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SONiKA VOCALOID2 | Songs Albums Notable Originals


This article is about the VOCALOID2 software known as a voicebank. If you are looking for the VOCALOID character then click here.

History[]

Zero-G felt that a young, carefree singer would make for an overall interesting VOCALOID, providing the fresh and innocent voice that professional singers do not provide. She had several demo songs released.

Global Export[]

Sonika has had a Chinese version produced, distributed by E-Capsule Co. Ltd in Taiwan. The Chinese edition came with new boxart. Users can choose to use the original English or Traditional Chinese interface.[1] Because of this, it has an instructional DVD and a comparative table of English and Chinese phonemes in an explanatory leaflet. The leaflet shows her accessibility to about 90% of the Chinese pronunciations. The leaflets were produced by E-Capsule for users in Taiwan to make it easier for buyers to produce natural Chinese from her voice. This version when displayed at its announced convention on 24 and 25 July 2010 came with limited stickers and posters.[2] On August 1, 2010, Sonika was released in Taiwan and became the first VOCALOID to be released in Greater China.[3]

She had several demo songs: "Little Forest", "夢想天堂", "Press that accelerator" and "Scenery".

Final Retirement[]

At the end of 2015, it was announced that from March 31, 2016, VOCALOID2 was being retired and no new serial codes were be issued by Yamaha. Zero-G announced that they would continue to issue import codes to legitimate owners of Prima, SONiKA and Tonio.[4]

Product Information[]

Demonstrations[]

Demonstrations

Cool Attraction NicoNico YouTube Zero-G
Ring My Bell NicoNico YouTube Zero-G
Sonika Says NicoNico YouTube Zero-G
The Lion Sleeps Tonight NicoNico YouTube
Sora (Sky) NicoNico YouTube
Susanita Rock ft. Kaito NicoNico
Dinky Dink No Time To Think NicoNico YouTube
99 Red Balloons NicoNico YouTube

E-Capsule Demonstrations[]

Demonstrations

Little Forest YouTube
夢想天堂 YouTube
Press That Accelerator YouTube
Scenery YouTube

System Requirements[]

  • Windows XP/Vista 32bit
    • (Windows 7 is not officially supported; 64bit is NOT SUPPORTED),
  • Pentium 4 2 GHz/ Athlon XP 2000, 512 MB RAM
    • (1GB of RAM recommended)
    • (2 GB or more recommended when using VSTi realtime)·
  • Approx 4 GB Free Hard Disk Space / DVD Drive.

Voicebanks[]

SONiKA was the second English capable voicebank by Zero-G released for VOCALOID2.


Product Information
Optimum
  Genre: Pop, House-dance, Electronica  Optimum Range: G3 ~ D5  Optimum Tempo: 75 ~ 160 BPM
  Total Tempo (min-max): 85 BPM  No. of Keys: W ~ 12, B ~ 8, Total ~ 20
Versions
  Trial/Demo Vers?: No
Package details as noted:

SONiKA is a VOCALOID designed for Pop Music. She has a strong British accent and is better suited for late 20th century pop. She sings with a soft and innocent sounding voice. She is a Mezzo-soprano singer. Unlike past Zero-G VOCALOIDs, SONiKA was not intended to be based on a professional singer and does not produce professional singer quality results in the same way Prima did.

She is the only Zero-G vocaloid known to have been created by processing her vocals and this was done as a experiment. This also makes her among the least realistic sounding of the English Vocaloid2 vocals for that era, compared to her predecessor Prima who was much more realistic sounding. As a result, she more closely mimicked the style of Japanese Vocaloids mostly being released at the time from the Character Vocal Series and was the closet English only Vocaloid to do so in that engine version.

Her software comes with the VSQ file for her song "SONiKA says".

Buying the Taiwan version gives a Chinese interface for Vocaloid2 and a guide on how to match her sounds to sing in Chinese (90% accuracy possible if guide is followed closely). This is the only way to obtain the Chinese version of the VOCALOID2 interface.

