By now, I'm sure you know what Vocaloid is, and who Hatsune Miku is. Yeah, I love her too. But sometimes, her singing isn't that great. She's a real pro, but her trainers (Vocaloid users) don't always understand how to get the best performance out of her.
Enter VocaListener. Moetron informs us of this technology that can adjust Vocaloid's parameters to where Miku can better match the original singer's inflections and details. In other words, it makes her closer sound to a real girl. Check out the above video to hear this technology in action. This technolgy will be explored at the 128th Human-Computer Interaction Workshop.
But, there's something to be said about doing things the hard way. If you thought that the above "Prologue" was good, check this out: Moetron thought that this Vocaloid version of Ayumi Hamasaki's "Dearest" was done using VocaListener, but it turns out that it was tweaked by hand. The result is absolutely astounding! If you know the original, you'll be blown away.
It will be interesting to see how both old fashioned elbow grease and this new VocaListener technology pan out.
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All this time I thought Vocaloid was some anime that got licensed before it had a chance to be fansubbed. I never woulda guessed it was text-to-speech software.
Vocaloid can sound just as good or possibly better than that prologue if you know what you're doing. The problem is the majority of videos/songs that are uploaded everywhere that most people hear aren't always the best examples of what you can do with it in just a few hard hours. Most you see are just slapped together real fast together without a whole lot of reorganizing and arranging That "Dearest" example though was waaaay beyond that though....that was amazing!
@Heero Yui : "The problem is the majority of videos/songs that are uploaded everywhere that most people hear aren't always the best examples of what you can do with it in just a few hard hours."
Exactly my thoughts every time I stumble upon some guy playing the guitar on Youtube. Most can't play and are still praised as guitar gods by noobs.
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