Create a vocal synthesizer tag

BUR #22044 has been rejected.

mass update Alter/Ego -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update MUTA -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update NEUTRINO_(software) -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update Piapro -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update Synthesizer_V -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update UTAU -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update VOCALINA -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update VOCALOID -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update VOISONA -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update MAIDLOID -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update CeVIO -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update A.I._VOICE -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update Gynoid_Talk -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update TalkEx -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update VOICEROID -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update VOICEVOX -> vocal_synthesizer
mass update VOICEPEAK -> vocal_synthesizer

The divide between "characters for vocal synthesizer A" and "characters for vocal synthesizer B" is no longer these days. Hatsune Miku and Kasane Teto, poster girls of Vocaloid and Utau respectively, nowadays each have voicebanks in different systems, those being Piapro Studio and SynthesizerV, respectively. Yuzuki Yukari's wiki mentions she has voicebanks in FOUR systems. All this means is that it's getting harder and harder to discern what synthesizer a given song uses, and for illustrations, what exactly the artist intended to depict. Is post #6996703 UTAU Teto or SynthV Teto?
Additionally, we had songs mixing and matching characters from different engines for a long time, too. An example of such song is Triple Baka, which uses a Vocaloid and an UTAU together. Pinocchio-P commonly uses Yukkuri/AquesTalk Josei 1, an UTAU/SofTalk synthesizer, for backing vocals in many of his songs.

This tag would be similar to virtual youtuber in use, unifying characters (and most likely songs) from different companies under one tag. This way, one would not have to do an OR search with 18 tags (which first, is a pain to type, second, is only available to Platinum+ users, third, might easily time out), but rather simply search for the vocal_synthesizer tag.

For characters under multiple engines, my system is to tag whatever they originally were. The logic being that they act as the "parent" tag that people would be more familiar with, for now anyway. I'd only tag the updated engines if the art shows features of their updated designs. For post #6996703, as far as I can tell there's no distinct feature from Kasane Teto (SV) so I wouldn't tag it as such. Honestly, I think artists would have the same approach. If they intended it to be one of the updates, they would include something to indicate that. For Kasane Teto (SV), this would mean her white hair bow or her uniform.

Yuzuki Yukari is a bit more nuanced. I would say she defaults to VOCALOID but she's somewhat the poster child of VOICEROID as well, and was initially released for both engines on the same date. For her default design, I'd tag both VOCALOID and VOICEROID. For her derivatives, my system is similar as before; her CeVIO bank is for singing so I include VOCALOID as the parent, her A.I. VOICE banks are for talking so I include VOICEROID as the parent. Likewise for Kizuna Akari.

In regards to vocal_synthesizer, I can see the utility in it since I just manually look up each tag as part of my routine. Having a single tag to view all of them at once would be convenient.

Previous thread which discussed this idea: topic #23946.

Oppose "macne series -> vocal_synthesizer", Macne Series is a project/group name than a software (although closely related). So there's a problem: Do Touhoku Zunko's media need to be tagged SSS LLC. or Touhoku Zunko Project for copyright? Do Yuzuki Yukari's media need to be tagged VOCALOMAKETS for copyright? Since difference of vocal synthesizer is not so important in searching media, tags for characters in a same company or group are indeed.
Another problem is: Are Vocaloid derivatives and other characters that don't have voicebank but related to Vocaloid/UTAU/CeVIO/... community belone to vocal synthesizer? AHS has several characters that in a band with Tsurumaki Maki canonly, but they don't have any voicebanks, only pitagoes. Are them belong to voice synthesizer? I'm not very sure.

Having a vocal synthesizer gentag to group all the different engines and such together is a good idea, though this way of doing it (via mass update based on copytags) would also catch a bunch of characters who are decidedly not vocal synthesizers, like original characters for songs. The character from the Otome Kaibou music video comes to mind, as an example. It would also catch references to vocaloid or other voice synth properties which don't feature any actual vocal synth characters: see posts like post #7026483, which depicts a fangirl (unsure whether character plushes get tags like virtual youtuber), or the OC parodies of Project Voltage. As a way of attracting attention to the topic the BUR is good, but in actuality there'd probably be lots of false positives.

