Forgotten Friday #212 - Proto-S / プロトス

 I should be wearing my wrist brace, but I wanna go fast!

Forgotten Friday #212 - Proto-S / プロトス

Alright! I'm decently far enough pushed out to not feel panicked for this feature, and I just gave up my very unreceived prank of using Praat to realistically tune even CV vocals. That means, it's the perfect time to look at an UTAU with twelve banks. You heard me! Twelve different banks to listen to! I did something like this previously, just way more. I had to stop doing the prank because oh my goodness. So. Much. Time.

This is an UTAU that doesn't like singing. They don't like talking, and they just sleep all the time. They lie about their age by doing hex conversions as they are just an artificial intellegence that floats around.

Their personality is one of my favorite words in existence. Fuwafuwa.

They are not a corporal being, so they have different designs for each bank. I choose the one from their subtitle free CVVC bank as the icon for this article, as it is the main art used on both the distribhution page and the archive.

Who is Proto=S?

official art from bank

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(resume campaign)

Becky didn't know if she was grateful that she didn't eat the night before. She wasn't technically throwing up since there was nothing in her stomach. Though, she wasn't sure if anyone had eaten.

Vanessa grabbed her hand and spelled 'timing' into her palm. She was confused until she looked up to see Blade. He was annoyed. He loudly lamented that there was some barrier stopping him. 

"Barrier?" Becky interrupted his monologue. "What happened?"

"I wanted to be rid of you," Blade sneered. "So I walked away, as you said I could. I saw a settlement in the distance. Suddenly, I was stopped by a wall. It was invisible until I touched it. Then it glimmered as a prism would. It hid itself again until I tried to push through again."

"Now Mister Blade," Jasper piped up. "You can be mad at Faulkner, but we ain't done nothing to hurt you at all."

Blade laughed. "Hurt? Warriors of my stature do not get 'hurt'."

Vanessa began to furiously sign things so vulgar, Becky didn't even know that half of the signs existed. Blade almost seemed amused as he watched her. She ended it by holding up both of her hands in a very rude gesture while keeping eye contact with Blade.

Becky was extremely glad that 'the bird' wasn't seen as an insult in Blade's culture. She didn't want to know what would have happened if he had actually been offended.

Suddenly, there was a loud roaring in the distance. Becky slowly stood. As soon as she heard Faulkner's shouts about valor and honor, she ran as fast as she could towards the sound.

She stopped when she saw the beast. It was a giant ox. At least, that's the first word she had for it. It looked as if a stereotypical minotaur just had the body of a normal ox, only larger. 

It reared onto its hind legs and she realized that its front legs were arms with clawed hands. She screamed out as the beast slashed its arm and made contact with Faulkner. She didn't know if it was the game slowing time to be dramatic or if it really was her own perception. She watched as the beast's claws phased through Faulkner as if it were two meshes intersecting in Blender. Once the massive claws clipped through him, his body was thrown to the side as if there had been actual contact.

The beast lowed before turning and meandering away. Becky ran to Faulkner's body. There was no blood. There were no injuries. As soon as she realized that, the body vanished. She turned around in time to see Faulkner simply reappear, shouting about valor.

Behind Faulkner was the rest of the party.

Vanessa rapidly signed, "He died?"

Becky slowly nodded. She knew she looked terrified. She understood that they were all safe, but she was still shaken from the brief moment that she didn't know that.

"That's not how DnD works… I think?" Becky looked back over her shoulder. "I mean, maybe it is…"

She built up the courage and walked to Faulkner. She patted him on the shoulder before asking, "Did you lose any equipment?"

"Is my ax missing?" Faulkner had a bit of panic in his voice as he reached back to check for it. As soon as he felt it, he shook his head.

"No penalties for death!" Becky nervously laughed. "I'm glad!"

Vanessa looked up at Blade. His expression was completely blank. Becky wanted to make a joke about how battling to the death wasn't really an option, but she was too shaken.

How are Proto-S's banks?

Proto-S is actually a tiny little UTAU, all things considered. There is no full VCV bank from what I've seen (I was wrong), and zipped, they are under 400 megabytes for everything. There are single UTAU banks that are nearly a gigabyte with all of their pitches of VCV, so that was nice to learn. Sadly... Uh...

I have two CVVC tester USTs that don't require Praat. I had more, but I just now realized that they were in a separate folder on my old computer... Well, I think that means there's only one thing I can do.

Haha! I am pranking all of you again!

Let's start with the basic Proto-S. I was wrong earlier - basic and BLANDO have two banks, so there's fourteen to look at. Basic is meant to have a neutral voice. 

First, we can look at the CV. The OTOs need a little work, but the voice is absolutely wonderful! It is gentle and androgynous, though a little more on the feminine side. It is a comforting kind of voice.

Next is the normal CVVC. The voice is still just as gentle and reassuring! The added bonus of realism from CVVC is extra awesome.

Next we can look at BLANDO. BLANDO is a more feminine version of Proto-S. 

The first we'll look at is the CV version. The voice is very lovely! Is is very similar to the normal version, but the vowels are more wistful.

Thankfully, I was wrong earlier. Proto-S does have a VCV bank! I really like the cv version of Blando. Will the vcv version be as good?

The voice is so perfect, I moved the zip file to my "permanent" UTAU folder to possibly convert to Utan later... Though, something strange showed up.

Strange pattern in the spectrogram

Next we have FACE, a three pitch falsetto CVVC. Now technically, I don't think you can falsetto across three pitches, but I'm just being silly. Sadly, the OTOs aren't that great. It was a lot of headache throwing it all together because I needed a cvvc ust that worked for it, but they sound beautiful!

The subtitle for CULLATA helped me figure it out almost none, and I had to view the page source to be able to copy it to translate it automatically. Pronounced out of habit? Maybe the pronunciation is quirky? I don't know! What I do know is that it is a VCV! Yay!

Whoops! The bank accidentally fell into my possibly convert to utan folder. 

MELODIA is a one pitch female whisper cvvc. Proto-S is already a very soft UTAU in general, so the only way to make her more whispery is to just make her raspy. I would like it if I heard it by itself, but those iframes up there contain stuff I love way more.

SANFT is a male cvvc whisper bank. I don't really hear the male aspect, but the tone is much warmer than before. It actually sounds a lot like me!

ERDE is another male cvvc bank. It's okay.

VOID is a two pitch soft bank that's meant to be dark according to Google translate.

while it is nice, the two pitches sound like they're from completely different banks!

The next two are a CV-VV set of Young boy and Young girl style voices. MAGIER is the shounen style bank. It's... Really feminine. I can hear the things that would set it aside as shounen, but I was expecting more. It is nice, though!

The shoujou counterpart has a really unfortunate name: MAGA. I will ignore the name because she is perfect. She is clear in tone and adorable. I wish this could have been vcv.

Next, GRAVITÀ. This is meant to be a female voice with a low tone with one pitch of cvvc. It is perfect and I wish it was vcv. It's very clear and has a wonderful calm tone.

Finally, we have the bright female one pitch CVVC: CHIARO. She is also perfect and I love her! She is clear and bright with a tone that is half youthful but half mature.

Where can I download Proto-S?

Well, I rendered off the first sample at 6:19 AM according to my tablet that has the wrong time, and now it has the time of 9:19 AM. I spent a lot more time on this than I needed to, but it was worth it. I think Proto-S deserves to sound their best! I hope I've convinced at least one person to download her. You can find the download page on the official website. I really, really love this UTAU. I didn't mention it much, but the art style is really good and the designs are really good. You definitely should check them out! And definitely, check the banks out too.