I’m going on an indefinite hiatus from vocal synth.

Hello everyone,

This has been a very difficult decision to make, but I wanted to get it out there in order to prevent confusion as to where I suddenly went.

TL;DR: I’m going on an indefinite hiatus from vocal synth. Yes, I know this contradicts what I said in my previous post and I sincerely apologize for that. More details under the cut.

As you can read from the title, I’ve decided to go on an indefinite hiatus from vocal synth. Calling it a “retirement” sounds too drastic — since there’s always a slim chance that I might return one day — but I wouldn’t count on any sort of guaranteed comeback. Just keep in mind that the chance of me never returning does, in fact, exist, and just in case that happens: please don’t worry about me, I’m probably fine.

As I’ve said, this was a very difficult decision to make. Vocal synth has been a part of my life for 15 years now, and to be honest, until surprisingly recently I expected to easily add 15 more to that, but then one day I just realized this wasn’t in the cards. It honestly feels like a sort of breakup — leaving a community (even if possibly temporarily) after 15 years isn’t exactly easy. When I decided this, it honestly felt like a part of me was taken away; as if a marriage had fallen apart. I know the comparison sounds silly, but it genuinely felt that way, and still does.

Why I’m stepping away

The exact circumstances as to why I’m going on indefinite hiatus isn’t something I’d like to discuss in public, as they’re very personal and not really of anyone’s business. But to keep it general, I’ve realized that I simply don’t feel like I belong anymore. I lost my motivation in specifically UTAU quite a while ago, since it no longer meets my standards of quality (due to this, please don’t expect any UTAU voicebanks coming from me anymore; I’m essentially done with it. I’m very sorry about that). I then moved on to DiffSinger, which motivated me to keep going for a while, but I’ve recently lost motivation for that as well for personal reasons (please don’t ask for details).

To be honest, the “not quite belonging” part is something I felt very quickly into my vocal synth journey. I’ve always had somewhat different creative visions from the rest of the community, as well as some other points where I just differed from the rest. But what kept me going was the positive interactions with the community despite all this. Differences aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it gets to a point where the differences are in conflict with each other, it’ll just no longer work out.

Another reason is that I want to make music again for a general audience. I no longer want to make “music for vocal synth fans”. The truth is that using vocal synth will put you in a sort of niche, and people outside that niche won’t understand the appeal. And you can’t just make them understand; they have to do that by themselves, and most of them never will. Some people are OK with this, but it’s something I’ve always struggled with since I’ve always been too embarrassed to show my vocal synth projects to the people closest to me, and that has always hurt me. It has actually somewhat prevented me from forming friendships that I so desperately need, because nobody really understands your arguably biggest hobby at that moment. (Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t get too personal, but this is something I felt important to share.)

And then, when your “niche” happens to be a community you feel estranged from… Why bother at that point? Why not go into the world and make friends elsewhere instead?

The future of my characters

The short answer: I don’t exactly know yet.

I’ve currently put aside all my WIP voicebank projects, including the planned multidict DiffSinger updates. Please don’t expect these updates any time soon, if ever. (And as I’ve said before, I no longer use UTAU.)

A few things I will say, though:

• If I do decide to keep my characters around in some form, I’m going to rename Hanami. “Hoshino Hanami” as a name has been a burden on me ever since my first day of doing vocal synth. It’s unnecessarily Japanese-sounding and “weeb-y” and that’s just not something I’d do anymore right now. She’s not Japanese and has no attachment to Japanese culture. I did mitigate the issue somewhat by fixing the Japanese spelling of her name, but the truth is that I was never happy with it. The only reason I kept it around was due to the fact that people knew her under that name, and I didn’t want to confuse anyone (and this reason is less relevant now due to me stepping away). My other characters will keep their names, since I never had issues with those. I will reveal Hanami’s new name in a different post, if I decide to go through with this plan.
• “Hanami” would also be getting a makeover. Right now I’m an adult woman in my 30s (as opposed to the 19 year old girl I was back in 2011) and her current look with the pigtails is starting to look too juvenile. She will look and dress like an adult woman, just like myself.
• I might write a story featuring my characters. Who knows, if I can think of any interesting lore.
• I might train RVC/other types of voice conversion models of my characters (and if not my characters, just my natural voice with an avatar). I still like the idea of “open-sourcing my voice” to music producers and other interested parties — I just no longer believe that vocal synth is “the solution”. Like it or not, the current AI trend also makes this appealing to the general audiences that I mentioned before. I’m still staunchly opposed to unethical AI and always will be, but if I consent to it, nobody is getting hurt. DiffSinger is AI too, anyway.
• “Project AI❤️dol” is essentially dead. I was going to make a “DiffSinger girl group” featuring “Hanami”, LEONA and QUiNN, but I no longer have a desire to do so. I’m very sorry to anyone who liked this idea; I never spoke too much about it in public since it was still in its planning stages, but don’t expect much from it anymore for the time being.
• That being said, the dataset stays, but will probably get a different name. As I’ve said, I still like the idea of “open-sourcing my voice”. I might also allow custom model training featuring my voice (which was practically banned before), including for things like RVC (but also DiffSinger!). NOTE: RVC-ing over the corpus for training DiffSinger banks will remain banned. That’s what multispeaker is for.
• The alternative to all this is that I’ll redesign my mascot Vee (who I was actually planning on retiring, since I currently find her boring). She’ll no longer be a 1:1 copy of me “but with cat ears”. I want her to look “cooler”, more interesting. We’ll see.
• The third option: I could also keep both my characters as well as Vee around in some form, together, at the same time. Once again, I’m not yet sure!

