Personally, I have no qualms either way. VOCALOID started out just as obscure at one point, so I'm not going to hold that against CeVIO & 1st Place for wanting to try something out here... the thought of potentially up & coming software makers not get some footing somewhere is kind of disappointing, as someone who likes to see some trial and error where there's actually room for it. I've been seeing a lot of that hinted in responses around the web to the news as of late just because once one thing is established, it needs to stay that way forever and always, to be quite honest.

I can SURELY understand the disappointment, though. I also still have a yearning for it to be a V4 English bank, since that's something I'm accustomed to using already, as well as many others who came up using IA since her intro in V3. Plus VOCALOID editor just provides a little more customization with phonemes at current in comparison. It's just way more convenient to be able to use her vocals in that format, and it would be more consistent to how the vocal samples would be rendered. That's the main part people lament, and I am right there with y'all. The reason why I'm even still hanging with VOCALOID is because I fell in love with how easy & pleasant sounding IA's vocals can be as a VOCALOID, and that won't change any time soon. (In fact, I still lament the fact that I can't really achieve the same clarity in her talk voice as I've heard in her concert monologues, even just playing around with some things... CeVIO just doesn't have that flexibility as of yet.)

But, as I mentioned on Twitter... 1st Place has laid it plain every time they introduce IA to new audiences: they see her more of a virtual artist before strictly being a VOCALOID. Which is probably why, if indeed confirmed a CeVIO bank, they're trying this out. They have the room to do so now, it's year six and at the very least, it can't be denied IA has at least gathered a decent little following in the years they've been working on her, both in character and voice. They're at least banking on some of us to give it a chance, as well as reach out to newer folks looking for additional options outside of just VOCALOID, UTAU, etc. (Because when you think about it, there aren't very many viable alternatives, especially for English speakers...)

I'm still not too big of a fan of the way CeVIO renders its samples, though, I'm fighting with that constantly in my personal sound experiments, even with how natural sounding the flow of the phonemes are... sometimes I feel like I end up accidentally over processing the vocals when I'm mastering the audio with the amount of VSTs & plugins I fiddle around with for clarity. Despite all that, I'm hoping as time goes on, those sound issues improve along with interface changes and additions for extended usability.

The only way that's going to happen is if they do at least get the opportunity to open up to a wider audience & market to get more input from, and this is surely one way they saw to do it I guess...

Either way, I'm just hoping for the best.

This made me upset. Not because it is CeVIO, because Lia can do better than this.

While I do like CeVIO, it'd be a bummer to see IA switch software, especially since she sounds less like IA and more like IA Talk (which I loathe with a burning passion). She also sounds really similar to ONE now, which is another minus

Its likely to part do with the CeVIO engine "noise" or their recording method.

The licensing for CeVIO is either more flexible or the license cheaper, either way with it going to CeVIO, my interest in it is over.

Well, I checked the recent news, and it seems that IA English was confirmed to be CeVIO, so I guess we now know that the product is not a Vocaloid product. 

Agreed.

I said it on my twitter, my only note is when a lot of the western fans were asked to vote in their poll about a year or so ago, we were under the impression it would be a Vocaloid. The fact they never said what the English vocal would be on, I consider a bad move. In a sense, whether or not they intended, they ended up using the gullibility, naivety and keenness of the western fans against them in the process. They *should* have said she would be for CeVIO. However, though CeVIO is well known in Japan it is barely known outside of Japan. And many won't use non-Vocaloid software if their a fan of Vocaloid. We sometimes have a hard time getting people on board with UTAU and even worst time with Alter/Ego.

Hmmm... Quite wondering why recently we can see some phenomenon of transitioning from VOCALOID to other synth yeah? Kind of fishy though...

pare rapport au développement de IA maime si de mon coté je sait que CeVIO au japon se demande coman je fais .de mon coté jai une chose à dire à CeVIO au japon que jai mais source pairsonnelle de mon coté et que je ne suis pa un pirate informatique de mon coté pare rapport au développement. et sa maime si pour le moment que je ne suis pa sure le site de CeVIO.pourquoi je suis pruden de mon coté.si je devait utilise CeVIO sa pourai aitre dagereu pourquoi pareque ma connaitivité ai conu come une connaitivité spécial par rapport à moi sa pourai aitre dagereu à CeVIO ma connaitivité a un rapport à un persocoms qui se nome chii de Chobits ....

Macne Nana + Macne Petit -> Reason/Garagaband -> UTAU (note; they did not become official UTAU until their 2S releases) -> Vocaloid

That's the best we've seen so far in terms of engine skipping overall, CeVIO's engine is a bit worst then Vocaloids in terms of engine noise... So aside from one or two phonetic differences, the results overall likely will sound worst. Same thing happens with the Japanese vocaloids as it is. With Nana and Petit, the change was beneficial as each jump improved things in some little way, though the Vocaloid jump is the closet one to sound as they intended in Reason and Garage band. Jumping engines can make a vocal sound different.

I don't think its fishy as technically... Yukari, Akari and Zunko are on two different engines, one for speech and one for singing, namely the speech is Voiceroid.