Music News: New VOCALOID Ruby Breaks Out With "Problem" Song

VOCALOIDs of recent history;
will Ruby join them soon?

I get excited when English language VOCALOIDs break out into the news, especially when they actually sound good. It's hard to recreate English language cadence via the computerized sound banks - Leon does a good job, but he still sounds a bit tinny and unnatural compared to other idols.

This newest VOCALOID - casually known as Engloids because they use an English language sound bank - is named Ruby and a sample of her voice, set to singing part of Ariana Grande's "Problem" minus the backing vocals.

Unfortunately, I can't find any photo of what Ruby might look like, but I've got the audio of her "Problem" cover thanks to a VOCALOID-related Facebook page. Ruby sounds terrific! She's a sign that VOCALOID technology has truly advanced in skill and range since it first started.

A release date for Ruby's software/voice bank has not been announced. According to this VOCALOID Otaku forum thread, she's a VocaTone creation, created in partnership with PowerFX. If VocaTone and PowerFX sound familiar, it's because they are behind the creation of Oliver, a young British boy VOCALOID, and YOHIOloid, a bilingual male VOCALOID. I don't know much about YOHIO - his song list isn't as long as other digital personalities - but I've always thought Oliver had a nice, cute voice that fit his fictional persona. His cover of "Scarborough Fair" is a good one.