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. frown 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.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?