Operation Guides
Using & Fitting Community USTs
Before you begin:
- This guide was written and coordinated by members of the UTAU community and has no affiliation with the UTAU software itself or its creator.
- This guide was written with users of WINDOWS 10 in mind, advice does not immediately translate to other operating systems or other versions of UTAU, such as UTAU-Synth for MacOS.
- This guide relates to the original UTAU software by Ameya which released in 2008 and NOT OpenUTAU, the fanmade UTAU alternative, as such the utility of this resource may vary.
- While the process of operating UTAU is ultimately safe when done correctly, JOEZCafe and other parties involved in JOEZUTAU projects take no responsibility for any incidents, loss or damage to users or property from following these instructions.
Community USTs, an introduction:
UST making is a very lengthy and complicated process, so it's also commonplace for other users to distribute their own complete USTs for other users to adapt from.
This guide goes over the process known as "Fitting" that users must undergo when using a voicebank on a UST file made by another user for a different vocalist.
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Before we begin, it's important to note that in the UTAU community, there is an etiquette regarding how other people's USTs are utilised.
If you plan on publishing works using USTs by other users, please remember to give credit to the original creators of the UST files you use (even if you make your own changes) and be mindful of any rules or terms the original creator may ask of you (eg. Not redistributing the UST with other users).
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Always remember to practice good UST etiquette in the UTAU community!
Is the UST compatible?:
As you've no-doubt seen in the previous guides available, each voicebank type in UTAU is widely different and utilises a different UST making process.
As such, it's good to learn some of the general visual signifiers of what type of UST you've downloaded and whether or not your desired vocalist will be compatible without extensive changes to the notation or aliasing.
CV Japanese
If the lyrics in the UST are primarily standalone hiragana characters with no additional prefixes or suffixes in the vast majority of notes, then the UST is compatible with CV banks that are configured in Kana.
Some CVVC banks can read CV USTs straight away depending on how they're configured, but some may require the aliases on notes containing vowel sounds to be different in order to read them.
CV USTs can be used with VCV voicebanks, but it first requires changing all of the aliases in the notes to ones a VCV voicebank can read, which can be done by hand, or using a converter plugin.
Romaji
If the UST looks similar to that of a Japanese UST (CV, VCV or CVVC) but instead of Hiragana, the aliases are written entirely in roman characters, the UST was made for a Romaji bank (Banks containing aliases written in Romanised Japanese), these are not directly compatible with Kana voicebanks without changing the lyrics first, which can be done by hand or by using a converter plugin.
VCV Japanese
If the lyrics in the UST are Hiragana characters, but with prefixes of romanised vowels, the UST is only compatible with VCV voicebanks.
VCV USTs can be used with CV and CVVC voicebanks, but it first requires changing all of the aliases in the notes to ones a CV or CVVC voicebank can read, which can be done by hand, or using a converter plugin.
CVVC Japanese
If the lyrics in the UST are standalone Hiragana characters similar to CV, but alongside each note is additional VC notes with romanised aliases, the UST is only compatible with CVVC voicebanks.
CVVC USTs can be used with CV banks, but they first require removing all of the VCs by hand, which is done by changing all of the VC notes into Rest Notes and extending the CVs so they overlap and delete the Rest Notes created.
CVVC USTs can also be used with VCV banks, but not only do they require removing the VCs as well, but you must then change all of the aliases in the notes to ones a VCV voicebank can read, which can be done by hand, or using a converter plugin.
Arpasing English
If the lyrics in the UST are Arpabet diphones, then the UST is exclusively compatible with voicebanks that use Arpasing English.
No other voicebank types of any languages, including English banks that use a method other than Arpasing will work with Arpasing USTs without completely reworking the notation and aliasing.
Other English Methods
If the UST is for English vocals, but the phonetic system in the aliases is something different to Arpabet, then the UST is not compatible with Arpasing voicebanks and is instead compatible with a different method of English synthesis, such as VCCV English which uses the PaintedCZ system and Delta CVVC English which uses X-SAMPA.
For these USTs to work with Arpasing, completely reworking the notation and aliasing would be required.
Fitting:
When a UST is made, everything is assembled with the UST maker's currently equipped vocalist in mind, not just in terms of vocal parameters, but in timing parameters too.
In other words, a UST will sound glitchy straight away if another vocalist is used without some necessary adjustments.
If you're using a UST by another creator but with a different compatible vocalist, try the following process.
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1. Highlight all notes in the UST with CTRL+A, then Right Click and go to Region Properties
2. In the Note Properties window, set each parameter to the following values:
- Intensity to 100
- Modulation to 0
- Preutterance and Overlap cleared using the "Clear" button
- Consonant Velocity (beta) to 100
- BRE, Flags and STP completely cleared with no values (Not Grey, the boxes should be White)
then click OK to submit these changes.
3. While all the notes are still selected, click RESET in the Envelopes toolbar, then P2P3
4. Check the UST for any note aliases your equipped voicebank does not recognise, a variety of USTs use extra samples and aliases that only a small range of voicebanks recognise, making necessary adjustments to these notes will allow your current vocalist to read them.
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The UST should now be FULLY useable by the voicebank of your choice.
Troubleshooting - When community USTs
crash UTAU:
On some rare occasions, pressing Play on a vocal phrase while using a community UST will crash UTAU, when this occurs, this is often because UTAU is unable to recover the sampler that the UST originally used while it was on the creator's PC and is no longer compatible with UTAU's default sampler.
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To fix this, ensure that "Use resampler.dll (Setting isn't saved to the project)" is unchecked and set Tool 1 (append) and Tool 2 (resample) to a third-party sampler of your choice, such as Moresampler, for more on Samplers, refer to Recommended Tools in Section 1.
