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E-CAPSULE Co. Ltd. (飛天膠囊數位科技有限公司 "Fēitiān Jiāonáng Shùwèi Kējì Yŏuxiàn Gōngsī"[1]) is an importer and producer of digital audio workstations and encoders in Taiwan. This company is also known as a distributor of VOCALOID products, notably those produced by Crypton Future Media, Inc., Zero-G Limited,[2] and PowerFX Systems AB.

Under their virtual singer production brand VOICEMITH, E-CAPSULE Co. Ltd planned to develop an AI voice database of their UTAU character XIA YU YAO, following a successful crowdfund campaign launched in May 2022. Initially unconfirmed, the engine was later confirmed in August to be Synthesizer V AI.[3]

About[]

E-CAPSULE Co. Ltd. was established in 2005, and its main products included: foreign music software, music-related mobile accessories, music materials, virtual instrument sound sources, copyrighted music, etc. In recent years, they actively invested time and manpower to develop music-related products, such as music software (Cubase/Sonar/FL Studio/Ableton Live/Mixcraft etc.) instructional videos, loop music materials (music capsules), short-clip soundtrack materials (sound effect capsules), and copyrighted music (Feitian copyrighted music).[4]

Announced in a newsletter on July 18, 2010,[5] E-CAPSULE was to release a Chinese edition of VOCALOID2 SONiKA that came with a new boxart. Users could choose to use the original English or Traditional Chinese interface.[6] It contained an instructional DVD and a comparative table of English and Chinese phonemes in an explanatory leaflet which showed her ability to reproduce about 90% of Chinese pronunciations. It was produced by E-CAPSULE for users in Taiwan, but considerable time was not spent making the sounds closer to natural Chinese. On August 1, E-CAPSULE released SONiKA in Taiwan, and she became the first VOCALOID released in Greater China.[7]

They since released Taiwanese editions of VOCALOID2 products Tonio, Prima, Sweet ANN, and BIG AL. E-CAPSULE also released the first recommended ranges and speeds for these VOCALOIDs as well as provided background information such as age and height. However, both BIG AL and SONiKA already had some details released, some of which were different from the original information. BIG AL was younger, shorter and lighter, and SONiKA was also slightly shorter and lighter. They also distributed VOCALOID products from other companies such as GUMI, Lily, Camui Gackpo, SF-A2 Miki, Nekomura Iroha, VY1, and VY2. It was speculated that they might release VOCALOID3 Oliver in Taiwan as they previously uploaded a demo of him singing. They also distributed Crypton Future Media, Inc. VOCALOID products such as Hatsune Miku V3 English due to E-CAPSULE being listed as a distributor on her website. They also previously sold other Crypton products such as MEIKO V3, Megurine Luka V4X, and Hatsune Miku NT.

E-CAPSULE was also known for their line of VOICEMITH virtual singer characters and Virtual YouTuber characters. Their first UTAU vocal XIA YU YAO was first introduced in 2014 and had multiple subsequent releases since, as well as various pieces of merchandising and promotions.[8] She was followed by other vocalists OSCAR and JOAN, who released for UTAU in August 2016, and E-CAPSULE's first DeepVocal vocalist ZETA released on June 10, 2020. The VOICEMITH line has also produced various virtual YouTubers such as DiNOS, LANCEE, DeeLA and HEI HEI under their "V-CLUB" brand.

Through a successful crowdfunding campaign beginning on May 31, 2022, E-CAPSULE through the VOICEMITH brand was able to raise enough funds to produce an AI singing database for XIA YU YAO.[9] When asked if there would be AI voice libraries for the other VOICEMITH voice synthesizer characters (OSCAR, JOAN, and ZETA), the company replied "Possibly but not this year".[10] In April 2023, it was confirmed that OSCAR was already in the recording stage for Synthesizer V AI.[11][12]

Voice Databases[]

Synthesizer V AI[]

Voice databases developed and distributed by E-CAPSULE Co. Ltd..

VOICEMITH[]

VOICEMITH is the exclusive virtual singer production brand of E-CAPSULE Co. Ltd. and launched their first virtual singer XIA YU YAO in November 2014. Since 2019, VOICEMITH has started to operate a Virtual YouTuber (Vtuber) IP brokerage, and launched their first Vtuber virtual idol LANCEE.[13]

VOICEMITH Logo
VOICEMITH Logo

XIA YU YAO[]

Established under E-CAPSULE towards the end of 2013, a team titled "VOICEMITH" began to implement the "Virtual Singer Development Project" (虛擬歌手養成計畫) in 2014 and created a Mandarin Chinese and Japanese voicebank named XIA YU YAO.[14] Initially conceptualized for the VOCALOID3 engine, YU YAO was released for the UTAU synthesizer on November 10, 2014. She has become a very popular virtual singer in Taiwan, even creating competition with Xin Hua when it was revealed the latter would be a VOCALOID, rather than YU YAO. She had a large amount of merchandise as well as several albums.[15][16]

OSCAR & JOAN[]

On August 4, 2016, VOICEMITH released their second and third virtual singers, OSCAR and JOAN, who were a pair of siblings. Both have Mandarin Chinese libraries with "Inside" and "Outside" appends.

ZETA[]

On June 10, 2020 VOICEMITH released fourth virtual singer and first DeepVocal vocalist, ZETA.

References[]

External links[]

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