Studio VOXYZ

Vocals that soar above the clouds!

News & Updates

Health and computer updates + new stuff!

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Hi, all! I’m certainly much later than I should have been posting a formal update here, but I figured better late than never.

First off, the health stuff: as of this September, I am officially cancer-free! I had a successful thyroidectomy back in May, my throat recovered over the next few months, and in September I had radioactive iodine to kill off any remaining thyroid cells and to detect if anything had spread via my lymph nodes (since one was found to be partially compromised during surgery). Most recently, my full body scan came back 100% clear!

As for my voice, I have finally and thankfully made a full recovery there as well. I’m not certain how much of my recording issues prior to surgery were from stress alone, or if the nodule (which was found to be 3cm during removal 😱) was pressing against my larynx or something, but either way my high range is more solid than it’s been in a very long time! I do seem to have lost a little off my low end, though it isn’t anything too drastic. Aiko recording has resumed and will be going strong through the rest of the winter. At my current pace, I am now aiming for an end of January release for my three current projects (Atmosphere JP & EN, DeepVocal and TalQu).

Sadly, though several attempts were made at recovering the data lost from my catastrophic laptop HDD replacement, I was unable to salvage any prior files. This mean I have completely lost any WIP voicebanks and USTs/VSQs/etc. that I was working on, including Chiyoko CVVC, Akiko CVVC, and several others. However, my voice providers have all said they are ready and willing to rerecord when possible!

Kikyuune Aiko Plushie Campaign & New Stickers!

Onto the new stuff! I am currently holding a 100-piece limited preorder campaign for an official Kikyuune Aiko plushie! She’s roughly 10″/25cm tall (about the size of a crane game prize plush) and features removable jacket, skirt and wrist cuffs so that she may swap out to different, similarly-sized plush and doll outfits! Preorders are open through the end of the month on my Ko-Fi shop (US only) and my Etsy (international only, excluding EU). The campaign includes an optional set of merchandise, including keychains, buttons and stickers, which may be purchased as a bundle with the plush or separately/individually. These items will ONLY be available during this period.

I have also added a set of peeker-style vinyl stickers to my shop featuring both Aiko’s UTAU and her Mikoto Studio designs! This is the first step of the eventual itasha-ification of my new car, a blue Kia Soul I ended up having to purchase after a tree fell on my old one last month. (It. Sure has been a year.)

As always, your continued support is much appreciated! I’ll be posting regular #Aikoplush campaign updates on here and on my Bluesky as the campaign progresses and production continues!

Not quite the update I wanted to post.

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Hi, all. I’d been putting off saying anything about this publicly, but last week, I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma.

In terms of how cancer goes, this is one of the most treatable ones out there. The prognosis after successful removal is basically the same as never having had it. Papillary nodules are slow growing and slow spreading, and mine were thankfully detected each at 1mm under the normal threshold for biopsy at their respective TIRADS (“danger”) levels.

(Insert anecdote about advocating for your health here?)

Anyway, along with the pair of confirmed malignant nodules on the right wing of my thyroid, I also have a few smaller unconfirmed but suspicious ones on the left, and so my endocrinologist has recommended a full removal. The final decision will be up to the surgeon. At the time of writing this, I do not yet have a consultation scheduled, and am not sure when that will be.

Long story short, I am doing my best to record what I am able to of Aiko before my surgery date (whenever it might be) as there is a solid chance of permanent vocal changes after the surgery. Best case scenario, my voice recovers after a few weeks. Most likely case, I am unable to perform sustained singing for 6+ months as my throat heals, possibly requiring voice therapy and with noticeable quality changes. Absolute worst case scenario, there is accidental damage to my laryngeal nerve (which lies right under the thyroid) and my voice becomes permanently hoarse.

Perhaps I am over-preparing for a worst case scenario, but Aiko is very near and dear to me and I’ve always been extremely particular about her sound and quality. This has obviously come to shoot me in the foot as I tend to delay and re-record WIP voicebanks without releasing anything. This weekend, I took my aging 2017 PC laptop to a repair shop, hoping to prep for recording work by simply replacing some RAM, the battery, and the boot drive, on which none of my UTAU content was stored. I was assured that cloning the boot SSD would not affect the storage HDD.

Spoiler alert: it did.

I am currently waiting to see if my data has been recovered from the HDD, which could suddenly not be read once the new boot SSD was installed. This contained my WIP Nimbus, Cirrus and Stratus JP VCV and EN Arpasing banks, as well as my omake/exVoice I had recorded so far.

Needless to say, I’m kind of a mess right now.

My surgery may be in 3 weeks as the doctor estimated, or it might not be for a couple of months as the usual turnaround time seems to be. I have no idea or reference point at the time of writing this.

I’m not writing this to receive any pity, mostly just to scream into the void and get a weight off my chest, and also to express why I’ve had to step back from a couple of recent projects. Perhaps my voice and I will recover just fine, and I’ll be able to look back on this post and laugh at myself for being overly worried, or perhaps I’ll ridicule myself for my misplaced priorities. But right now, I have no guarantees to go on and I’m doing my best to do what I can for my most beloved hobby while maintaining some semblance of normalcy in other aspects of my life. It’s only been a week and I already feel incredibly burnt out.

All I can say right now is thank you for reading, and thank you for continuing to support Aiko. I’ll do my best to continue to do so as well.

-Myst

Happy 15th Anniversary, Kikyuune Aiko!

