MACNE Series (Mac音シリーズ) is an imported UTAU group. At the time of release, VOCALOID and UTAU were both released for the PC, leaving Macintosh computers with no such software for music users in Japan. The MACNE Series would serve to fill that void. For Mac users, the Macne series was one of the best options for vocal music creation at the time, this made them popular with Japanese software users of Reason and GarageBand.
History[]
The Macne Series is a series of voicebanks designed for Reason 4 and GarageBand. They are the music sequencer softwares for the Macintosh operating systems, developed by MI7 Japan and distributed by act2, Inc. The characters are used by selecting one of them as an instrument and altering pitches and lengths of sound files.
The idea of releasing 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 voicebank Macne Nana, and other voice actors and actresses joined the project as Macne gained popularity. Kikuko Inoue then provided the voice of Macne Coco White and Black's. During Macne Papa's release, a 6 day event was made that included samples of the voice actor Jōji Nakata.
After Macne Coco Black's voicebank was removed from market sales, in February 2011 she returned with improved vocals and a new boxart. Macne Papa's voicebank was also removed from sales for improvement purposes, but has yet to make a return. The newest character to this series is Macne Nana Whisper (or Sasayaki-san, meaning Whisper Angel).[1]
On February 29, 2012, Macne Nana's original voicebank was retired from sale, 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. Their new designs were based on the new iPhone 4S. The updated voicebanks were released on March 27, replacing the original Nana and Petit.
Voicebanks[]
By converting the samples to .wav format and providing a tuned oto.ini file they can function in the UTAU program. Although, these new files cannot work with Reason or GarageBand. The allowance for the vocals to be converted is due to being sold under Open-source license unlike VOCALOID. However, this does not permit users to share the voicebanks produced from UTAU or in their original state. Using them for Reason or GarageBand does not produce the same results when used for UTAU.
Trivia[]
- Their family name is "Mac音" which means "MAC Sound". This was later changed to "Macne/マクネ" for Macne Nana's first ever VOCALOID3 voicebank release.