deadbyte

deadbyte.carrd.codeadbyte's carrddeadbyte's carrd

10 Feb 2025

Hey y'all - so, recently I've had some major circumstances in my life change. It's nothing super troubling, I'm not going to be living on the streets or anything - but I could do with an extra buck or two. So - I'm (finally) re-opening oto.ini commissions. deadbyte.carrd.co

Hey, so, trying to get back into the swing of things. Still not really feeling great. It was just... awful. It was so much worse that I could have possibly imagined. And not just because euthanasia is already very difficult, but the way it was handled by the vets was absolutely horrific.

deadbyte@deadbyte.bsky.social

We have to put my boy down tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t think it’s really even hit me yet. I don’t feel anything. Needless to say, I might go dark again for a little while.

It's left me questioning if it was even the right thing to do, and it's been eating at me every conscious second since. So... I haven't been doing well. Still not. But I need to go back to living at some point... I guess.

We have to put my boy down tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t think it’s really even hit me yet. I don’t feel anything. Needless to say, I might go dark again for a little while.

I also wanna talk about Adachi Rei... why is she that price? Maybe it's just because I built the expectation up that she'd be cheaper in my head, but... $90 dollars per voicebank seems utterly egregious imo. Like, okay, we've had UTAUs upgrade to commercial product before, sure, but normally-

-the commercial voicebank made is a very distinct product from the UTAU variant. Whereas Rei appears to use exactly the same samples as her UTAU voicebank. On top of that, with the previous point aside I could kind of understand how you could get away with charging that for an AI voice-

In the meantime - we've had some crazy-ass announcements the past few days. Not the least of which being VOCALOID7. Which... I think actually sounds good? I'll reserve judgment until we hear more vocals, but between Gumi and Tobari, they actually don't sound bad?

There's still some overt engine noise, but I feel like it's not nearly as totally dominating as it used to be. They sound much closer to V4-V5 voicebanks than V6 ever did, and honestly, I don't hate it. I feel like the personality of Gumi's vocal modes in particular are actually audible now.

If it can maintain its concatenative-esque charm with the bells and whistles of AI... we could really have something special on our hands. I've been initially impressed and then been let down by Yamaha before though, so I'm just gonna wait and see. I like what I hear so far though.

Hey y'all. I've been mostly inactive for like the past almost couple of weeks, had a lot of irl stuff happening, some of which I've talked about already, and time has just completely passed me by. Some of which is still ongoing. I'm not dead or anything though

In other news, Bennett's recent demo is invading my brain. Curse you producers being so talented. It makes me want to spend money

I find myself missing commercial concatenative synths. Lately, AI synths haven't been as interesting to me. Partially because of all the problems in the last post I made, ( and that I find DiffSinger unpleasant to tune in ). But also because I feel there's kind of a push for realistic voices

-aggressively Americanized by the synth he's in ( a la Sweet Ann or Ninezero ), and whose marketing seems to be centered around that quality as being one of his most notable traits. But a lot of modern commercial vsynths are just... not interesting to me, and I kind of wish we could go back to-

-commercial vsynths that butchered their VP's recordings in unique and interesting ways to the point that it'll stand on its own merits even from the vp, instead of seeking to be an exact clone like nowadays.

-uninteresting when it's not done with enough deliberation or compelling vocal direction. A cutesy moe voice can work, but just doing a cutesy voice on its own isn't usually enough to make a product that stands on its own with the utter oversaturation of that kind of voice present in the space.

