Forgotten Friday #31 - Toyo Aya

Yeah, I realized I'll never get anywhere with SEO. So, I'll write fun things here. Nothing fun right now, though. Can't think of anything!

Forgotten Friday #31 - Toyo Aya

Give it up for 2011! This bank has samples dating from December of 2009 to August of 2011. This UTAU has three acts, but I only downloaded one bank. That bank was the combination VCV-CV bank. It's insane, though. The ZIP file is 160MB, but the Wikia warns that it is very large in size. 160MB! I remember back when that was giant for an UTAU. Part of me misses that time.

I have no memory of this UTAU. I feel like I should, but I don't.

Anyway, on to the article.

Who is Aya Toyo?

Thumbnail by QuietButHappy, Aya's voice provider

Aya is fifteen years old, according to the UTAU Wikia. She is an American who loves painting and looking out for others. The UTAU Wikia says that her voice provider, Nicole, had also recorded an UTAU named Luke Pembroke, but there is no hyperlink on his name. The homepage that Nicole had linked to is now frozen, so that's also a dead end. However, I won't get too hung up on the case of the missing UTAU this time. 

Let me take a moment to realize that Aya's 'canon' birth year is the same as mine, meaning that little Aya is no longer fifteen, as I am no longer fifteen. Darn. 

I searched through the bank, and there's no images or supplemental materials, so all I know is what the Wikia states. With that out of the way...

How is the bank?

>:T

The OTOs are wonk. It's not nearly as bad in the VCV as it is in the CV. The CV crashed Resampler multiple times. The difference in the tone between the VCV samples and the CV samples is negligible enough that I don't feel bad about just ignoring the CV samples. (Though I will admit, I prefer the CV by a hair.)

Any mistakes in the VCV, I fully forgive with "It was 2011". I do feel like it's important to just give a workaround for a problem you might run into for older banks like this. Sometimes, the voice provider pauses too much and it sounds a little jarring. Especially with a bank like this, the obvious answer is to replace the VCV with a CV. However, when using the automatic CV to VCV / Suffix_Brokering button, you can't easily swap out samples, as it will automatically make any note that could be VCV into VCV. The solution is to OTO their "- (kana)" sample to work as a CV sample - meaning it will overlap at the correct spot to blend in nicely. If you were using a CV to VCV plugin, however, you could just take away the prefix and use CV.

Despite my hand-waving of issues, there is literally no way around the point that to use this UTAU to her full extent, you need to redo the OTOs. (Also, she has hard American 'R's, which I like, but you may not.) That being said, I think she is worth the work if you want a young and energetic female voice with a tiny bit of a muffled quality.

Where can I download Aya Toyo?

Her download link is on her UTAU Wikia page. I do like this UTAU, and I wish I had used her years ago - maybe I could have even remade her VCV OTO for Nicole back when I could waste five hours and feel no guilt.

If you're not into American 'R's, then you should sit this one out. But if they make you feel nostalgic, you need to pick up Toyo Aya and try her out.