Macne Shichi

Development
The Macne family is a series of voice bank designed for Reason4 and GarageBand. They are the music sequencer softwares for the Macintosh operating system, developed by MI7 Japan and distributed by Act2. Following the rising popularity of Vocaloid2 Miku Hatsune, which works only on Windows operating system, a voicebank for Macintosh computers was conceptualized in the Japanese voice actress Haruna Ikezawa's regular column 天声姫語 Vox Reginae, Vox Dei ("voice of princess, voice of god," a spoof of Asahi Shimbun's editorial article 天声人語 Vox Populi, Vox Dei or voice of the people, voice of god) carried in the magazine Mac Fan by Mainichi Communications. Haruna provided her voice for the first Macloid Nana Macne, and other voice actor and actress joined the project as Macne gained popularity. The characters are used in Reason4 or GarageBand by selecting one of them as an instrument and altering pitches and lengths of sound files; They can also work normally on UTAU by converting their samples and providing a tuned oto.ini file. Macne Nana was available for purchase as a download through act2's Macne website. Her download files included a few wallpapers, concept art and the .aiff samples. The samples included recordings done in three different pitches, as well as a "chibi"-like voice.

On 29/2/2012, Macne Nana's voicebank was made unavailable for purchase, and act2 announced that they will be releasing newly-recorded updated voicebanks for Macne Nana and Macne Nana Petit, entitled "Macne Nana 2S" and "Macne Petit 2S", to celebrate Macne Nana's third anniversary. On 29/3/2012, the updated voicebanks were released, replacing the original voicebanks.

Macne Nana 2S is currently sold at Macne.net for ¥980 as an already confiqured UTAU-synth voicebank

Voice Configuration
Shichi is used in GarageBand by selecting him as an instrument and altering pitches and lengths of sound files with the aid of the Reason4 plug-in; he can also work normally in UTAU. You can buy Macne Shichi 2S or Macne Petit 2S for 980円 at Macne.net's store. On the original voicebanks, you will have to convert his samples into WAV, and they'll be in Romaji from the start. FRQ files for all wav samples will have to be generated as well before he can be used.

On the 2S voicebank, conversion to .wav files is optional for his use, however it is more preferable.

Some details are based on existing information and usage experience. The details seen here may be subject to change without prior notice.