MIRIAM

Miriam is the third Vocaloid installment from Zero-G and was released on the 1st of July, 2004. Her voice is based off the popular British singer, Miriam Stockley, who is also the lead singer of the band, Adiemus.

History
In July 2004, Zero-G limited launched Miriam, making her the third Vocaloid to be released. Miriam's programming surpassed her previous Vocaloid counterparts, Lola and Leon. Miriam Stockley offered to allow her voice to be added into the software engine, accepting that you cannot fight progress. Improved functionality was implemented into her which lessened the time for a Vocaloid user to produce a more realistic sound. In addition, Yamaha mentioned on their website that Miriam's synthesis quality was much better.

Marketing
Miriam was sold as a more general voicebank rather then as a genre driven voicebank like Leon and Lola although was still aimed at professionals just the same. Unlike previous Vocaloids Leon and Lola, Miriam was also released at the same time as Virsyn's Cantor software and comparisons between the two software were noted. This put Miriam at the time at a slight disadvantage in her original time of release, as Leon and Lola did not have competition at the time and Vocaloid was not yet a popular software. Cantor was considered a far greater Synthesizing tool than Vocaloid and was able to do what Miriam could not offer; this impacted Miriam's sales. She had been sold as any other software of the time and had no fandom to back her inital release up as it did not exist at the time.

For a period she, along with Leon and Lola, were not on sale due to the lack of interest in synthesized voices. This lack of interest was owed to the sudden change in indie music trends. After increased interest began to occur in vocaloids and renewed demand, Zero-G began reselling Lola, Leon and Miriam from their own website via their virtual shop. According to Zero-G, the 3 may also get a redesign in the future.

Vocaloid
Miriam is made to sing in English and sings with a British accent. Overall though no engine adjustments were made for her release, her voice was much smoother than previous Vocaloids Leon and Lola. Miriam also had minor vocal related fixes that had been in previous Vocaloids. She had a larger phonetic sample base making her English skills better than Leon or Lola, although problems with note pitching were reported by users.

Like Lola, Miriam has limited information supplied to aid users in working with her due to her low usage, however she has been used for more songs than Lola overall. Miriam also has a much softer tone of voice and is the softest of the Vocaloid era voicebanks. She is also fortunate as because of her softer tone of voice, the digital "twang" of the Vocaloid engine is less noticeable. However, Miriam can sometimes be harder to hear clearly compared Leon or Lola due to her soft voice. Her range is more limited than Leon, although holds itself more favorably on the higher notes than Lola.

She was originally sold using the Vocaloid 1.0 engine, but Zero-G provided a link to update the program on their website (via her product page) that would update the vocaloid program to Vocaloid 1.1.

Allowance is also given by Zero-G for the addition of the Vocaloid's works onto Karen-T.

As of a note of confirmation in 2011, Vocaloid engines will no longer be supported by Yamaha and will be slowly fazed out, therefore it is no longer possible to clarify if any Vocaloid software package will work on systems newer then Windows 7 or 64 bit.Currently there are no plans for an updated version of Miriam. However, it has been confirmed that if there is demand, Miriam will be updated to a newer engine version, the factor in this. Confirmation was also given from Anders, that if English Vocaloids become a lot more popular, Appends for existing Vocaloids are also a possibility. Zero-G however confirmated that right now this process is far too expansive to undertake.

Demo
Miriam's demo version gives users a chance to experience usage of the phonetic system for English. However, greater manipulation of her voice is absent and users are limited to having her sound robotic. The demo lasts for 30 days.

Reception
Miriam is often considered the best English Vocaloid vocal overall, mostly for having the most appealing vocal with the least amount of issues known. Out of the 3 voicebanks, hers often claims the highest popularity of the trio and is overall the 3rd favourite of the Vocaloid Voicebanks. Her voice is favored more so over Lola's for its gentle sound. Users also report she can sing better in Japanese and Korean than other English Vocaloids for having vowel sounds which can make sound similar to those of the target languages

Despite being the most popular English Vocaloid, in Japan, it is Lola who often dominates over Miriam. In the Nico Nico Douga International Vocaloid ranking 2010, Miriam made the least amount of appearances in the top 30 most popular songs of 2010, with just 1 video appearance in the rankings, together Leon and Lola had a combined total of 9 appearances compared to Miriam.

Trivia

 * She is the only one of the Zero-G vocaloids whose voice provider is known, Zero-G does not normally name their voice providers for legal reasons.


 * Miriam, Lola and Big-Al were featured in the freeware RPG "AD Lucem".


 * One of the few lesser known additions of her fan image is her character item. Upon entering Miriam Stockley's webpage, a tube of lipstick would pop up on the screen which then writes out Miriam's name. For this reason, her character item is thought to be a tube of lipstick.


 * A model for MMD has been made for Miriam.


 * Most depictions of her show Miriam as a long haired woman or teenager, whose hair is either white, silver or blonde in colour and she also is commonly seen wearing black or dark attire as a woman and white dresses as when depicted as a teenager. These are based on the boxart photograph of Miriam Stockley herself, however, the overall details vary per depiction.


 * In addition, due to her being the third English Vocaloid and Miku Hatsune being the third Japanese Vocaloid, Miriam was once thought of an English parallel among the Japanese fandom. This is the reason why she is usually shown in fan art with green clothing. Japanese fans also took notice that both she and Miku's names start with the letters "M and I" (ミリ Miriam / ミク Miku)


 * It is unknown how many units were sold, but as Kaito was the only commercial Vocaloid failure reported, it is safe to say she sold at least 1,000 units.
 * Otherwise she has been the Vocaloid which of the retired ones she is the one who people want appended and updated.

Notable for...

 * First known voice provider for a commercial release
 * First Vocaloid based on a establish singer to be released
 * First Vocaloid to be named after the vocal provider
 * Most popular English Vocaloid release
 * Only English Vocaloid from Zero-G whose voice provider has been revealed