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NEWS: Miku English Is Hatsune Miku's 1st Windows/Mac Release




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kawaiibunny3



Joined: 10 Aug 2008
Posts: 534
Location: Houston, Texas
PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 1:40 pm Reply with quote
This is actually kindof big. The vocaloid software has pretty much always been sold for Windows since it started in 2004 as far as I know. So Miku-English would be the first voicebank out of all 40ish vocaloids advertised as being compatible for Mac. (which had been something some competitors would try to take advantage of)

I don't pay much attention to the other vocaloid related software that Yamaha and other people have put out tbh so there might be some program available to make them compatible that I overlooked. But I do know that back in April they had said they were looking into bringing Vocaloids to Mac users.

Guess I shouldn't be surprised they use Miku to be the guinea pig Anime hyper
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Shiggity



Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Posts: 367
Location: Boston, MA
PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 1:55 pm Reply with quote
Man that'd be great if the core Vocaloid app was to be ported to OS X! Please Crypton please!
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 2:09 pm Reply with quote
kawaiibunny3 wrote:
I don't pay much attention to the other vocaloid related software that Yamaha and other people have put out tbh so there might be some program available to make them compatible that I overlooked.
Wine's AppDB says it should work perfectly, though native is almost always better than going through third-party API reimplementations.
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Ryuk_shinigami21



Joined: 19 May 2013
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:03 am Reply with quote
I'm glad to finally see/hear English miku, I mean haven't heard much of it yet (except a couple of those early alpha/beta versions) but this should definitely be a treat to all vocaloid fans. I am not expecting "perfect english pronunciation" as the voice actress of miku herself has only basic english but I am sure they have worked on it to make miku speak english (albeit with a Japanese accent which is fine)

Needless to say - in spite of the accent Miku software will now finally be a lot easier to use for turning ENGLISH songs into vocaloid songs, whatever the genre it may be.

Definitely looking forward to this Surprised
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14896
PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 1:58 pm Reply with quote
Dunno what's stopping them from using an English speaker.........
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 2:14 pm Reply with quote
Because it wouldn't be Hatsune Miku if they did.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 4:43 pm Reply with quote
enurtsol wrote:
Dunno what's stopping them from using an English speaker.........

If Crypton Future Media were to replace Miku's voicer with a new voicer, English-native or Japanese, she would be an instant failure. Besides, I'm pretty sure her accent is thin enough for her English to sound intelligible.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 6:45 pm Reply with quote
Mr. Oshawott wrote:
enurtsol wrote:
Dunno what's stopping them from using an English speaker.........

If Crypton Future Media were to replace Miku's voicer with a new voicer, English-native or Japanese, she would be an instant failure. Besides, I'm pretty sure her accent is thin enough for her English to sound intelligible.

I don't think he means replace Miku entirely. Japanese Miku and English Miku are already separate. It's still unclear whether or not Crypton Media will include the Japanese Miku vocaloid in the English release (it will be a big disappointment if they did not) I also think that they should've used a native speaker with similar pitch for the English phoneme samples. But I guess it wouldn't be "Miku speaking English as a second language" anymore...
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@



Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 3498
Location: IN your nightmares
PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:59 pm Reply with quote
Just to clarify, from what I got from the panel at AX where they announced a bunch of Miku related things, they had Saki Fujita return to the studio in order to expand Miku's voice bank enough for the English version.

I'm just glad they saved the tuning data so that they were able to replicate the modifications they made to Fujita-san's voice for the new sounds.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 8:16 pm Reply with quote
configspace wrote:
I don't think he means replace Miku entirely...I also think that they should've used a native speaker with similar pitch for the English phoneme samples. But I guess it wouldn't be "Miku speaking English as a second language" anymore...

You seem to have misread my earlier post.
If CFM were to replace Miku's voicer, Saki Fujita, with a new voicer for English [in which you seem to be suggesting], Miku would be a failure on the spot, for the reason that the customers are going to expect to hear the same voice in her English voicebank as they did with her Japanese one. Using a different voicer, be it an English native or a Japanese one, will throw off the sound of the entire voicebank. There's simply no way that a similar-sounding voice will bring about the same result, regardless of hard they attempt to make it sound even close to being identical.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 12:53 am Reply with quote
I dunno......... There's a lot of seiyuu out there that I think there's enough good ones who sound similar enough to Saki Fujita, and maybe a few could even speak English fairly well. Plus after all, these are just phonemes and syllables, not whole speech patterns that tend to be unique to individuals.

And people can think of it this way: "what if Miku actually studied and learned English well - this is how she will sound." I'm multilingual, and even I sound a bit different depending on the language - it's to be expected. I'm sure ya guys have encountered renowned multilinguals who sound a bit different too. I just don't think sounding a bit different depending on the language is a deal-breaker. It's simply foreign language, English, French, Spanish, or otherwise.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:36 am Reply with quote
enurtsol wrote:
I dunno......... There's a lot of seiyuu out there that I think there's enough good ones who sound similar enough to Saki Fujita, and maybe a few could even speak English fairly well.

Even if there are 1,000 people whose voice may sound "similar" to Saki's, replacing her with a new "similar-sounding" voicer just won't work at all. The engine will end up changing the voice's tone, rendering a differing result in the process. Not to mention that all the time and money invested in those English lessons will have gone to waste.
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:56 am Reply with quote
One will have to take into account that when they first sampled Saki's voice for Miku, she was just 16 in 2006/7. From What I could discover they sampled her voice in English starting Spring of 2012, when she would have been either 20 , or 21. So be prepared to her Miku to sound a little more mature in Vocaloid 3. Also, depending on how well she learned to speak in English, she will never sound like if English was her first language like it would be had she's been taught in the US, or Canada, of even the UK. There will always be that Japanese/English accent. But I'm not worried about that as long as she is coherent without constant repeats, or replays of what she said. Also whats even more important, and tops all and any concerns with all this speculation, is the skill of what ever artist uses the programme in the first place. We know that even English vocaloids like Sweet Ann and even the more recent Oliver, the voice synth still sounds like a voice synth, and even the Japanese Miku has trouble properly speaking in Japanese, by all accounts spoken by some Japanese who can understand and have the knowledge of that. Non speakers of Japanese tend to be more accepting of that because of our ignorance of the language. But that seems to be the reason why just about every Japanese vocaloid song, including Miku's are mostly subtitled in Japanese as well. Remember this has only been a commercial release for coming up to 6 years now. The fact that it is as popular as it is now is even more astounding when one realises how long it took for recorded music itself to gain popularity 100 or so years ago. Wink

New Miku in English

That'll do Miku-chan, That'll do. Wink
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