SONiKA

Sonika is the fifth Vocaloid created by Zero-G. Released on July 14th, 2009, she is the third English speaking Vocaloid to use the updated Vocaloid2 software. She later became the first Vocaloid to be released in Greater China.

Nothing is known about her voice provider except she was an amateur singer.

History
Zero-G felt that a young, frivolous singer would make for an overall interesting vocaloid, providing the fresh and innocent voice that professional singers do not provide. She had several demo songs released.

Her software comes with the VSQ file for her song "Sonika says".

Marketing
She is the first English speaking vocaloid to use a character design and profile as part of the product. She was released with profile/biographical information on the back cover of the software package, similar to the other Vocaloid2 products. She also had a comic upoaded onto her website.

Prior to Sonika, Zero-G did do much to market their Vocaloids, since they sold based on reputation of their products to a strickly professional market and most marketing was done via traditional means (such as software reveiws). Unlike past Vocaloids, Sonika was a more fandom driven Vocaloid and rather target professionals, Zero-G focused on selling Sonika to the Vocaloid fans. This resulted in both positive and negative results with the most important being that Zero-G was able to create links with the Vocaloid English fandom that never existed previously. The downside was that any disappointments around Sonika were more felt then with previous Vocaloids they had made since they were talking to the fans directly of the Vocaloid software.

While many of the Vocaloid fandom has expressed a desire to see an improved version of Sonika, it has been confirmed by Zero-G that they have no intentions to improve her voicebank.

Sonika on Twitter
Following her release Zero-G took a unique stance with her post-release development. They have created and maintained a Twitter page for Sonika, something unheard of for any past vocaloid. Tweets have included pictures of herself with a different hair color, announcing her favorite food is sashimi tuna, and announcing upcoming interviews in media articles. She has even made direct reference to fans discussing what her character item should be.

She also reports things like Tonio's late arrival and may even make a reaction to the release of other Vocaloids like Big Al. In Jan 2011, her Twitter account reached 1,000 followers. The Twitter account is maintained by "Sonika" and not by a bot.

Competitions
From Nov. 2, 2009 to Nov. 30, 2009. Zero-G announced a competition to give Sonika a new look. The winner would receive a copy of the "Sonika Vocaloid2 Software".

Nearing the end of November an image was uploaded on Crypton Catalog that represented Sonika's new appearance. It was drawn by artist Mario Wibisono (aka raynkazuya) at the request of Zero-G. And with the image being found during the New Look Competition and uploaded to Zero-G's site a few days later, this greatly confused fans and submitters who thought that it was the winning image.

This was quickly corrected by Zero-G stating that the competition rules never included the winning image being used for boxart.

She also had a song competiton in 2010, the winner would recieved whatever Zero-G Vocaloid 2 voicebank they desired. The winner was Daniel Castro with the song “U Know It (My Name Is Sonika)”.

Global Exploit
Sonika was also produced as a Chinese version and Ecapsule Co., Ltd (飛天膠囊數位科技有限公司) is a distributor in Taiwan. The Chinese edition came with a new boxart. Users can choose to use the original English or Traditional Chinese interface, however it does not have Chinese language input method. Because of this, it has an instructional DVD and a comparative table of English and Chinese phonemes in an explanatory leaflet which show her accessibility to about 90% of the Chinese pronunciations and were produced by Ecapsule for users in Taiwan, not to take considerable time for making it sounds closer to nature Chinese. This version when displayed at its announced convention on 24th and 25th July, 2010 came with limited stickers and posters. On August 1, 2010, Sonika was released in Taiwan and became the first Vocaloid released in Greater China.

She had several demo songs "Little Forest, "夢想天堂", "Press that accelerator" and "Scenery".

Vocaloid 2

 * Sonika Tutorial
 * Using Eq to tune Sonika
 * Creating a trace vocal effect with Sonika

Sonika
Sonika was the second English capable voicebank by Zero-G released for Vocaloid 2.

Sonika is a Vocaloid designed for Pop Music. She has a strong British accent and is better suited for late 20th century pop and sings with a soft and innocent sounding voice. Sonika is a relatively easy voicebank to use overall, and has an above standard level of English skills. She is a Mezzo-soprano singer. Unlike past Zero-G Vocaloids, Sonika was not intended to be based on a professional singer and does not produce professional singer quality results in the same way Prima did. However, this allowed her voice to be more flexible than past Vocaloids; Sonika was the closest Zero-G Vocaloids came to mimicking "Character Mascot" style of Vocaloids favoured by Japanese Vocaloids during the Vocaloid 2 era because of it. According to Zero-G, Sonika has every vowel sound combination possible needed for English.