FMRomantern said:

Oppose "macne series -> vocal_synthesizer", Macne Series is a project/group name than a software (although closely related). So there's a problem: Do Touhoku Zunko's media need to be tagged SSS LLC. or Touhoku Zunko Project for copyright? Do Yuzuki Yukari's media need to be tagged VOCALOMAKETS for copyright? Since difference of vocal synthesizer is not so important in searching media, tags for characters in a same company or group are indeed.

[...]

As for this topic, I do actually think that company/circle/project tags should be used. The aforementioned Touhoku Zunko has a bunch of characters who are related to her, but because they exist in different engines, aren't actually grouped together under the same copyright. There are also related characters such as Ankokuu Daishogun, who doesn't have her own voicebank. There's also the problem of Zundamon, who never had a VOICEROID voicebank, but has been tagged as such anyways for years because of her relation to Zunko. In actuality, her fairy form has only ever had an UTAU voicebank and her personification's first engine was VOICEVOX. So considering this, it'd be beneficial to have tags for projects such as the Touhoku Zunko (now: Touhoku Zunko/Zundamon) Project, Tsuina-chan (who didn't even start out as a vocal synthesizer), and more.

Some downsides are that doing so would add to the already large copyright count for some characters and that the format would be inconsistently applied (some characters like Kasane Teto belong to single-character circles, which likely have no reason to have their own copytag). But I do think that the benefits would outweight the bloat, and we already have some kind of precedent with Jam Band, Macne Series, and even Kamitsubaki Studio. I'd find it very useful to be able to say "I only want to search for Crypton Future Media characters" and not have to do a 5 tag OR search to do that.

FMRomantern said:

[...]

Another problem is: Are Vocaloid derivatives and other characters that don't have voicebank but related to Vocaloid/UTAU/CeVIO/... community belone to vocal synthesizer? AHS has several characters that in a band with Tsurumaki Maki canonly, but they don't have any voicebanks, only pitagoes. Are them belong to voice synthesizer? I'm not very sure.

I'm of the opinion that even if they are related, characters who are not actually vocal synthesizers should not be tagged as such. That includes characters who received voicebanks later on in their lifespan, such as Tsuina-chan, Jashin-chan, and REML.

FMRomantern said:

Oppose "macne series -> vocal_synthesizer", Macne Series is a project/group name than a software (although closely related). So there's a problem: Do Touhoku Zunko's media need to be tagged SSS LLC. or Touhoku Zunko Project for copyright? Do Yuzuki Yukari's media need to be tagged VOCALOMAKETS for copyright? Since difference of vocal synthesizer is not so important in searching media, tags for characters in a same company or group are indeed.

Alright, that makes sense. I'm not very familiar with Macne Series, but I guess I'll remove it. Adding it again is easier than removing it once the BUR passes.

Having a vocal synthesizer gentag to group all the different engines and such together is a good idea, though this way of doing it (via mass update based on copytags) would also catch a bunch of characters who are decidedly not vocal synthesizers, like original characters for songs. The character from the Otome Kaibou music video comes to mind, as an example. It would also catch references to vocaloid or other voice synth properties which don't feature any actual vocal synth characters: see posts like post #7026483, which depicts a fangirl (unsure whether character plushes get tags like virtual youtuber), or the OC parodies of Project Voltage. As a way of attracting attention to the topic the BUR is good, but in actuality there'd probably be lots of false positives.

Hmmm... This one is more complicated to me - I originally thought of this Vocal Synthesizer tag to be more of a topic tag than a tag specifically for the voicebanks, as this is what happens to copytags for specific engines. So characters from songs like Otome Dissection (Vocaloid), Girlving to the Right (Utau), etc. still fell under it in my head. And looking back to the virtual youtuber example, there are posts tagged with it that only feature the VTubers' mascots/related characters (who I assume are not VTubers themselves), like post #6900511 or post #6434146. I could submit an alternate BUR (or rather a series of BURs) which'll take vocal synth characters and update based on those character tags, rather than the copytags.

HOWEVER, now that it was mentioned, I do think this clearer distinction may add a good layer to searchability. But I also realize that it's also not that simple of a matter, as certain songs are ambiguous on whether the PV character should be considered the vocal synthesizer in a different costume, or an OC. For instance, post #6631350, post #6497473 and post #6455429 are all tagged as Miku, despite having little to no resemblance to her official appearance... but some people interpret them as Mikus, based on the fact that Miku is the singer in all three of those songs.

