Hatsune Miku
Hatsune Miku (初音ミク?), sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is a humanoid persona voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media. Hatsune Miku is portrayed as a 16-year-old girl with long turquoise pigtails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2 and Vocaloid 3 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine, and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is sampled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Hatsune Miku has performed at her concerts onstage as an animated projection.[1]
The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for first (初, hatsu?), sound (音, ne?) and future (Miku (ミク?) sounds like a nanori reading of future, 未来, normally read as "mirai"[2]), referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series". According to Crypton, her name is meant to signify the "first sound from the future". (Wikapedia)
Hatsune Miku is the most popular of many, many vocaloids. Though she has a very unnatural, mechanical voice that some people find irritating, if someone asked me who my favorite singer is, I'd probably say either Hatsune Mike or Namine Ritsu (an utauloid, but we'll save that discussion for later). The fact is, the songs are great, and Miku's KAWAII factor is at 100, so there is no reason you shouldn't listen to Miku unless you don't like Japanese music, anime/manga, or the first impession you got of Miku wasn't good, which was only possibe unless you watched, like, Kipple Industry INC. or something.
