Found a bug! When I opened an older SVP file that I got online, it worked just fine, if a little slower than normal in (real-time)updating the pitches/parameters in instant mode with the beta versions of Mai and Yuma.
But when I opened a different SVP file, which I made by importing a VSQX file, Mai and Yuma both sounded really weird and crunchy/grumbly. Also changing Yuma to an older version did not get rid of this effect! I cleared all the parameters and the effect persisted, and also there were no visible parameter changes in gender/tone etc in the note editor.
Thankfully I found a work around!
By importing the older VSQX file in Studio Beta 1.8, it sounds normal and I can also once again hear the difference between Yuma’s versions! However this means I couldn’t carry over any tuning I did on the SVP before. I’m not that concerned about it since I was probably rerunning the instant tuning with 1.8 anyway, but for some people this might really make them sad if they did a lot of meticulous editing since importing a VSQX!
My guess is that maybe there was some parameter in the VSQX file that is not visible in Synthesizer V Studio, and it used to be ignored by earlier versions of Studio, but under version 1.8.0b1 it is incorrectly applying some holdover parameter that was saved and not overwritten, maybe Vocaloid’s Growl Parameter? (I’m not a regular user of Vocaloid, that’s just one of my guesses!)
Note that the bug wasn’t present when opening ANY older SVP, only the one that once was a VSQX file and was re-saved.
Hope this can help them fix it.