Cantor

Cantor was an old software released at the same time as Miriam and was a rival to the original Vocaloid software.

History
Cantor and its successor Cantor 2 were made by Vir Syn. The interface also saw a overhaul between versions. It was sold for £199.99 including VAT. Though it was the more expensive of the two software, since it offered a far greater selection of vocals, it was cheaper for the amount of contents it offered.

The final version of the software, Cantor 2.1 was released on February 6th, 2007. Though updates have since ceased, the software remains on sale and is confirmed compactiable with Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X 10.5/10.6 versions. A demo is able to still be downloaded from VirSyn's website, allow it requires to purchase a eLicensed Syncrosoft dongle. The special dongle was included with the boxed version of the software, as well as other software sold by VirSyn. It was not able to be bought with the downloaded versions but could be purchased on its own.

Usage for Music
Unlike Vocaloid, it had 50 voices for use which was far greater than what Vocaloid had to offer upon its release. It had capabilities for both German and English and supported both Windows XP and Mac OS X, unlike Vocaloid which was restricted to just Windows XP. Like Vocaloid, it worked as a stand alone or plug-in and supported ReWire.

Cantor was considered at the time of release as a good engine suitable to stand up to Yamaha's Vocaloid engine, then only known in the west by its English version, and was released before the Vocaloid software became famous. Cantors singing results, however were inferior to Vocaloid and there were no keyboard shortcuts. However, it boasted a higher level of fine tuning, with a more simple interface to Vocaloid. Cantor was not based on singing samples, and its results were reproduced by a morphing additive synthesis engine derived from VirSyn's Cube software synth. It is used to generate the 39 phonemes which VirSyn used to reproduce English speech or singing. Each phoneme is created by passing an additive sound source through a formant filter, which morphs between a start and an end state. These filter responses are fully editable, and up to to six peaks and three troughs in the formant filter response can be specified as morph points. Overall, its recreation of the English language was considered flawless despite its lack of vocal clarity.

Improvements were made between Cantor and Cantor 2 while at the time of its release, Cantor 2 was considered ground breaking technology and a revolution in vocal synthesizing. It had 20 "ready to use" vocals in both German and English, and also had capabilities within its reach of mimicking other languages despite being primary set up for German/English, since it was not restricted by a pre-recorded vocal sample and could be manipulated in ways Vocaloid could not be.

Because of its design, it was more like a virtual instrument than intending to be a virtual singer. It never claimed to mimic a real singer's voice and was intended purely for special effects. This was a very different approach to the intention of Vocaloid, which was intended to produce a realistic vocal result. However, both were based on the same concepts, ideas and shared a number of similar designs.

Registering also allowed users to recieve updates from VirSyn regularly.

External

 * website
 * review