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Character Voice

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For Crypton Future Media's CV vocals, see Character Vocal Series

"Character Voice", normally shortened to "CV", is a particular trait of some voicebanks, (notably VOCALOID products), commonly seen in Japanese vocal synth characters, although this concept can be applied to any language library for any software.

About[]

For more information, see Wikipedia page Voice Acting in Japan

The term "CV" was coined in the 1980's by magazine Animec ("アニメック"), before its company Le Porte (ラポート) went bankrupt, as well as the magazine Newtype. The term was used specifically to refer to the Voice Actor or seiyuu ("声優") in that specific role. However, in regards to Vocaloids, "CV" is used in a broader term. The produced vocals using both the VOCALOID engine and the provider's samples can range from realistic, faithful recreations to unrealistic vocals attempting to convey a given characteristic.

Vocal Directions[]

There are two main methods of approaching voicebanks, both natural and voice acted. Throughout each version of a software, an engine, and its languages lies a variable amount of realism across all voicebanks naturally even within the languages and among each voicebank itself. While the engine attempts to sound realistic, it is not always certain a voicebank is even trying to be realistic.

Natural Singing Vocal[]

This is a voicebank that is sold containing the traits of the vocalist and is particularly important to professional producers or those desiring a "genuine" result. The first of this type of VOCALOID is jointly held by VOCALOIDs LEON and LOLA, who were sold as "Soul Singers" and were aimed to give a realistic 'black singer' result. The natural singing style is the most "uncanny valley" producing of the approaches to VOCALOID, being more likely to be harder to tell that the singer is not a real singer.

This "naturally realistic" result shares similar problems to some of the things mentioned in quality as a clause for concern. For example, if a layer of sound is off pitch even the slightest, it impacts the quality and realism of the vocal, making a VOCALOID intention to sound like the provider failed to do so. Poor quality often leads to a dip in realism in addition. Those buying a VOCALOID of a particular singer may be disappointed if the results don't sound like the singer, but this hasn't prevented VOCALOIDs that don't always sound like their provider from selling either. While it is arguable how well each example achieves its goal, the aim of these VOCALOIDs is to sell to a producer a VOCALOID with professional or realistic results to work with for projects.

Results are mixed in every example of natural singing VOCALOIDs. Tonio is capable of sounding distinctly like his provider, leading to a notably realistic result. For comparison, the sample package "Classic vocal", also released by Zero-G, offers a chance to hear the provider in his raw singing state. However, at the same time, while the traits of the provider are clearly heard within the software, there are many technical issues with the voicebank library which can degrade the quality and impact the realism of the result. This leads to Tonio being comparable to one of the most realistic or one of the least realistic VOCALOID2 vocals, depending on the example of usage.

These vocals are some of the hardest to produce at times because there is a higher pressure to get the vocal correct and sounding just like the singer. Another issue is exemplified by both Tonio and his partner Prima in that some singing styles sound "odd" when mixed with electronic vocal effects. Another issue is the pair are fixed within their style and they can have problems breaking out of it, an issue that also impacts Sachiko and a few other Vocaloids of this style. Thus, the vocals that are based on natural singing result are not always that useful.

Naturally realistic does not prevent additional vocals, as exemplified by Megpoid V3 or KAITO. But it can limit the number of ways a voice can be expressed. GUMI's "Falsetto" vocal was too difficult to match against her normal voice, so it could not be released due to how unbalanced it was. Instead, Kokone was produced with natural Falsetto results.

While voice actors often have no issues providing their vocals to a voicebank, professional singers can be reluctant to provide their vocals.

Voice Acting[]

The merits of voice acting versus recording the provider's natural singing is also a common subject of debate on realism. While VOCALOID attempts to recreate the human voice realistically, the studios that recorded these vocalists do not always take the realistic approach. The first ever release of a voice-acted VOCALOID was Hatsune Miku, whose popularity had not been hindered by her lack of realism at all. The idea of Hatsune Miku was to give producers, both amateur, professional or general hobbyist, a vocalist who was ready to sing with a cute-sounding young female vocal. The resulting choice of direction became popular and Miku was an instant success, thus is at times not considered a drawback despite usually producing a less realistic approach. The provider does not have to be a talented singer so long as they can mimic a particular style of singing.