Vocal traits as noted:
  • She was more flexible than most other English VOCALOIDs for VOCALOID2, not having a voice so specific to a genre.
  • Sound on sound writer John Walden says her higher vocals were better than lower and labelled "C4" as the best octave. He also stated that in his opinion her vocals seem best for "bubblegum pop", [5]
  • At a optimum known vocal range of #D5, both Megurine Luka and SONiKA joint hold the title of second highest VOCALOID 2 vocal
  • Sonika's voice is considered generally appealing and she gained a number of fans for her vocal. She is one of the most appealing vocals for VOCALOID2 because of her youthful sounds vocals, able to easily sound cute and energetic.
  • Se does better in a duet then as a soloist due to the amount of quality related issues in her vocal. In a duet she can "lean" on the other VOCALOID.
    • For example, an old trick within the Western VOCALOID fandom is to have Luka's VOCALOID2 English voicebank and SONiKA sing together. If correctly done both voices will blend together. The advantage of this is that both VOCALOIDs effectively hide each others' flaws since both VOCALOIDs have similar vocal ranges. In this case, Sonika helps Luka form her words and hides her lack of smoothness of sounds.
    • Later VOCALOID3 vocals AVANNA and OLIVER can also compliment SONiKA's vocal.
  • She generally works well with electronic undertones and vocal effects, though she can easily loose more clarity with certain ones like echoing.
Phonetic notes as noted:
  • She has a number of pronunciation issues linked to a number of weak consonant related sounds, which are made harder to use because of the softness of her vocals.
  • According to Zero-G, SONiKA has every vowel sound combination possible needed for English.
  • Despite numerous fan and producer claims, Sonika's level of English is among the better of VOCALOID2 and she is capable of words no other can form, even when singing words not in the dictionary.
Software issues as noted:
  • She is unstable when she reaches her optimum range and SONiKA will suddenly change from being soft and muffled to loud and clear (one range reported where she is clear is #B2 to #G3).[6]
  • Something often picked up upon is SONiKA overall vocal commonly suffers from noise issues that, while possible to remove, affects her raw vocals.
  • The overall quality of her vocal is arguable. SONiKA was ranked 4 out of 5 stars in her review by Sound on sound and was recommended as a quality product.
    • However, users and VOCALOID fans often recommend other English VOCALOIDs over SONiKA. This was more true with VOCALOID3 release as both OLIVER and AVANNA are considerable for the similar roles, in addition if a user has both there is little reason to buy SONiKA.
    • Overall, she competes with Megurine Luka English on who is the overall worst English voicebank. While Luka's is due to missing sounds and other issues related to the vocals English language capabilities, Sonika's is about its overall quality of sound sample and its lack of overall clarity in the majority of the voicebanks results. She is considered among one of the worst VOCALOID2 voicebanks overall.
  • When imported into VOCALOID3, SONiKA develops a Aspirated Plosive glitch. She also suffers from a "h" phoneme related glitch.
  • Every English VOCALOID ever produced can drown out SONiKA's vocal, making mixing her vocal with other VOCALOIDs problematic. Though the amount varies per example, some like Big Al do this with little effort. This can be undermining for her as she generally lacks the strength as a soloist and does better singing with others.
  • The process of improving her clarity often results in the previously mentioned background noises also becoming clearer. This results in further editing to remove them. Certain vocal effects can add heavy amounts of metallic sounding results to her vocal and prove a negative point. Adding echoing effects for example is one such situation which can make them more apparent.
    • Her "clear" range may also need balancing with the rest of her vocal results. You cannot always treat this range as the same as the rest of the vocal range, as what works for this range doesn't for the rest and vice versa.
    • One way to work with her is simply to not try and enhance Sonika's clarity at all. While this leaves Sonika without clarity and thus mumbling, it can often just not be worth fixing the clarity at all. While this means it can be difficult to find a way to use her as a result, it can be better to work with her vocal then against it.
Voicebank sample



References[]

  1. [1] PC home store - 【New product】VOCALOID2 SONIKA Virtual Female Singer
  2. [2] E-Capsule Official Site - SONIKA
  3. [3] PC home store - VOCALOID2 SONIKA 正式開賣!
  4. link
  5. link SONiKA VOCALOID 2
  6. [4] VOCALOIDOtaku - Tips for Engloids

External links[]

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