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Our Products >
Zero-G Vocaloid - MIRIAM
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Zero-G Vocaloid - MIRIAM - Press Reviews |
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| Reviewed by: Future Music
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| December 2004 |
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Leon and Lola have been Zero-G’s previous forays into the realms of vocal synthesis. When we took a look at Lola way back in FM147 we were certainly impressed with the innovation of the whole thing, but not too enamored with the results. So, the bigquestion is – can Miriam redress the balance? The instrument is based on the voice of Miriam Stockley, a renowned session singer who’s worked with plenty of major industry talent including Elton John and David Bowie, so she’s certainly got the credentials! Once loaded, you’re presented with an editor, which allows you to create the notes you want sung, to enter lyrics and to attempt to develop your own vocal lines.
The main problem with it all though is the fact that this process is extremely time-consuming and the results are often very unrealistic. The palette of vocal timbres on offer is quite varied and the interface has been well designed, but the end product is ultimately what counts and it’s really hard to see how useful the output of this package will be – unless you want to sound like a backing band that is. Wealso found it to be a bit of a processor hog with our test machine chugging for up to 30 seconds before playing a phrase.
The new 1.05 download tested during this review speeds things up a great deal (up to three times) but ultimately it’s hard to recommend Miriam as a suitable replacement for the human voice.
It’s better than the previous versions of Vocaloid but singers across the land can breathe a sigh of relief – at least for now. However, we certainly look forward to future iterations with great anticipation and a round of applause must go to Zero-G for their forward thinking. This is definitely one to keep an eye on…
5/10 |
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| Reviewed by: Computer Music
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| April 2004 |
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Early in 2003, Yamaha announced that they were developing a new technology, Vocaloid, that would enable us to recreate a human voice by using a collection of samples combined with their unique vocal editing and composition software. A year later and Zero-G have realised Yamaha’s initial dream with the release of two Vocaloid packages and a third to follow soon. The male version is called Leon, the female version is called Lola and the forthcoming Miriam Stockley library is called, simply, Miriam.
Anyone who’s read any of the industry press or websites over the last few months can’t have failed to notice the hype that has been surrounding the release of Vocaloid. The adverts and demos would have you believe that you’ll be able to completely replace the need for a singer in all but the most demanding of situations. Obviously, thousands of bedroom programmers and project studio writers who would love a quality vocalist on tap 24/7 are hoping that this will represent an opportunity that’s too good to miss.
So, after much anticipation, Vocaloid is finally here. Leon landed on the CM desk some weeks ago and we’ve been noodling with it ever since.
Setting up
Zero-G have obviously reckoned that Vocaloid might be a software pirate’s number one target this spring, so they’ve really gone to town on the copy protection. For starters, you need a LAN card installed in your machine for Vocaloid to install and run. You also need to be able to get online to authorise your copy, but this doesn’t mean that your audio machine needs to be connected to the internet – you can use another PC to do this. Once the software has been authorised, you can use it freely until such time as you change your LAN card or want to use it on a another PC, in which case you’ll have to go through the authorisation routine again. It uses the LAN card’s MAC ID to generate the unique code for your PC, which as any half decent PC boffin will tell you, is not too tricky to get around. But still, they tried.
Once booted up, you will see the Vocaloid Edit window. This is where you draw the notes and add the lyrics for your required vocal lines. There’s also a floating Icon Palette which has icons for vibrato, crescendos, attack and dynamics. It all looks much like the key edit page of any sequencer – the notes are represented by a keyboard down the left-hand side and there’s a timeline across the top.
Making vocal files requires you to draw in the notes and then add the lyrics and expression, all in step time. First you pick your note length and drop it onto the required note, then you type in the lyrics you want it to ‘sing’ on the text bar above the note. You repeat these steps for each new note. Using the Icon Palette to add expression and change the feel helps to achieve more realistic results.
Taking control
At the bottom of the Edit window is a control section where you can freely draw on control automation. The available parameters you can adjust include resonance, harmonics, noise, brightness, clearness, gender factor and pitchbend. By using a pencil tool you can add and vary the amounts of these control elements as the vocal file is playing. These control elements can make the vocal start to sound a bit more like a real singer, and a bit less like Metal Mickey.