Back when virtual youtuber was first proposed, one of the main arguments against it that evazion brought up was that we didn't have a tag for virtual singers (forum #142768). Now we've gone full circle and are using virtual youtuber to justify this proposal.

I don't really see a point in having hybrid meta-gentags like these that have hundreds of thousands of posts and yet have no visual information in common between them. Remember, vocaloid has 132k posts and hatsune miku has 90k, so virtual synthesizer would just be "hatsune miku with some other character popping up every once in a while".

nonamethanks said:

Back when virtual youtuber was first proposed, one of the main arguments against it that evazion brought up was that we didn't have a tag for virtual singers (forum #142768). Now we've gone full circle and are using virtual youtuber to justify this proposal.

I don't really see a point in having hybrid meta-gentags like these that have hundreds of thousands of posts and yet have no visual information in common between them. Remember, vocaloid has 132k posts and hatsune miku has 90k, so virtual synthesizer would just be "hatsune miku with some other character popping up every once in a while".

Well, are we gonna get rid of virtual_youtuber? I know it's probably impossible at this point, but I wouldn't be against it.

blindVigil said:

Well, are we gonna get rid of virtual_youtuber? I know it's probably impossible at this point, but I wouldn't be against it.

I don't like the tag, but people actually search for it, so I have learned to ignore its existence, and I suppose it does help in filtering down for new vtubers to watch based on visual preferences.

The most important difference in this case however is that virtual youtuber has tons of different characters in it and none of it is as predominant as Miku would be for an eventual virtual synthesizer. She alone makes such a tag proposal pointless because you'd always have to search for virtual_synthesizer -hatsune_miku (at minimum) for it to have any practical use, and you already hit member level limit that way.

nonamethanks said:

I don't like the tag, but people actually search for it, so I have learned to ignore its existence, and I suppose it does help in filtering down for new vtubers to watch based on visual preferences.

The most important difference in this case however is that virtual youtuber has tons of different characters in it and none of it is as predominant as Miku would be for an eventual virtual synthesizer. She alone makes such a tag proposal pointless because you'd always have to search for virtual_synthesizer -hatsune_miku (at minimum) for it to have any practical use, and you already hit member level limit that way.

It isn't dominated by any one character, but Hololive does make up almost 60% of it and no other group even comes close, so I don't think virtual_youtuber -hololive is too far removed from your Miku example. If you're a fan of any particular company, you wouldn't be using virtual youtuber to find its members, new or old, and if you're looking for indies then there's indie virtual youtuber. I could only see people doing things like virtual_youtuber red_hair just to find vtubers to watch based on their appearance if they were the most casual, out of the loop consumer.

To be honest, your example use case for virtual youtuber could be applied to a vocal synthesizer tag. You might think it would be silly for someone to base their interest in a synthesized voicepack solely on their appearance, but people absolutely would and do, and I would say the same for vtubers. I could apply that logic to anime and videogame characters, too. But we don't have videogame character or anime character. If someone wants to find an anime to watch or a game to play solely based on the appearance of a character from it, they have to search something like blue_hair animal_ears solo, which members can't even do, and then just sift through the results.

I'll accept "people actually search for it" but I'm still skeptical that it's that useful to people actually using the site with their own two hands, and not jusr scraping it with bots.

nonamethanks said:

The most important difference in this case however is that virtual youtuber has tons of different characters in it and none of it is as predominant as Miku would be for an eventual virtual synthesizer. She alone makes such a tag proposal pointless because you'd always have to search for virtual_synthesizer -hatsune_miku (at minimum) for it to have any practical use, and you already hit member level limit that way.

For some numbers, the currently proposed tag would contain 146632 posts as of writing, while Hatsune Miku has 89007 posts, meaing 60.54% of posts, or about 12 out of every 20 posts on a normal page, would be Miku. The second most common character would be Kagamine Rin, at 12.5% (~2.5 posts per page), followd by Kagamine Len at 8.36% and Megurine Luka at 7.04%.

Excluding these top 4, which are the only ones that appear in >5% of posts, we are left with 36863 posts, or about 25% of this proposed tag.

This bulk update request is pending automatic rejection in 5 days.

This bulk update request has been rejected because it was not approved within 45 days.

The bulk update request #22044 (forum #263408) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.