Piapro Studio Vocaloid Editor 23
Keena Wiegert
Crypton is best known for production and sales of speech synthesis software for computer music. Its products use the Vocaloid singing synthesis engine developed by Yamaha Corporation; they were also charged with finding and contacting English studios in order to gain recommendations for the English version of the Vocaloid software.[5] The company released Meiko in 2004 and Kaito in 2006, who were originally developed by Yamaha leaving the commercial release to Crypton Future Media.[6] The company then released the first Vocaloid developed by them, and member of the official Character Vocal Series, Hatsune Miku, which used the upgraded engine Vocaloid 2. The success of the Hatsune Miku Voicebank in Japan (and later in other countries) greatly raised Crypton's profile. The second Character Vocal Series are Kagamine Rin and Len and the third Megurine Luka. Because the popularity of these Vocaloids grew, Crypton launched the website Piapro to upload fan-made content and its own music label KarenT to sell Vocaloid songs.
I find that older vocaloids like Miriam, Maika, Avanna, Oliver, Diana, Ruby, Zola Project, Gumi & Sonika had/have this particular emotional quality that adds a layer to their singing. It came naturally to each voice bank and became whatever emotion you needed without much effort. It might be due to how they recorded voices 10 odd years ago.
The database of MEGURINE LUKA V4X is based on a human voice, provided by Japanese voice actress Yuu Asakawa, and carefully recorded in a high-standard studio environment. Every sound was precisely edited to produce this database that includes different kind of vocal sounds. The database contains both Japanese and English and it is compatible with all the functions such as E.V.E.C, Gender Factor, Brightness, Cross Synthesis (morphing function), Growl (growl-like expressions to the voice), which can be operated through bundled vocal editor "Piapro Studio".
This is my first experience with vocaloid and I must say I'm more than happy I bought it! Megurine Luka can fit almost any music style you can think of, also thanks to Piapro Studio which, once you get used to it (be reassured, it only takes a few minutes to learn!), not only provides a super easy way to enter vocals but also allows you fine control over a wide range of parameters. I only tested the English database, but the *** one contains even more features. Used as VSTi in FL Studio, consumes very few system resources, and will fit any kind of music thanks to gender tuning, wide frequency scale and growl effect. Definitely worth the price!