The control automation works much like track-based automation on any DAW package in that it uses nodes, or points, as Zero-G call them. You can edit the automation by clicking and dragging these points to new positions. As you’d expect, the Vocaloid mixer allows you to mix the relative levels of each of the Vocaloid parts – you can have up to 16 parts ‘singing’ simultaneously. There’s a fader and pan control for each channel and these can be clicked and dragged or adjusted numerically.
The Singer Editor is where you choose which ‘voice’ or singer you wish to use for each part. If you’ve just purchased one singer, Leon for example, then only Leon will show up in the selection window. If you have more than one, however, this is where you choose which one to use. Another feature of the Singer Editor is that you can use it to customise the characteristics of the voice to suit your track. The settings that it comes with are the ones that most faithfully represent the voice of the sampled vocalist, but you can create new versions and save them alongside the original. Let’s say you want a more feminine version of Leon that has more harmonics to the voice; all you need to do is adjust these settings in the Singer Editor and then save the results under a
new Singer name.
Plug-in support comes in the form of a VST instrument that acts as a player for the Vocaloid MIDI files. You get the same controls on the VSTi GUI as you do on the Singer Editor window. Unfortunately, we couldn’t try the VST instrument part out as it didn’t function at all in any host we tried. We are assured that Yamaha are aware of this and are working on an update that will fix it. ReWire support, however, did work within Sonar 3 and Logic 5.5 on the PC.
Dream machine?
After excitedly unwrapping and installing Vocaloid Leon, we gradually began to realise that this was not the product we’d hoped it would be. By following the manual and inputting the notes, adding the lyrics and then using the expression controls, we slowly constructed a few vocal phrases. Once we’d waited for the software to render after each change, we eventually sat back to listen to our efforts, only to hear something that sounded a bit like a drunk bloke with a speech impediment. 24 hours later we had improved our technique, but the results were still nothing ike what we were expecting after reading the blurb on the packaging.
Used in the context of a mix, we could just about create something that might be OK for some distant backing vocals, but getting the lyrics to sound natural was a real effort. If you were hoping you’d be able to use Vocaloid to add vocals to demos, so saving yourself having to use a session singer or sing yourself, you’d be disappointed. We can’t see this working unless it’s a Daft Punk, Auto-Tune style vocal that you’re after, in which case this would be fine.
After the hype and early demos, we all thought Vocaloid was going to rock the music production world and send a few studio backing singers out looking for work. But all those singers must be killing themselves laughing now. To release a product that has rather important sections like the VSTi not working at all is just bizarre. The alarm bells should have started ringing when a demo was posted on the Vocaloid site with a live singer performing the lead and Vocaloid doing the backing vocals. If it’s so good, why not use it for the lead, too?
Practise makes perfect
We’re not saying that Vocaloid doesn’t work. If you have the time and patience to spend a good few solid months really getting to grips with it, we’re sure you’ll be able to coax some usable backing vocal parts from it. But for us, the tone of the vocal is just so lifeless and thin that we’d rather not bother. We’re sure that the real ‘Leon’ has a great voice, but one part of the process or another has robbed him of any of the richness or depth that you would want in a quality lead vocal.
Yamaha have suggested that we should think of Vocaloid as an instrument, in that it will take months to master. Which is fair enough, but there’s no mention of that in the advertising. When we spend just under £200 on a piece of software, we expect it to work. We don’t expect to be unwittingly used as software development guinea pigs. Vocaloid is a truly clever idea, and we’re sure that in time it will mature to a point where it will be more user friendly and useful to the average producer. But right now the concept itself seems to be too far ahead of the technology. With a lot of refinement, it might come somewhere close to the groundbreaking product we were promised.
5/10 |
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| Reviewed by: Sound on Sound
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| December 2004 |
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Miriam Stockley is the first well-known singer to undergo the Vocaloid sampling technique, allowing anyone with a PC to install her as a virtual instrument. At least, that's the theory...
