Dreamtonics officially announced their first breakthrough in 2023: the fourth singing language - Cantonese and its cross-language synthesis support.
They have released a video with multiple demo clips; In the first part, they reveal a male Cantonese AI voice database under development; in the second part, they show a cross-language synthesis of a Cantonese song sung by the Mandarin Chinese vocal database using Feng Yi as an example, including a reworded version of Feng Yi’s official demo track.
Cantonese is a dialect widely spoken in southern China, with approximately 86 million native speakers worldwide. As a dialect that inherits the most features of Middle Chinese, Cantonese cannot communicate unobstructed with Mandarin and other Chinese dialects, so they are considered a separate language in the sense of singing. recorded independently in SynthV and sung for Mandarin-speaking singers through cross-language synthesis features.
oh my god, one of my synthV new language idea requests is going to become true someday? (I had mentioned cantonese as one language i would want to see in SynthV)
Are there any languages hinted or confirmed to be coming to synthesizer V in the future?
Just Cantonese and rap support (they show Mandarin and English rap so far; confirmed that Japanese is WIP)
My thoughts:
Okay, wow. I’ll admit that a long time ago, back when I was still a new synth fan, Cantonese was one of my wishlisted languages for Vocaloid (this was before we had a bigger synth market and CeVIO was still new at the time too). Mind you, I was only listening to songs, not using the synth myself. It was pretty important to me as someone who grew up in a household with Cantonese speakers and a high appreciation for Cantonese language songs. The thing is, I wasn’t sure how likely it was at all if VOCALOID would ever support it (they expressed interest in French among some others. I really don’t think it was likely). Tbh my other wishlisted languages were French (supported on Alter/Ego at least), Russian, German, and Italian if I recall correctly.
It feels very strange or surreal that that dream is becoming a reality. I’m glad it’s Synth V doing it too. In a way, it’s both surprising and unsurprising: Unsurprising because it’s clear that Dreamtonics is very into trying to appeal more to the Chinese market through making more vocals, dabbling in Peking Opera (via Feng Yi’s Vocal Mode and a full voice database through Cheng Xiao), and now actually trying to tackle Cantonese support full on. Surprising because 1. for a long time, I didn’t really hold out hope on Cantonese support for a commercial synth (I wrote my wishlist about 9-11 years ago) and 2. even if I expected it, in a way, I didn’t think it would be “so soon”? It probably feels like that because Dreamtonics is very high-speed train on new stuff for SV. And as a possible third reason, it might feel a little funny because I’m used to seeing Spanish and Korean as 4th and 5th options for VOCALOID, plus French for Alter/Ego… so seeing a brand new language is both refreshing and a strange (but good) feeling. It’s hard to explain.
I actually don’t know if I’ll use Cantonese or do Cantonese songs, but it’s a nice option to have. I’m pleased.
The only information so far is the teaser at the end of this video. There is no timeframe given, but considering Japanese isn’t even ready for a technical demonstration it’s probably going to be some time still.
Additionally it says “support for rap voices” which suggests these will be separate, rap-specific voice databases rather than a mode that could be used for any existing singing voice database.
Again, this video is all the information we have so far. If it’s not in this video, we don’t know for sure.
Dreamtonics will be showing off a “soon to be released” Cantonese voice library at the event, described to have outstanding mixed Mandarin and Cantonese singing with proficient and smooth cross-lingual singing synthesis across all 4 available languages.
Please note that it’s not currently confirmed that this was the same voice shown in this past February or someone new.
