Morning all,
Once again, I'm reading about and considering Vocaloid.... I know it has limitations, and can't replace a singer, but I still want it to be a useful tool for recording ideas.
It seems that in the rest of IT tech (Cortana / Siri / Alexa etc) voice synthesis is advancing at a great rate. I would have thought that the music applications would be advancing as well??
 
Is Vocaloid still the 'best' option out there? Or are there alternatives available now?
I see there are some 'English' voices available now - do they include the English phonemes now (I know it was a struggle to produce English words from the original Japanese voices/phonemes).
 
Is anyone on here actively using Vocaloid (or similar) in English - and if so can you let me know how you find it (and which voices / applications you are using).
 
Cheers,
Paul

If you're thinking of trying out Vocaloid, you owe it to yourself to try out the free Plogue "Alter Ego" first. https://www.plogue.com/products/alterego/
I find the results with Alter Ego are very similar to Vocaloid, in some ways much better, but with way less work. I believe the current state of Vocaloid would allow more human-like results with a lot of editing and trial and error, but I could never get anything usable or useful and it was a frustrating experience (using Vocaloid 2). In the end, both products are capable of creating something human-like if used (very) deep in a mix or used for a vocoder style effect in electronic music (which is a much better fit, IMO). 

Thanks - I just stumbled across alterego myself an hour ago :)
Yes - seems much easier to use, but I'm not sure if the 'simplicity' means I don't have the in depth editing to make it sound 'better' - but to be honest I'm not sure I've got the ability / patience to make the (perhaps overly) complex Vocaloid sound better either!!
 
Thanks for the tip - I'll keep experimenting.....

Just dug out my demo version of Volcaloid 4 - with the English Luka voicepack.
I have to say that just entering notes and words, the vocal quality is distinctly better than alterego - vocaloid (without any serious editing) sounds like a voice sung without any emotion, and heavily autotuned. Alterego still sounds robotic (using the free 'bones' voicepack).
However, the lack of VST makes Vocaloid much harder to work with.
I'm going to have to spend some time with vocaloid to try and understand what the various settings / tools do, and see if it can work for me.
I'm thinking that if I can get something close in vocaloid, I can then bring it into Sonar and use Melodyne to 'tweak' it some more.....

I am watching this thread with interest. I also find Alter Ego good for free but not quite up to the level of what I have heard from Vocaloid. I am tempted to try this deal...
 
https://www.vocaloid.com/en/products/show/v4l_cd_cs_english_sp_en 
 
which comes with the editor and Cyber Diva and Cyber Songman, both "English" singing libraries.
 
I find Realivox The Ladies and Blue also good but it's surprising how often I am unable to get them to sing what I want given the limited set of vowels and consonants available.
 
For the moment Vocaloid still seems to be the most flexible although the workflow is a bit restrictive. I wish they would implement something that can be integrated into your DAW (there is a Cubase version although I'm not sure how better integrated it is compared to the other version).  

Hmmm £160 (ish) - that's not a bad price for both male and female libraries....
Certainly worth some more thought.....

For that price, you could get a Kontakt-based vocal library that might be more limited in terms of articulations but at least sounds human. Check out the Realivox libraries to hear what the state of the art sounds like in that realm.

Thanks bitflipper - that's really interesting (and impressive) - exactly why I started this thread - to find out what else is out there.
As you say, the articulations are a little limiting, but the sounds are very good......

Realivox Blue looks potentially even better - not a complete set of phonemes, but a lot more......

Blue is really good. Also check out Ladies.