Yamaha made quite an impact when they announced Vocaloid towards the end of last year. Zero-G were the first company to enter a licensing agreement to use Yamaha's singing synthesis engine, and they released the female Lola and male Leon in time for the January 2004 NAMM show. I was lucky enough to review both Vocaloid and the Lola /Leon combination in the March 2004 issue of SOS (read the review on-line at www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar04/articles/vocaloidlandl.htm ). My feelings were a little mixed — Vocaloid is undoubtedly a remarkable technology and, at its best, capable of equally remarkable results. However, the down side is the amount of detailed editing of the various expression controls needed to craft a natural-sounding vocal line. While this is not too daunting a prospect for short vocal phrases or harmony backing vocals, trying to create a lead vocal for a full-length track would be a pretty major undertaking.
At the time of the release of Lola and Leon , Zero-G also announced that a third vocalist, Miriam , was in development. Based on the very considerable vocal talents of Miriam Stockley (see the 'Taking Stock' box for some of Miriam's credits), 'virtual' Miriam is now available. The release also brings some significant price cuts — Lola and Leon now retail at £129.95 rather than £199.95 — and an update to the synthesis engine. As I am unlikely to be in the privileged position of inviting the real Miriam Stockley into my studio, I was keen to see how her virtual counterpart might sound.
What's New?
Miriam is supplied with the latest version of the Vocaloid engine. As suggested by the version number (1.0.5.12), this is not a major upgrade but it does include some minor tweaks and fixes. However, the release notes suggest the upgrade does tackle three niggles I'd raised in the earlier review: VST Instrument functionality, the response of the synthesis engine and the Play With Synthesis option have all been improved.
Miriam has the same copy-protection system as its predecessors, which ties it to the particular Ethernet LAN card installed in your system — if you don't have one, you'll need to spend an extra £20 or so to get one. While the earlier two releases each required around 600MB of hard disk space to store their sample database, once expanded from the installation CD, Miriam requires close on 2.5GB. This difference is not explained in the documentation but is probably due to significantly more detailed sampling of each of the phonemes used as the building blocks for pronunciation of lyrics. In theory, this ought to result in an improvement in the intelligibility of the singing produced by the synthesis engine.
Repeat Performance
On the surface, nothing obvious has changed in the Vocaloid interface. This was discussed in detail in the earlier review, so I'll avoid too much of a recap here. In essence, notes to form a melody line are entered into a fairly standard piano-roll editor and, above each note, lyrics can be typed in. Each syllable of a word needs to be given a separate note, with syllables being connected via a minus sign (-).
Miriam adds some further options to the Icon Palette.
Once the lyrics are entered, they are automatically transformed into phonetic sounds, which can be displayed below each note and edited manually if required. The synthesis engine then extracts the required phonemes from the sample database of the selected virtual vocalist and pitch-shifts the fundamental and overtone elements of the sounds to the required note, leaving the formants intact. It is at this stage that the additional samples within the Miriam database ought to be an advantage, as less pitch-shifting is likely to be required.
The final, and generally the most time-consuming task, is to add all the necessary expression to the vocal to make it sound as natural as possible. The Icon Palette helps here and includes attack, vibrato and dynamics presets that can be dragged onto each note. These can then be edited manually and further expression can be added via the Control Track (at the bottom of the editor) through settings such as pitch-bend, velocity, harmonics, brightness and gender factor. All of these can add character to the vocal, making it more lifelike, but this stage certainly does take some experience and experimentation to get to grips with. As before, multiple Vocaloid tracks are available so harmony vocal parts can easily be constructed once a main line has been created.
As noted earlier, the major drawback of Vocaloid is the lengthy nature of this expression-editing process, but the changes to the synthesis engine in this version do provide some help here, as less time is spent waiting for the vocal to be re-synthesized after each minor edit. In addition, the Play With Synthesis option, which allows playback to begin while synthesis is going on in the background, now appears to work smoothly.
When I reviewed Lola and Leon , using the Vocaloid Editor application as a Rewire client to a Cubase SX host had worked fine, but I'd had no luck with using it as a VST Instrument. Things have certainly improved in that regard. As before, vocal lines have to be created within the stand-alone editor. MIDI files are then saved and imported into a VST host to be played back via the Vocaloid VSTi. The Vocaloid MIDI files do not contain Note On or Off events, and the data in the MIDI file is actually sent to the VSTi a little prior to playback of the vocal (to allow for processing). Aside from requiring a little trial and error in the initial line-up of the Vocaloid part within SX , this created no problems. A further plus with the VSTi is that it allows real-time control of many of Vocaloid's expression parameters and, unlike the control track in the stand-alone editor, all of these are displayed at the same time.