Voice acting results in a singer who is hired purely for their vocal performance and abilities to sound a particular way, even if this is not natural for them. For example, Kagamine Len is male, but was voiced by female voice actress Shimoda Asami, who had the ability to do both a female (Kagamine Rin) and a male vocal range (Kagamine Len). However, there can be flaws to voice acting. The problem is for any particular style of song, the results are often not a perfect match compared to using an actual voice provider who specializes in that style of singing.

Because a female vocalist was used for Len, one of the notable traits of both his act1 and Kagamine Rin & Len V4 English voicebanks is that at times they produce results that sound notably "feminine" instead of "masculine". It was also noted that during the production of VY2, only true male vocals were referenced when producing VY2. As both Len and Ryuto were voiced by females, they could not produce satisfactory masculine results at all and were not taken into account for VY2's production. Biology plays a role in how the sexes sound in adulthood, as well as in childhood. In examples such as Kagamine Len's, wherein a vocalist represents the opposite gender, the impact is caused by the effects of the voice breaking in puberty in young boys. At times Len fails simply to match both the masculine vocals of a pre-puberty and post-puberty male.

Similarly, Otomachi Una could be said to have shortcomings in the portrayal of her characters since she was voiced by an adult but her character is 11 years old. In comparison to OLIVER or Kaai Yuki, both of whom had child vocals, Una can sometimes fail to match the softness that comes with a child vocalist.

The cause for concern in such cases is simply that when attempting to pitch realistic tuning, the results often don't produce authentic or genuine results.

Voice actors are able to give a wide variety of different tones and if a provider is required to voice multiple voicebanks, then voice acting may be the best option. While a singer can give a better singing performance, great singers do not always result in the ability to morph their voice like a trained professional voice actor can. However, the majority of voice actors have talent in singing, as they know how to change their vocals to fit different situations, as well as an understanding of microphones.[1] Regardless, the ability to morph their vocal can be useful in producing a variety of expressions for recording, as demonstrated by Hatsune Miku Append, which through voice acting allowed multiple different tones that Hatsune Miku could use alongside her normal vocals. Voice acting allows for very different approaches to one vocal, compared to natural toned extensions.

Singing roles can be quite different still to talking roles even for actors used to acting in normal speech. Otori Kohaku's provider, Kakumoto Asuka, had to work out for the first time just how "Unity-chan" sounded. So even though Otori herself was actually a voice-acted performance, the singing itself was a brand new voice for the character and it required some working out how she would sound while singing. It is not certain how a voice-acted performance will turn out for this reason, especially if they are not a singer. The popularity of VOCALOID for its ability to open opportunities for roles, however, has over times brought in a large interest in providers who are voice actors and Kizuna Akari's provider, Yonezawa Madoka, has noted that software such as VOCALOID have opened doors for voice-acted roles that did not exist previously.

Voice acting has proven to be a problem when it comes to multilingual providers, especially if they are not used to the language. As seen with Hatsune Miku V3 English, maintaining the same tone as the Japanese voicebank is difficult to achieve. Other issues is that the voice can sound forced or unnatural. The reason for the struggle is that with a change of language comes a change of tone, as languages do not work the same and languages like English requiring stressed sounds. This can impact a tone of a vocal, and for voice acting it can be hard to maintain a voice equal to that of the native language. If the provider is adept at languages, then they can easily produce a voicebank for any language they speak, as demonstrated by Macne Nana. Though an accent can be an issue, it tends to sound far less unnatural or forced.

Although voice acting may have shortcomings compared to natural singing, some may consider the supposed flaws to be characteristic and even defining for a VOCALOID. Otomachi Una, for example, had her voicebank provided by an adult so it can be difficult to produce natural child-like singing compared to voicebanks like Kaai Yuki who used an actual child vocal provider. However, these unnatural quirks are not necessarily a bad thing and can be considered characteristic of "Otomachi Una".