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Illustration by Lovesick Hospital (sketch), MystSaphyr (lines) and AxelCode (colors).

I’m pleased to announce that as a part of her 15th anniversary celebrations this year, Aiko will be joining the first generation of AI vocalists for Mikoto Studio!

“Kikyuune Aiko 3510” (as it will be called to distinguish it from her UTAU voicebanks, which will continue to be developed alongside this new project) features a brand new design by ExpressiveLabs character designer Jay Dawson (aka Lovesick Hospital). I’m super excited to be working with ExpressiveLabs and I’m looking forward to seeing how Aiko develops as the engine improves and more training data is added to her model!

And please note, I have not at all forgotten about Aiko’s Nimbus, Cirrus and Stratus UTAU voicebanks (collectively called “Atmosphere”). I have 3 out of 6 voicebanks totally recorded, and Aiko’s Arpasing banks are currently being developed in cooperation with Chorical LLC., who are assisting with some modified reclists and oto.ini configuration. While I’d originally aimed to have all of Aiko’s new UTAU banks released on her anniversary date, as usual I bit off slightly more than I could chew. However, I will be posting 1 or 2 demos per month leading up to November 12th (my own birthday) which is the new planned release date. As promised, this release will include a physical edition, previews of which will be dropped in the coming months. The first demo featuring Nimbus Arpasing should be uploaded in the coming days!

Along with these voicebank demos and physical package progress, each month I’ll also be revealing 3 pieces of Aiko standing artwork I gathered from fellow artists that will be packaged with her anniversary voicebanks. This first month’s featured artists are LucaBGT, MewKwota, and Chiguma!

LucaBGT
MewKwota
Chiguma

There are 15 pieces in all, and I’m so excited to share them with everyone!

As a reminder, I’ll be attending ConnectiCon this month from the 18th to the 21st, where I’ll be presenting a vocalsynth panel and also selling some merch in the Artist Colony. I’ll have Aiko enamel pins, signed prints featuring her 2020 character artwork, Aiko 3510 buttons, and I’ll have a Mikoto Studio postcard featuring the ELEMENT vocalists illustration from this article as a freebie. Of course I’ll have plenty of other goodies in a few other fandoms, so please feel free to stop by if you’re attending the con! After the con is over, the pin, print and buttons will all go live on the VOXYZ Shop.

Last but not least, as I believe it should be obvious, the Studio VOXYZ website has gotten a major overhaul. We are on a new (and significantly faster) web host, and the overall site has been completely redesigned from top to bottom.

So here’s to the Year of Aiko — I can’t wait to share more of what I’ve been working on over the course of the next few months!

Kikyuune Aiko 14th Anniversary + Slipstream VCV Release

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HAPPY 14th BIRTHDAY AIKO! I’m pleased to announce the release of Aiko’s 4-pitch Japanese VCV voicebank, named “Slipstream”! The voicebank is now available to download on Aiko’s page, with Google Drive and Mega mirrors.

This voicebank is one I’ve been sitting on for some time now, I recorded it back in 2019 but never got around to finishing it (so it goes) until now. Many thanks to Tom (@text_to_death) for the oto work! It was the last voicebank I recorded using my Blue Yeti, and my first completed VCV. She functions quite well with moresampler and takes to the tension (Mt) flag like a dream. This was also my first cover using OpenUtau, and I can safely say I’m never going back.

I apologize that I haven’t been super active recently. It’s been a rough couple of years, but I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things. Please expect vocalsynth updates to be posted directly here or to my YouTube channel as community posts rather than to my Twitter. For various reasons, I’ve decided to stick to my social media hiatus for a bit longer. Being off of my main account has been a welcome breath of fresh air for my mental health and I’d like to keep it that way. If I used to promote my vsynth work entirely through this website and YT, then I can go back to that just like old times!

Downloads fixed!

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So the other day, I was alerted to a 404 error on the Google Drive embed on Aiko’s page. Turns out I’d accidentally deleted my voicebanks folder from Google Drive while doing some cleaning. Whoops!

All my voicebanks are back in Drive where they belong, accessible here.

I’m in the process of revamping the download pages for all VOXYZ voicebanks, starting with Aiko. Each download will now have a brief, basic raw-rendered sample (using moresampler) and banks will be hosted on both Google Drive and Mega.nz. Aiko’s UTAU downloads page is fully updated to the new layout.

In addition, I went through Aiko’s banks and did some housekeeping. Changes include:

  • dropping numbered versions for banks past ACT1-3 (frankly, they’re confusing and obsolete)
  • re-otoing and re-aliasing all old banks prior to CVVC (because why not)
  • removing outdated information from character.txt (though I left in the old art!)
  • including the “Whistle” VB with her CVVC banks, rather than having it be standalone
  • merging the “Omake” folder into CVVC EN since that’s what it originally was recorded for

Her CVVC banks also may have some minor oto tweaks that I’ve done over the years, so it may be beneficial to download the updates!

I’m also currently in the process of editing her Wiki pages and will make a tweet once that is done. Please bear with me!

YanHe & Bilibili!

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I’m happy to announce the latest addition to my voicebank collection, and my first Chinese VOCALOID: YanHe! I’m super excited since she’s been on my wishlist ever since she was first released, but I was always a little intimidated at getting a voicebank for a language I’m not at all familiar with. However thanks to help from Xue and UG, I’m getting the hang of things!

As of posting my “I Am Here” cover with YanHe, I’ve also officially started using my Bilibili account! Everyone’s been super welcoming so far, 谢谢!