Granted, that may be starting to shift somewhat. In particular, I think voices like VoiSona Hitsuji Mio and Bennett are refreshing breaths of fresh air. Mio's vocals are delightfully androgynous and full of personality, and Bennett is a bit of a unique case as an Australian vocal that isn't-

-concept with a lot of potential. But in practice I find that the only VTubers currently making their own vsynths all mostly fall into the same cutesy moeblob archetype where they're at times impossible to tell apart. And, I may be assuming in bad faith, but it feels less like they participate out-

-of interest in vsynths, or in the interest of making a good singing product, but more to promote their own brand, or "be like Miku". Which, again, I don't want to shame, but there's a LOT of that when it comes to commercial character voices right now, and I personally find that it to be-

Which, realistic voices are cool, but there are so many that it feels like character voices are getting drowned out. And when it IS character voices, half the time it's VTubers with very similar voice types. Which, not to be disparaging to them, I've always thought VTubers making vsynths was a-

Lately I've been imagining being a commercial VSynth company trying to decide on a platform, and... VOCALOID6: Sounds horrible, and heavily suppresses notable vocal qualities SV2: Can't turn the horrible pitch models off CeVIO AI/VoiSona: Decent, but missing various QOL features ACE Studio: Jfc

VOX Factory: On thin ice with AI bro nonsense To me, it seems like VoiSona would be the best to develop for currently, but it's still feels really rough to use. I feel like there are no great options right now.

I recently was invited to a D&D server. I played one session, and it was fun, but I peeked in the chat every so often, and there were a couple of people who were just… really mean to everyone else for no reason at all. And they just kind of got away with it bc they’re apparently the “best players”??

They sent bots to the server. They created an alt to get back on the server. They posted a nude photo ON said alt account’s pfp. And THEN, still on the same day, the admin is like “Hey, he promises to be good, let’s let him back in”???? FUCK no

Never mind that I later learned that user spouted manosphere bullshit, and publicly joked about sexually assaulting other player characters and like??? The should be an insta-ban for life on its own??? I left, obviously, because that degree of spinelessness and complicity is incredible. Holy shit.

Whatever that even means. I eventually told the admin that I wasn’t really comfortable staying in the group with people like that, and they actually removed them from the group. Which was good! Then one of the guys that got banned started doing all sorts of crap.

Just bought AiKO too. IDK what Animen's status is, but at least as of today, they're still selling their products via email.

I've seen two email addresses they allegedly respond to, and the one they actually responded with was different from both of them. I ended up sending to both of the addresses I knew about. This is them if anyone needs them. <eshop@animen.com.tw> <volor@animen.com.tw>

The email they responded with was <aries@14star.com>, which I think might be linked to a completely different business, so I wouldn't send to that one initially unless you really need to. It's legit though, I got my installer and serial code working on SV1 and 2 with no issues.

Mark my words, there's going to be a 3D Animated movie within the next decade, probably made by Dreamworks lbh, specifically about the cat distribution system, but it's like a secret industry, a la Boss Baby or Storks And I kinda want it tbh

Genuinely can’t believe there’s a gay romance subplot in the actual main story of a Fire Emblem game I always said Nintendo was too cowardly to attempt this. Well played.

Granted, there’s the Tellius games, but that case was very much written with the “and they were best friends forever” historian style of writing, and the gayness was very much subtext. This is just plain explicitly gay, I’m so glad I played this route first

Y’know, I was thinking it was kind of strange that AHS just… isn’t going to be selling GENBU anymore. Like, if Animen transferred the rights of Eleanor to AHS, why not GENBU too? They already have distribution rights. Then it hit me though… I wonder if GENBU’s rights got transferred to Virvox

As I understand it, technically Virvox didn’t own Genbu, they simply got permission to feature him as part of their group. It’s why his Virvox-managed voicebanks, namely his VoiceVox and TALQu voicebanks, don’t actually call him GENBU, but Kurono Takehiro.

So I’m wondering if, since he’s already prominently featured as part of Virvox’s lineup anyways, they simply transferred GENBU’s rights to them. This is all pure speculation, tbc.

So, it occurs to me that everybody might not know the full context of this skeet. GENBU is being discontinued by AHS on the 30th, basically meaning the only way you MIGHT be able to purchase him is through Animen’s email thing they’ve been doing since their closure, if they’re still even doing that

deadbyte@deadbyte.bsky.social

Just bought GENBU. Played with it a little bit in SV2. GENBU is... weirdly operatic in English XLS. I like it