Other information[]

Many software such as VOCALOID and Synthesizer V still attempt to make all voicebanks realistic and a voice acted result, while not "true", is not false to the point it does not sound remotely human. As mentioned in "realism", the definition of realism is subjective and varies from person to person. One person can listen to Prima without knowing what she is nor tell she is a synthetic vocal, but another will pick up on her faults and find the voice "odd" and wonder if a tool was used such as auto-tuning software, whether or not they know what VOCALOID is. Yet Prima is classified as a "natural singing" vocal and produces authentic opera results. Another can listen to Miku and feel she is more realistic then she is, because they are not able to pick up the digital engine noise of VOCALOID, or because they don't how unrealistic she actually is. This is again thanks to the "uncanny valley" effect and how well each VOCALOID is able to trick the human ear. It is because of this push towards realism that Crypton Future Media, Inc. pulled development of their characters from VOCALOID5 to their own software Piapro Studio in hopes of preserving their unrealistic tone.

In addition, some voicebanks fit into both categories because a vocalist does not have to alter their vocal in any way to voice act either and the vocalist can remain natural. In this sense, the two styles can overlap at times and a VOCALOID can be both an example of voice acting, as well as natural sounding. This is exampled by Camui Gackpo, who is regarded as a "Character Voice" role of his provider Gackt, the two are not the same singer and Gackpo simply has the traits of his provider.

Part of this is because of the idea that the "voice" you are buying is ultimately that of Camui Gackpo, not "GACKT" himself. This idea was also shared by Unity-Chan, which has two avatars Otori Kohaku and AKAZA. AKAZA's creation was because at the same time they had recorded Unity-Chan as the singing voice of Otori Kohaku, the two were so different that the provider herself noted it was as if there were two different singers entirely. Thus, it is important to be aware that not all VOCALOIDs and their voicebanks are unnatural just because they are voice acted and the two different approaches do have overlaps in ideas.

There are also a few examples of VOCALOIDs that use both approaches; IA (natural tone) and IA ROCKS (voice acted), Tone Rion (voice acted) and Yumemi Nemu (natural tone), Galaco "Red" (natural tone) and "blue" (voice acted), Fukase "Normal" (natural tone) and "Soft" (voice acted), Yuzuki Yukari V4's "Jun" (natural tone) and her two extra vocals "Onn" and "Lin" (both are examples of voice acting).

Traits[]

The difference of both approaches is that using a voice actor gave those libraries more flexibility to approach any musical direction, as well as future developments. But the lack of a natural singing voice style on voice acted CVs usually displays some problems that can create concerns or affect the commercial impact of the product.[2] However, this doesn't represent a decrease on the popularity of the library, with Hatsune Miku being the most famous and popular vocal synthesizer despite her voice acted direction.

In both cases, it is important to point that the similarity of the VOCALOID with its voice provider will vary, as different studios have different techniques and production methods. When Wat was discussing the difference between KAITO V3 and MEIKO V3 in comparison to the direction of the Character Vocal series, he mentioned there being different techniques being applied to the voicebanks during development, as KAITO and MEIKO were not created via voice acting.[3] Asakawa Yuu also reported that she didn't feel that Megurine Luka sounded much like herself at all.[2] VOCALOID™ itself is a product aimed at professional musicians and producers, who are often the intended target audience rather than the fans, regardless of the VOCALOID mascot or vocal design.[4]

Each individual voicebank will lean in either direction, though there may be overlapping between the two concepts. Furthermore, while a character's original direction may embody one of the two, further additional vocals for the character are likely to utilize the other method in order to achieve more disguising results between each voicebank library.

List of characters regarded as "CV"[]

Piapro Studio[]

The following is a list of declared CV Piaproloids.

UTAU[]

The following is a list of declared CV UTAU.

VOCALOID[]

The following is a list of declared CV VOCALOIDs.

References[]

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