The future of the DiffSinger wiki

Just in case anyone is unaware, I created a DiffSinger wiki on Miraheze a while back. Due to my current disinterest in vocal synth (and my admittedly poor management of the place), I plan to transfer ownership to someone I trust, preferably with wiki management experience. Who that is, I don’t know yet, but I hope to know soon. If I can’t find anyone, I’m afraid I’d have to close it (which I don’t quite want to do), but if that happens, feel free to start a new one from scratch without my involvement.

Moderating the DiffSinger Discord server

As some of you may know, I’m a moderator in the DiffSinger Discord server. While I’m not the only mod, I’m the only one who’s frequently active. Obviously the first thing that might come into your head is that I should step away, but I can’t — the owner of the server, OxygenDioxide, has been MIA for a while now, and he’s the only person who can grant mod status to people. So without me, I’m afraid the server would severely decline in quality.

I’m still pondering a few things:

• I could ping Oxygen to tell him I’d like to rescind my mod status and to instate some new ones, but I’m not sure if he’ll see the message.
• I could ask the DiffSinger community to start a new server with an active admin who’s online often, with more moderators who live in various time zones. I would obviously not be involved with this server in any form.
• I could just leave and let the server “rot”. This is an absolute last resort that I do not want to do; I’m not that evil.
• Another (terrible) alternative is that I keep permanently lurking “in the shadows” as a mod, but I also ideally don’t want to do that, since I’m no longer a real part of the community.

I’d like feedback on this, because I really don’t know the best course of action. This isn’t like the wiki where I can do whatever I want.

This website (and my current voicebanks)

This website won’t be going anywhere, however it will get a makeover sometime in the future. At the very least, the voicebank links will be removed, as well as the current character profiles (this does not mean the characters are “dead”; if I ever bring back their profiles, they’ll be at a different location). What I’ll do with the voicebank uploads themselves, I don’t yet know — I always said that I’d keep my voicebanks online even if I were to ever lose interest in vocal synth, but to be honest, I’m not quite sure anymore right now (this doesn’t mean I’ll definitely delete them, only that I haven’t decided yet). The direct links will go though, since they no longer reflect my current interests.

My plans for the future

As I’ve stated above, I’m not going to stop making music. Instead, I’ll go back to making music featuring my actual singing voice — and if I keep my characters around, I might even sing “character songs” for them. It won’t be vocal synth, but it’s still something! And the RVC model will come, no matter what its “face” will be.

I’m also going back to an old hobby of mine: dress up games. I used to make my own when I was younger, and I recently (even long before the hiatus) rediscovered how much fun they can be. The big difference is that I’ll use modern technology now (HTML5) instead of the crusty old (and obscure!) tech I used before. (And yes, the dress up game site/subdomain/whatever is still in the cards! Very much so. I’m excited to get started!)

I’ll also keep on drawing, coding, writing, and do all my other hobbies. Who knows, maybe we’ll bump into each other in different places where we least expect it.

Don’t get me wrong, this community has brought me some unforgettable memories. I was even part of an UTAU album collab once, and I met my now ex-boyfriend there. That’s certainly not nothing! But, I’ve also accepted that this is all in the past. I’m a different person now than I was back then, and I want to move on.

—-

That’s all I have to say for the time being. Perhaps I didn’t even need to write such a sentimental post, but I felt like doing so for the sake of transparency. I don’t like the idea of just “leaving” without a trace and having everyone wonder where I went.

Either way, I hope you understand and respect my decision. See you… somewhere, someplace, sometime.

~ Lotte V