おかゆのおんど。/ Sprinkler Cat's UTAUs, An Investigation
Sometimes I look through the voicebanks I downloaded and ask myself, "Wait, what?"
I have no memory of ever listening to these banks, but they're in my downloads folder anyway. There are twenty banks in total. I guess that's good for me, as I have no preconceived notions of what these banks will be like!
I credited this collective as Sprinkler Cat's UTAUs because Sprinkler Cat is the Twitter handle of the person running the site. As I said before, I am going in blind. I'm not sure if Sprinkler Cat is the voice provider of all the banks, but I'll poke around in the ReadMe for each bank. (Also, this isn't exactly a collective if this is all Sprinkler Cat's personal work. Let's ignore that!) Let's get started!
Who is 岡音ユガ / Okane Yuga?
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| Official Art Packaged with Voicebank |
Yuga has five banks. The creation date on his latest bank, Hatred, is a little iffy. The OTO was last modified in 2016, but some of the audio files were created in 2013. The Hatred bank has no FRQ files, image files, or text files to tell you what's going on. However, there is an OTO file. (Yay for not having to whip out MoreSampler!)
Yuga has three CV banks and two VCV banks. For some reason, I couldn't get the power CV to work. The reason was that due to wonkiness surrounding Bowlroll, the ZIP was named "岡音ユガ%E3%80%80power". I extracted each ZIP to its own folder based on the name of the ZIP, and those percent signs made UTAU not find the samples.
I was a bit lazy and didn't do my whole combining CV banks things. These banks sound awesome and would be fun to use as a multi-expression bank.
Yuga's two VCV banks are just named "Act 1" and "Hatred". "Act 1" is a really cute bank that sounds very similar to the CV banks. "Act 1" is only one pitch, whereas "Hatred" has two pitches. However, "Hatred" requires setting up a prefix map to use. All samples in Hatred either have "C4" or "↓" as a suffix in the aliases, so it won't work at all unless you add the suffixes to the prefix map. Hatred doesn't sound much like the other Yuga banks, but still sounds pretty good.
Who is 福音℃ / Fukuin Doshi?
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| Official Art Packaged with Bank |
So, I was super confused by how to pronounce this name. It didn't help that the password for the banks was "Celsius". (I usually don't share passwords, but this was relevant.) I couldn't figure it out, even when I knew it was "Doshi" thanks to the Visual Archive. Then it hit me - the word "degree" in Japanese is pronounced as "do". "C" is pronounced as "shi". Putting it together, this UTAU's name is Gospel degrees Celsius. Or something, I'm not really sure.
Just like Yuga, Doshi is a 2010 UTAU and has five banks. There are three CV banks: act 1, act 2, and Power. All CV banks are one pitch. The differences between the CV banks are almost identical to the differences between Yuga's CV banks.
Doshi's two VCV are called "VCV" (ok, it's renzokuon, but VCV is close enough) and "Repent". Just like Yuga, Doshi's first VCV bank matches the tone of the original CV extremely well. Unlike Yuga, both the VCV and Repent bank are one pitch.
As a random note, Doshi comes with an Open Office spreadsheet file. I'm not sure what it's for, as this is what I saw when I opened it:
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| The title is vcv2cvvc |
Who is 餅搗Canon / Mochidzuki Canon?
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| Official art from UTAU Visual Archive |
Wait a second - this UTAU's name has the kanji for mochi! You know mochi, right? It's that really yummy and squishy rice cake. You can make it with powder, but I much prefer handmade mochi that was prepared with a mallet. The second kanji means "pound". So this UTAU is "Mochi pounding Canon". I can't believe how much I connect with these UTAUs on a deep level.
Technically, Canon is two separate characters. There is the human and then there is the bunny named も。/ Mo.
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| Official Art Packaged with Bank |
Canon has six archives to download, but the structure of the banks seems a little weird. For example, Mo has two banks, but one is packaged with a Canon bank as opposed to being their own bank. The Mo bank packaged with a Canon bank has no suffixes or prefixes, so you're not meant to use them together. It's a mess! Let's start by getting Mo's banks out of the way.
Mo. (whisper) is a two pitch CV bank. Mo. Act 2 is just a one pitch CV bank. Though the first bank mentioned has two pitches, I prefer the Act 2 bank a bit.
With the exception of Sasayaku, all of Canon's banks are VCV. I was planning on lumping all of the banks together, but then I heard the CV Sasayaku bank and I want to hug it.
Canon has four VCV banks: VCV + CV, Strong VCV, Naughty (V-Kei style), and Gloomy. Gloomy seems to not be finished according to the distribution page. Each bank has a slightly different design, which I will ignore for now.
The VCV + CV bank is one pitch and sounds quite nice. The strong VCV is two pitches with a screaming CV bank. I slipped in two of the screaming samples for the giggles. I generally don't like V-KEI styled banks, but the rolled "r"s made me love the one pitch "Naughty" bank instantly. The "Gloomy" bank has a lot of noise, but still has a cute tone.
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Who is デッキブラシ音源 / 出来公 / Izuki Isao?
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| Official Art Packaged with Bank |
My understanding is that Isao is a janitor that hates pink.
It's a Donka Fjord type bank, but it only has the vowels covered. That's basically it.
Who are 夢音森トルト／カクレ／カシュ / Yumenomori Toruto, Kakure, and Kashu?
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| Official Art from UTAU Visual Archive |
Whoo, that subheading was long! Basically, the Yumenomori family is a family of people dressed as reptiles. I think Kakure and Kashu are twins, and Toruto is their father.
Toruto (because turtle!) is a one pitch rentan bank. (That's a fancy way of doing CV.) Toruto sounds more like a mama than a papa, but that's beside the point. Kakure seems to be based off of chameleons. He has a one pitch CV bank. He sounds adorable. The final Yumenomori kid is Kashu. My understanding is that he is based off of a skink. He is surprisingly a two pitch VCV bank. He is also super adorable!!
Who is ヘルメル / Hermel?
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| Official Art from Voicebank |
I'll be frank - all of these UTAUs have feminine voices, but their gender is set as male. When I saw Hermel's design, I thought finally! A girl! Nope. Hermel is a drag queen who loves getting decked out in Lolita fashion.
I'm pretty sure Hermel is supposed to be a two pitch VCV bank, as there are samples with ↑ in the name. However, there are no aliases with ↑ in them. Instead of spending way too much time adding in aliases with the up arrow, I'll just treat it like a one pitch bank. My understanding of the character is that Hermel's voice is supposed to be broken and fried from a sake and tobacco addiction, but the voice doesn't sound too broken.
How can I download these UTAUs?
All of these UTAU's distribution pages are linked to here. Click on the name of the UTAU you want to download and you'll be taken to a page with their bios and links to their voicebanks.
I went into this not sure what was going on, but I came out pleasantly surprised by the quality of these banks. If you're interested in how these banks sound or how the designs sound, make sure to try them out 😄
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