Sonika was ranked 4 out of 5 stars by Sound on sound writer John Walden and in his opinion her higher vocals were better then lower and labelled "C4" as the best octave. He also stated that in his opinion her vocals seem best for "bubblegum pop", Walden having had experience with the software since Vocaloid, also felt Sonika was a high quality product.

At a optimum known vocal range of #D5, both Megurine Luka and Sonika joint hold the title of second highest Vocaloid 2 vocal, the highest being joint held by Hatsune Miku and Prima at #E5.

Her voicebank is often labelled "low-quality" by fans for a number of issues related to her and some have remained critical about her overall voicebank quality. Something often picked up upon is that she has a very tinny feed back issue that, while possible to remove, effects her raw vocals. Some of the notes includes the acknowledgement that she is unstable when she reaches her optimum range and Sonika will suddenly change from being soft and muffled to loud and clear (one range reported where she is clear is #B2 to #G3). Like Luka, when pronouncing the words "Road Roller", she can struggle seperating the second half of the words, whereas Prima, Tonio and Big Al can pronounce these words clearly with ease. This however was because she has a number of pronounication issues linked to a number of weak consonant related sounds, which are made harder to use because of the softness of her vocals.

Sonika benefits greatly from the use of the hidden phonetics [sil] and [asp] and these can be used to remove some of these issues, when imported into Vocaloid 3 use of the [?] hidden phonetic will carry her even further. So while she is easy to use, she is difficult to master and may not be suitable for inexperienced Vocaloid users due to her limitations. Sonika has no breath samples. Sonika's more flexiable vocal came at the price to realism, boasting a vocal more centre around characteristics then realism.

Popularity


Prior to her release, Zero-G and other English Vocaloid products were starting to fall behind their Japanese counterparts. Sonika marked the first attempt to raise the profile of English Vocaloids since Miriam and Sweet Ann. She was reported as having sold much better then past Vocaloids designed only for the English language. According to a flyer in 2011, Sonika was the 13th most popular Zero-G product in 2011.

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 with Sonika falling into that category as well.

Trivia

 * The winner of Sonika's New Look Competition was entry was number 30.


 * The artist of Sonika's 2nd boxart design has a Devianart account, as well as the artist for the comics.


 * The English community debated over which item would be Sonika's character item. The most popular choices were a golden ring, based off her name's similarity to "Sonic the Hedgehog", and a bell, based off her demo song "Ring my Bell". The Japanese community has focused on a pineapple due to her appearance's similarity to a pineapple (patterned gold shirt and spiky, green hair).


 * Although she was not the first English vocaloid to use an avatar on her boxart, she was the first to mimic the Japanese style of avatars.


 * According to her twitter messages, Sonika's hair color is able to change color (e.g. from green to red), she also has freckles that show in the summer heat.


 * Sonika is the first Vocaloid to coin the concept of "the Vocaloid family". This was previously a fan concept that accepts all Vocaloids as a form of undefined "family". Sonika however became more definate on some Vocaloids.
 * Sonika regards Leon, Lola and Miriam as her older siblings
 * Prima as her "auntie"
 * Tonio as her "uncle"
 * All other Vocaloids are referred to as her cousins.
 * In regards to Vocaloid3 she was glad to be getting more brothers and sisters and was looking forward to meeting her new friends and singing along side them.
 * She referred to Big Al as "her best friend" when asked about which Vocaloid she talked to the most.
 * "Sonika" is a Hindi name, it is a girl's name and means "Golden".
 * An old trick within the Western vocaloid fandom is to have Luka and Sonika sing together when using English. If correctly done both voices will blend together, the advantage of this is both Vocaloids effectively hide each others flaws.

Notable for...

 * First English Vocaloid to have a "true" avatar
 * First Vocaloid to have a boxart redesign
 * First English Vocaloid to get attention
 * First Vocaloid to be released in Taiwan
 * Most fan disappointment upon release
 * First Vocaloid to own a Twitter
 * First Vocaloid to use the concept of a "Vocaloid family"
 * First Vocaloid to coin the fan-term "Engloid"