Wednesday, 22 May 2013

UTAUloid

UTAU is a proprietary vocal synthesizer program unlike VOCALOID and VOCALOID2, which are commercially-sold programs with an accompanying voice bank. Distribution of UTAU began in March of 2008.
UTAU, meaning "to sing" in Japanese, has its origin in "Jinriki Vocaloid" (人力ボーカロイド, translated as "Manual Vocaloid"). It was created by re-editing an existing singing voice, extracting tones as WAV files and, reassembling them. For this purpose, a support program was created. In March 2008, Ameya/Ayame (飴屋/菖蒲) released a free, advanced support tool as UTAU. Now UTAU is a shareware, yet the developer distributes it free in effect and accepts donations.
The program has at least 50 different usable audio files, composed of Japanese syllables. It comes with the company's "AquesTalk" pre-loaded, which allows any user to load their own voice data to be programmed for usage within UTAU. However, without the explicit permission of the voice donor, it is a violation of copyright laws. Those laws protect the rights of any vocalist who may not wish for their voices to be used within the program, such as celebrities. Any music made through this program can be used in the commercial sector. The program can be downloaded here. However, it will not run properly on computers which do not support Japanese text or AppLocale.
Some UTAU are commonly put out as "real" vocaloids such as is the April Fool's joke origins of Teto Kasane. Songs using both UTAU and Vocaloid are also not unheard of. Some users have also began to enforce their copyright ruling over their voicebanks; UTAU or fanmade vocaloids who are guilty of plagiarizing an UTAU's name or using a voicebank without permission risk violating UTAU software agreements and voicebank copyright ownerships.

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