting yourself to purely Japanese vocaloids, too many make the common mistake of buying a software they have limited use for. This is why bilinguals like Fukase or Yohioloid have become popular for beginners. You either end up using them for phonetic conversion, which brings the question why you bought a Japanese vocal to begin with, or you end up with a VSQ/VSQX file slap in purely as you can't make originals. Therefore I hope your Japanese is solid here. I wouldn't rely on the V3 English bilinguals from CFM as they've worked on improving things in V4, but you really need to look at what you get... 30BPM range for Miku V3 English is pathetic and she has virtually no life, you really are stuck to certain genres of music. So you always have to be careful even then.

If you must insist on sticking to Japanese vocaloids, your best prob. looking at the AH-Software Co. Ltd. XSY group or Internet Co., Ltd. XSY group rather then the CFM vocaloids. Of the two, I tend to think AHS is the better.

The reason I say to chases these two groups is they XSY with any other member of their group, for example Cul can XSY with Gumi. If you go for a release like Macne Nana, not that Nana is actually in both the AHS and AHS English group, though you will need Nana's V3 version to use the English AHS group as these two English vocals are in the group only right now. There should be more coming along as AHS has English vocals planned. The issue is few people give Nana the time of day so she often gets overlooked, despite serving two of the criteria I just recommended. Failing this there are other members of the AHS group like Yukari that are good beginners if you buy the V4 version or Una for the Internet co version. Megpoid V3 or V4 sounds like a good deal, but though you have a lot of vocals, their all not much of a big advantage over each other.

If we're talking purely English, then VY3 and VY4, better known as CYBER DIVA and CYBER SONGMAN fit the bill followed by Dex and Daina, then Ruby in last place due to her vocals oddities. The V3 range is now almost completely redundant because of the changes to improvements in V4. But if you go for them, Yohioloid or Avanna.

I wouldn't touch the V1 or V2 range, both are unsupported and while V2 conversions can happen still....It can be awkward and annoying to fulfill, plus the V2 range is really dated now.