-- Yamaha Releases Vocaloid 5 -- (Website Link)

Quote:

Production flow has been drastically overhauled in line with the aim of having today's diverse music producers incorporate a wider line-up of virtual singers into their music. This new software helps increases speed and efficiency when producing singing voices.
The all new production flow makes it possible to create singing voices as simply as dragging and dropping from a choice of over 2,000 audio and phrase presets. Adjusting singing styles and vocal expressions such as vibrato are also simple to master – just select the icons. It's possible to create lyrics and melodies from scratch too. With a total of 3 new parameters to control vocal expressions added (making a total of 13), in addition to the standard dynamic and pitch parameters, Vocaloid5 offers finer control of vocal tone, amount of breath, and more. The software also comes pre-loaded with 11 powerful audio effects for vocal tracks.

My first thought was - Wow, that's much better than before...

Then I saw that they are starting to use canned phrases along with concatenation synthesis.

There aren't many examples posted for the new voices, but the few that I heard were acceptable, but not that different than prior Vocaloid.

It looks like this release is designed to work better within DAWs as a VST2 and AU, but Cubase is the only DAW I see listed. Looks like Mac users are finally getting some love. It also supports audio editing within the VSTi (pitch shift, time stretch, reverse, normalize).

You can edit "normal" audio within the VST (pitch/timestretch), but the short demo I listened to sounded terrible, filled with audio glitches.

There are three additional control parameters (vocal tension, breath, and something else), as well as an "emotion" editor.

It also comes bundled with two new English and two new Japanese Vocaloids bundled in.

Google says the current exchange rate for 25,000 Yen is about $222 USD.

Thanks for posting Jim and thanks for the analysis David. Love hearing from you as our local virtual voice expert.

I clicked several of their samples and if those are the best examples, I don't see how this is even a product!

Pop music has purged most of human playing on many instrumental tracks...might as well move the human singers out also. But, heck, we prolly have a few years left where we can at least continue to invent the stuff.

Bud aka cantankerous old phart

Or you can buy little alter boy for 29 bucks this month, connect it to a midi track and/or soft synth and use the plug-in to change the notes of your own voice to make some really wicked cool backing tracks.

https://www.soundtoys.com/product/little-alterboy/