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INTEREST: Hikaru Utada Praises Synthesized Version of Herself

I find it quite interesting that a person could synthesise her voice in Vocaloid format without actually having the person in the studio.

I'm not familiar with how the process works but the person doing this must have had to pull hundreds of voice samples off of Utada's CDs and import them manually into the synthesization software.

Plus as far as I'm aware it's not the Vocaloid software itself that has the ability to do the recording and synthesization. Vocaliod simply converts typed lyrics into whatever voice bank you happen to be using.

This might require additional research and a correction in the article what program was specifically used to synthesize her voice (although the article doesn't specifically say that either). Perhaps it is UTAU after all.

personally I don't like Utada Hikaru. I just find her singing voice to be too annoying. And definetly not fit to sing kokoro. Lily and Gakupo I can deal with, but not her, even for unofficial vocaloid.

Doing a little online research myself it looks like this is pretty common. Whenever you do a "homemade" voicebank, such as one made of Hikaru Utada it's called an Utauloid. However it seems as though doing it without the subject's permission is highly discouraged. As I had previously thought, I'm surprised Hikaru reacted positively to it. Ah ignorance sure is bliss, isn't it?