Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-53539-20180531074332/@comment-25521131-20180531111235

I kinda agree with @Ihavenoideawhatsoever, voice-wise. A lot of Japanese VOCALOID vocals are meant for JPop or similar genres, or are at least good for those genres. We don't get that many unique-sounding vocals anymore, unless the vocal is taking a unique direction, like with Sachiko for instance.

I wouldn't mind it so much, but as somebody who regularly purchases VOCALOID voicebanks, I'm not particularly a fan of seeing several voicebanks that sound almost exactly alike, because I know that somebody probably worked hard on them, and I'd like to support them by furiously throwing my money at them, but at the same time, if it sounds almost exactly like another VOCALOID, and doesn't bring anything new to the table that makes them distinct from the other VOCALOID, it makes purchasing them feel kinda worthless. I just dislike how we keep getting single-voicebank releases of the same vocals we've gotten 100 times already. Even a second voicebank of virtually any kind of tone would distinguish the voicebank, but then we have vocals like Aoki Lapis, Rana, Unity-Chan, AZUKI, and a bunch of other, as my friend calls them, "moeblob" voices, that don't have much going for them other than the appeal of their single voicebanks; then you have vocals like Una, which while she shares qualities with all of those voices, she makes herself distinct by having two vocals of distinct tones, and beyond that, is optimized for XSY, making her easily the most flexible of all of those voices. I'm not trying to say any of those other vocals are bad in any capacity, but I just don't have any incentive to purchase them when there's one voice that shares most of the qualities that presumably make them desirable, except better, or at least has some kind of hook to them absent in other vocals.

Perhaps my complaints are unreasonable, but it just feels pointless for companies to release vocals that have been done many times, without giving buyers an incentive to purchase their product over other ones just like it, and that just kinda frustrates me, because I love VOCALOID, I love most VOCALOID voicebanks, and even when they sound alike, I can at least appreciate the intention and work behind the voice, so I'd like to find a reason to use the voice, but it's meaningless when I already have access to a voice that's very similar, but is more useful. I suppose innovation doesn't always sell though.