Taking Stock
Miriam Stockley's CV is impressive. As well as solo albums (most recently Second Nature , released in 2002), she has an extensive list of credits as a collaborator and session singer. These include work with Tina Turner, Elton John, George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Chaka Khan, David Bowie, Seal, Mike Oldfield and Adiemus. She has also contributed vocals to material within a number of major film soundtracks, including Rob Roy ,One Night Stand and Lord Of The Rings . Miriam was the subject of an SOS interview in the May 1999 issue ( www.soundonsound.com/sos/may99/articles/miriam.htm ) at the time of the release of her first solo album, simply titled Miriam . If you want to find out more, then Miriam's web site www.miriamstockley.com has all the latest news on her activities — and if you want a real vocal treat, listen to some of the music clips.
Cue Miriam
These useful improvements to the synthesis engine aside, how does Miriam actually sound? I tested by creating some new vocal phrases and comparing the performance of Lola with Miriam when singing the same lines. My impression is that Miriam 's pronunciation is perhaps just a little better at times, although with simple phrases or vocal ad libs, these differences are less noticeable. In comparison to Lola (or Leon for that matter), results with Miriam sound a little smoother, and this seems most noticeable in the transitions between pitches in multi-syllable words. My guess would be that both of these improvements are down to the larger phoneme sample base supplied with Miriam .
The Vocaloid VSTi now performs much better within Cubase SX .
Zero-G supply a somewhat larger collection of example pieces created with Miriam than was the case with Lola or Leon . These included some WAV demos of the virtual Miriam with a full musical backing, 'performing' both solo lead and harmony vocals. Given that this is still very early days for the Vocaloid technology, some of these are frighteningly good (check out the 'Never Give Up' audio demo via the Zero-G web site for an example) and they clearly demonstrate the potential of the synthesis engine. While the lead vocals are not, perhaps, 100 percent convincing as yet, some of the backing/harmony vocal parts that can be created are clearly very usable in the right musical context.
That said, the main frustration is still the extensive expression editing (and occasional manual phoneme editing) required to create phrases that do not sound obviously synthesized — and while Miriam does seem to produce better results than the original Lola and Leon , crafting a convincing lead vocal line is still a very lengthy process. A more minor complaint is that the selection of Vocaloid MIDI files supplied with Miriam does not include the very best of the audio demos. This is a great shame as loading these into the editor would allow new users to see exactly the sorts of detailed editing work required to create a more natural finished vocal. Perhaps these will be added to the Zero-G web site at some stage?
Finally, in reviewing Miriam , it is difficult not to make some comparison between Vocaloid and Virsyn's Cantor (reviewed in the October 2004 issue of SOS ), despite the fact that Virsyn themselves are keen to play down any such comparison! As explained by Sam Inglis in that review, Cantor uses synthesis to create its phoneme sounds, rather than the sample-based approach adopted by Vocaloid. While the two applications share some obvious visual and operational similarities, Cantor is not intended to emulate a live singer. If you want special-effect-style vocals that are obviously synthesized, either application will deliver, although Cantor will probably do it quicker and with less CPU overhead. However, if you want vocals that might replace a live singer, then Vocaloid is the way to go — it might take a lot of work, but it can be done, particularly in the context of backing vocals.
Minimum Specifications
Pentium III 1GHz or faster, 512MB RAM, Windows 2000 or XP, Ethernet LAN card, 2.6GB hard disk space.
What Next?
One seemingly simple improvement Yamaha might consider is to provide MIDI input to Vocaloid Editor so that initial note entry could be done via a keyboard. I found it easier to create my melody lines in SX and then import the MIDI part into Vocaloid Editor to begin the vocal construction, but it would be nice to be able to avoid this step.
