RUBY (VOCALOID4)

RUBY VOCALOID4 | Songs Albums Notable Originals

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RUBY (VOCALOID4)
Product information
Catalog No.	RUBY (SONICWIRE)
Company	Independent developers (Syo) Distributor: PowerFX Systems AB. Crypton Future Media, Inc.
Release	October 7, 2015
Status	Released
System	Windows
Language(s)	English
Type	VOCALOID4
License	Proprietary
Affiliation	PowerFX Systems AB. YAMAHA Corporation
Website	Product Page (PowerFX Systems AB.) Product Page (Sonicwire)

This article is about the VOCALOID4 software known as a voicebank. If you are looking for the VOCALOID character then click here.

History

2013

RUBY started as an independent project in December 2013 with only Prince Syo working on her.  Half a year later, he was joined by Anders, who had previously worked for VocaTone. Despite Anders helping Syo, a development team did not exist, since Syo exclusively worked on RUBY for the most part.

At some point, Syo searched for companies that could support RUBY and PowerFX, Zero-G and Crypton expressed interest in the project. It became clear that Crypton would not allow much creative freedom at all.  Anders thought that Zero-G and PowerFX would be better candidates because he had worked with and trusted them. The two chose PowerFX because they would allow more control over the design. Anders later remarked that at no point was anyone promised any control over the final design and that it was his decision to choose PowerFX.

2014

On September 19, 2014, Syo publicly revealed that he and Anders were working on a VOCALOID and a voice sample of RUBY was posted.  At the time, RUBY was affiliated only with VocaTone, but not PowerFX. However, Bil Bryant, the CEO of PowerFX, revealed in October that RUBY would be delayed so that she could be updated to the VOCALOID4 engine.

On October 30, Natasha Allegri posted concept images. It was revealed that she and another artist had been requested to submit concept art for consideration. At the time, it was not confirmed if the concept art would be used in RUBY's final design or whether either of the artists were to be chosen as the final illustrator.

2015

Early in 2015, some early production samples of RUBY were discovered.  Syo explained that these test audio clips were not the original uploads of these samples. The originals had been removed and someone else re-uploaded them. However, there was no objection to them existing so long as everyone acknowledged that they were of early versions of RUBY's vocal and that they did not reflect the current status of the project.

It was announced that RUBY would be associated with PowerFX.

Syo expressed a desire to create at least two voicebanks for RUBY to take advantage of VOCALOID4's cross synthesis capabilities, but was unsure due to the doubled workload. The extra workload was owed to the increase in triphonetic data. In addition, PowerFX was only willing to pay for one English voicebank.  They wanted to see how well the voicebank sold before adding any additional voicebanks. It was also confirmed that RUBY originally had a Japanese voicebank, but this was scrapped. Her English recordings were redone to sound similar to her Japanese voicebank.

On June 10, Syo asked for original songs that he could use for RUBY demos within a week. Examples had to be sent in and he would decide if the song would be accepted as a demo.

After resolving miscommunication issues with PowerFX, it was confirmed that Natasha Allegri would illustrate the design for the physical copy of RUBY based on the concept Misha, the voice provider, worked on. It took 3 days to produce the art instead of the expected 1–2 weeks. Natasha commented that doing the art made her very happy.

On September 18, Syo tweeted that RUBY would be released within the month. Later that day, he tweeted that the release date of the download version would be the September 23. Boxed versions would be available afterwards. On September 23, it was noted that she was to be delayed. She was officially released as a digital download on October 7.

Her physical version and bundle package were made available on December 12.

Product Information

Early Production Samples

Samples 

Demonstrations

Witness	CLYP
Angelfish	CLYP
Applause	CLYP
Masked bitcH	CLYP
Happy Birthday 1	CLYP
Adventure Time	CLYP
Ai Kotoba	CLYP
Happy Birthday 2	CLYP
Delusion Tax	CLYP
Heart Beats	CLYP
Sad Machine	CLYP
Cyber Thunder Cider	CLYP
Shake It Comparison	CLYP
Delusion Tax 2	CLYP
Diamond in the Rough	CLYP
Shotgun Lovers	CLYP
Shake It (English)	CLYP
Shake It (Japanese)	CLYP
Fallen Angel	CLYP
ERROR	CLYP
Royals	CLYP
Not Fair	CLYP
Five Nights at Freddy's Song	CLYP
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger	CLYP
Just Be Friends	CLYP
Jenny (Acapella)	CLYP
Jenny	CLYP
Kurayami Shinjuu Soushisouai	CLYP
'ruby & maiakaka'	CLYP
Power Test Problem	CLYP
Power Test Masked bitcH	CLYP
Poe	CLYP
Yoshiwara Lament	CLYP
Yowamushi Montblanc	CLYP
Twinkle, twinkle little star	CLYP
Venus	CLYP
The Sweet Escape	CLYP

