Voc-Xmas 2013 – Macne Nana

Not a Caribbean plantain dish or drink, but the admittedly unusual name of a new Vocaloid whose English voicebank is due to be released next month (January 2014), more than four years after the original (Japanese) release. I am grateful to Channel Miku 39 on Facebook, for spotting this before I did, and providing a link to the short (52 seconds) Soundcloud demo below.

Technically, the Macne series – comprising six characters – are neither Vocaloid nor UTAU, both of which are PC-run systems whereas the Macne series (four sisters, their father, and another about whom I have no info as yet), as the name suggests, are for the Apple Mac'. The voicebank is embedded within the software rather than a separate file, so the software structuring is markedly different – although I gather that a way has been found to 'acquire' the voicebank for use with at least one UTAU editor.

It's a somewhat child-like female voice – as the artwork suggests (I am no expert at this, but am guessing at a 13-14 year old... UPDATE: officially 14-15 years) – but is good at both Japanese (as far as I could determine) and English, even without pronunciation 'tuning', none of which was applied here. Nearing in mind that there is a somewhat limited range of sounds (phonemes) supplied with Macne Nana – just 104 – this is a good achievement.

Interestingly, her younger sister, Macne Petit (yes, I spotted it too: it should be 'Petite' for a female!) has the same voicebank with fewer sounds, and was therefore cheaper to buy, though an expansion pack was later released  to extend the range of phonemes for Petit.

So, here is the new Vocaloid Macne Nana with Deck The Halls in both languages. If the player doesn't appear first time (a bug I have mentioned before) just force a page reload and it should then be visible and its controls accessible...