More significant (and obviously more complex!) would be some improvements in the expression editing process. As I commented in my original review of Lola and Leon , I wonder whether the vocalist models could include information on how the live singer performs transitions between pitches of different intervals and at different tempos, in such a way that Vocaloid could apply suitable expression parameters automatically. Additional Icon Palette tools for the ends of notes to match those available for note attacks might also be useful.
Conclusions
Miriam brings some improvements to the Vocaloid concept and, once again, demonstrates the considerable potential of Yamaha's synthesis engine, but a virtual vocalist is a much more ambitious undertaking than a virtual drummer or rhythm guitarist. While Vocaloid may still be a little way from the songwriter's Holy Grail of a 'singer in a box', the significant price drop may well encourage some users to take the plunge simply out of curiosity. Whatever your take on the desirability of replacing human singers with their virtual counterparts, it will be very interesting to see just how far Yamaha can take their technology.
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| Reviewed by: Music Tech Magazine
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| December 2004 |
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Originating in Japan, Yamaha’s concept for Vocaloid was in development for nearly eight years, with ongoing support from a team of scientists at the University Of Barcelona. Having developed the technology, Yamaha needed somebody to author the ‘vocal fonts’ – and this is where Zero-G came in. The company’s programmers (five in all) worked for an entire year on these fonts, and Miriam is the latest to be released. The main goal of the project has been to produce a virtual vocalist format that could provide a useable tool for songwriters or anybody requiring backing singers.
Vocaloid comes with a 102-page manual, which should be studied closely during installation. We say this because the onscreen installation pop-ups appeared to be badly translated into English – sometimes with entire sentences missing. That said, the manual steers you in the right direction, so before long you are ready to register the product. We opted for online registration, which was painless and quick, but even if you have to resort to snail mail you can still use Miriam unregistered for up to five days.
Vocaloid works by taking note information (pitch, duration, timing and so on) and lyrical data from the user, and combining this with a palette of expression tools and controllers, enabling you to modulate and shape the way that Miriam sings.
It’s all in the voice
Double-clicking the Vocaloid icon launches the main Edit screen, which closely resembles the familiar piano-roll interface found in most of today’s sequencers. There are two ways to get note information into Vocaloid: either draw the notes in with the Pen tool, or import pre-recorded MIDI files.
Vocaloid’s editor lacks the smooth finesse of veteran pedigree sequencers. It’s also frustrating that the virtual MIDI keyboard does not emit a tone when you click on it – this would really help in pitching your notes. Zero-G believes a future update will rectify this, but until then, the best solution is to import your own MIDI files. We tried this by playing a piano melody into Cubase and exporting it as a MIDI file. Vocaloid imported our MIDI file without a hitch and displayed our notes with their respective velocities, exactly as we had played them.
Next up are the lyrics. Raw notes are assigned a simple ‘oh’ or ‘a’ lyric by default, but double-clicking these enables you to edit whatever text is currently displayed. Fortunately, the [Tab] key toggles you through each note in succession. Vocaloid will then analyse your lyrics and relate them to its sound font of phonemes.
Playing your Vocaloid session at this point yields a result that sounds almost reasonable. We tried Miriam out on one of the our own compositions, and had the first verse up and running in Vocaloid within a few minutes.
Practice makes perfect
We found that to get really useable results we had to make extensive use of Vocaloid’s expression controllers, found in the Icon palette. Dragging one of the many and varied icons on top of a note influences the way Miriam sings.
When your vocal programming is completed, Vocaloid enables you to either render your work as a .WAV file or export it as a MIDI file, which, in tandem with the included Vocaloid VSTi plug-in, will run Miriam in sync with your favourite sequencer. There is also the option to sync Vocaloid via ReWire with any compatible sequencer.
There are many features of the program that we haven’t explored in this review simply because of a lack of space. For example, as well as the Icon palette there are a host of other controllers that influence resonance, harmonics, noise, clarity, brightness and even gender. Suffice it to say that, if you are prepared to put the hours in, Miriam can yield some good results.
One thing is clear, though: this product is just like an instrument, requiring time, patience and practice in order to get the best from it, so perhaps the biggest challenge facing Zero-G right now is in educating us, the users, towards better Vocaloid technique.
This virtual girl is certainly up to the job of backing singer, but we don’t feel at this stage that she’s ready for the lead spot.
7/10 |
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