Demonstrations

Demonstrations

Problem	NicoNico YouTube bilibili CLYP
Break Free	CLYP
ヒビカセ (Hibikase) - English version	CLYP
Hands	YouTube
Why Don't You Do Right	CLYP
Cutoff Line	CLYP
Potato Chalala	CLYP
RUBY Demo medley	PowerFX Website

System Requirements

• VOCALOID4 Editor
• OS: Windows 10 (32/64bit) / Windows8.1 / Windows8 / Windows 7(32/64bit)
• CPU: Intel Dual Core CPU
• RAM: 2GB or more
• Hard Disk Capacity: 3.54 GB

Voicebanks

Product Information
Versions
Trial/Demo Vers?: No  Starter Available?: Yes
Package details as noted:
RUBY is a young, female voice with a strong tone and general American Accent. PowerFX described her as "a youthful female vocalist with a smooth, joyful sound with the power and soul to ”kick it out” when needed." According to Misha RUBY has the same voice as her UTAU Hachi had for recording. The resulting nasally tone was put down by Misha as either a result of the English sounds turning out more nasally, or because of the Vocaloid engine. RUBY's voice was confirmed by Misha as being achieved via voice acting. In October 2015, Prince Syo, created a custom dictionaries with four languages, (English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese): Official Dropbox.com download and Announcement tweet.
Vocal traits as noted:
RUBY has three pitches of articulations thanks to the number of phonemes involved. Most other English Vocals have only two. EmpathP spoke about RUBY's clarity: she felt she was more understandable than CYBER DIVA. As noted by heart★breaker, users need to be careful when mixing her voice as she requires the same level of attention as a real singer. RUBY tends to not handle higher notes as well as lower ones due to the particular accent and power of her range. In response to a comment on RUBY's vocal being very weighted, a feature lacked by most other English vocals, Guiseppe called her voice "very peculiar".
Phonetic notes as noted:
Her dictionary is programmed to be able to speak 5,900 words, including the 3000 most common words in the English language and around one hundred random words or suggestions from users. She wasn't developed with the same script CYBER DIVA or previous English vocaloids used. As a result, she has improved phonemes and produces different results to CYBER DIVA. The total number of triphones she has per pitch is 500+ – this is more than double the number that CYBER DIVA had. She has a custom library like SeeU and MAIKA, including extra phonemes. However, all of them are allophones, meaning that they allow a more natural sounding American English. The V4 editor won't use these extra phonemes by default. For example, typing in [4] will produce the "tt" sound in the word "better". Another is [e@0] which produces a vowel sound for words such as "am" and "land". For more details on this, see Vocaloid Otaku Forums topic. Giuseppe also noted she had the phoneme "h/". She has the capability to imitate Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese at the cost of having an accent due to the lack of certain phonemes such as the Japanese "ts" or the Chinese "r". She has some extra Misc Phonetics: To change to an alternate sound, you can add "[2]" to input data section of the lyrics. She has the rolling [R] sound which became common in English voicebanks during the VOCALOID2 era. This phoneme had largely been absent from many of the VOCALOID3 era English voicebanks. Syo commented that RUBY has the most consonants, as far as he knows, of any Vocaloid. RUBY's phonetics should be correctly aspirated.
Software issues as noted:
RUBY's final package size is quite large due to its amount of content, even for a single voicebank. RUBY has a metallic rasp in her voice (most noticeably on her consonants), requiring proper tuning for control these sounds. While this is a common trait among Vocaloid voicebanks due to being based on synethised results, RUBY has a slightly more noticable amount than normal.
Voicebank sample
RUBY (VOCALOID4)
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