Forgotten Friday #74 - 大音フク / Daine Huku

It took a lot of effort to decide whether to use Fuku or Huku, because both are technically correct. What caused me to go with the "unconventional" spelling was the fact that the CV bank is named huku, and all of the passwords are huku. (Usually, giving out passwords is a big no-no, but it illustrates my point.) I do get how typing in Japanese works and why someone would choose "hu" even if they meant "fu", but yolo.

Forgotten Friday #74 - 大音フク / Daine Huku

So, when I started this I wanted to go in order so that it was like you were reliving the early days. That fell apart really, really quickly because extremely old UTAUs that qualify for this series tend to be kind of boring. "There's one CV voicebank, it's sounds like all the other ones with this voice type, there is no character." You need some 2010 action to spice it up!

Huku is different because his distributor is actually still active to this day. His latest bank was from 2013, but his 2009 bank is still available for download! His website is nice and tidy, and he doesn't seem like a 2009 UTAU. Anyway, I have three banks to look at, so I don't need to say as much up here!

Who is Huku Daine?

Official Art Packaged with Bank

Huku is a boy! A fifteen year old boy, to be exact. I listened to the samples on the blog and looked at the art and thought, "Aw, what a cute little girl!" Nope! Boy!

While Huku's distributor is still active, Huku is the only UTAU by his voice provider, Tokiwa. And oh my goodness!! I think I remember Huku's distributor!! They made the most bomb USTs! I can't get any of them to download at the moment to confirm, but I knew I recognized the icon from somewhere! 

Seriously, why does that uploader that I can never spell correctly act the way it does? It's like they just have servers they unplugged with all of the great retro-UTAU content on is. Once, I asked a friend to try a file I had been trying on and off for a month, and they got it first try! Why, oh why! First we lose loda, and now that one stops working at random? For shame.

How are Daine Huku's banks?

As stated earlier, there are three and one is from 2009! There is a CV bank from 2009, a VCV bank from 2010, and a rentan (basically CV, only easier to record) from 2013.

The 2009 CV actually is really different from most 2009 CV banks! The samples are extremely long at around three seconds. (Okay, that's not extremely long, but it is compared to the banks with samples that were .3 seconds during that era!) The recording quality is really good. The OTOs are really randomly bad, like half of them were done knowing what was right and half of them just being YOLO. There are inconsistencies in tone that can be pretty jarring at points. 

His next bank is his VCV.  And... his VCV is missing samples. It's a lite VCV without a corresponding CV bank. I'm not sure if the intention was for us to use the CV and VCV together, or if it was just something his creators didn't really think through. He doesn't even have an "n お" nor an "お" sample! Almost everything is fixable (adding CV aliases from the VCV, for example) except for the complete lack of palatalized consonants. Those can be pulled in from the CV or the Rentan. I'm not sure about the Rentan yet, but I feel like the VCV and CV are different enough for mixing the samples to sound jarring. It's really nice, but it's only a lite VCV.



Finally, we have his most recent bank. His rentan bank is just... Not Huku. "Recording quality" is extremely subjective, and it's not fair to say one is better than the other in a case like this. But it's very different. The original banks had very clear but slightly tinny sound quality, but the rentan is muffled. There's another dimension of Tokiwa just kind of giving up. The earlier banks, I actually had no idea if it was a real little boy or a woman. With this bank, it's kind of like, yeah. It's a lady voice acting and not really wanting to do it. In the earlier banks, Tokiwa lived Huku. Even if it was a bit counterproductive when it comes to UTAU, Tokiwa was there for it.

And the OTOs are very, very not good. Like the first bank, it is random. Some are done correctly, and some have the previous vowel as part of the pink and it's jarring. Even Huku's vowels have the problem.

Where can I download Huku Daine?

You can download him from his distribution page. I'm just kind of in shock from the 180 between the old banks and the rentan. The first two banks were different, but mostly the same. The third was just different. 

Still, it's amazing to see a 2009 bank that isn't extremely popular be kept up like this!