Talk:VOCALOID5/@comment-37551612-20190114004539/@comment-53539-20190114013053

It depends on how you look at it. ITs true its buggy but a lot of things got improve. As I noted elsewhere, possibly even on this page, the value of the engine alone for the 4 vocals it comes with is worth it, this is the second cheapest amount of vocals for 4 different vocals in 2 different languages you can buy. The best value is if you the 4 VYs as well as thats the cheapest package for 2 characters as thats the cheapest you can buy.

The colours and styles actually give a better expression then the XSY function did and the XSY function had issues with quality loss. There is also a return of numerous pre-V3 functions. In fact the number of improvements even to the realism of the engine is vastly over V4. IT is just the amount of bugs is crazy! But as they fix them the issue goes away and its just a case of they should have released this in Jan 2019 and not mid-2018. IT came out much sooner then I and others predicted and there is a feeling of rushed-outness.

The most major loss of function was plug-ins, but most fix on the XSY function which is sad as it was rarely used in Japan, but plug-ins were much more commonly used. But with the return of Rewire, the issue is.... Well... You can just use your DAWs ReWire function to do moreif you have that knowledge.

So yes, in terms of value the full prem versions is worth it, especially if you don't have all 4 Vys.

If I compare this to V4, then the biggest functions we gained were XSY and GWL... Which... Were not that big of a deal. I've seen people praise V4 as a better release, but it was just the V3 editor somewhat improved with a "4" attached to it instead of "3". Part of it was because the Father of Vocaloid was retiring so there wasn't as much time to put real improvements into it because the new head of the Vocaloid Project was taking over, so there was a transferring of power going on.

If you returned XSY, no one would really be complaining about Vocaloid overall I think. But, if you read its wiki page here Cross-Synthesis, you'll see the many issues it has had reported. ITs a bad function that is second only to EVEC in problems and can be bad when combined with EVEC. A lot of western fans support XSY and EVEC because they don't actually know how bad these functions can be because of the more professionalism that Japanese producers tend to be. They tend to have the tools to see bad results or are trained to, though this is not flawless logic (I often note when I joined the fandom the west was saying was the most realistic singer, but Yuki aside it was Miki).

But if you have no reason to want XSY, you have no reason to chase V4 over V5. The main issue is not just that each engine version is better or worst, its that Vocaloid has a lifespan of about 9 years. So in 2-3 years time we currently risk loosing the V3 vocals if they repeat the tradition that they used for V1 and V2. I'm hoping they are around longer. Each Vocaloid engine ensures update and new vocals for 4 years, so a Vocaloid bought with the latest engine has a longer lifespan then older ones.

Also, there isn't much difference between Japanese Vocaloids from V3 and V5 except how they record them (biggest improve is for English after V3) and a unless something major comes up you can't improve the Japanese Vocaloids. Their reached their current limit for improvements they can make without a utter overhaul entirely and completely. The new recording style though, it captures more vocal traits but sacrifices ease of use, V2 and V3 had issues with same-sounding vocals it fixes this a lot. Now the same sounding vocals don't behave the same.

So this is the situation, excuse the long comment but I've been researching the engines a lot. We're in the modern age of "release - fix" and more and more the pressure is "get the video game or software out at 90% ready, we'll repair the bugs later we need the money NOW!". So we can blame the modern culture a lot more then anything else. It also doesn't help this has been going on since V2 and even Miku was rushed out with 2 months of development on her vocal, Sweet Ann had been in production at least since V1 but V2 had no testing.