Kevin

**Kevin** is an English vocal developed and distributed by Dreamtonics Co., Ltd., and released as an AI voice database for *Synthesizer V Studio* in February 2022.

His voice provider has not been officially revealed, but Kevin was confirmed to have an American accent.

## Concept

Kevin was created out of Dreamtonics's determination to diversify the lineup of voices and was designed to be a male native American English AI voice.

Like the previous Dreamtonics vocals before him, Kevin was intended to be treated as an official voice database or an indispensable "reference-level" type of singing voice, representing the company's brand quality.

### Etymology

"**Kevin**" is a name of Irish origin meaning "handsome", "beautiful", or "beloved birth". It is the anglicized form of "**Caoimhín**", which is composed of "**Caoim**", meaning "dear" or "noble", and "**-gin**", meaning "birth".

Kevin's name is rendered in kana as "ケビン".

### Appearance

Like previous Dreamtonics vocals, rather than having an official human-like avatar, Kevin is represented by an abstract symbol, the letter "K", which is drawn from the first letter of his name. In the profile image from Dreamtonics, the "K" is mainly bright greenish-yellow with hints of dark blue. In the AH-Software rendition, these colors are darker. The origins of the color scheme were less clear. Characterization is left to the song producers themselves rather than towards the product, so Kevin is open to any form of visual interpretation, allowing the producer to decide what they would like him to look like.

## Voice Libraries

* Kevin AI (*Synthesizer V Studio*), February 4, 2022

## Additional Information

### Marketing

Like previous Dreamtonics vocals, Kevin was treated as an official or standard vocal for the engine, where he could be found in demonstrations of Synthesizer V Studio and its AI capabilities. This also meant that he would be among the first vocals to be equipped with the latest engine updates. While Kevin was released and marketed for Synthesizer V Studio 1.5.0, which introduced Cross-lingual Singing Synthesis, he was also previously used to demonstrate version 1.3.0, which brought significant improvements to the naturalness of AI voices, when he was still an unnamed vocal. After release, he was one of the demonstrative vocals for version 1.6.0, which introduced Instant Mode and Vocal Mode. He was also used to demonstrate "High Dynamics Voice Model" (HDVM). In July 2023, he was featured in the demonstration for "Enhanced Pitch Generation with RLHF".

On the day of his and Ryo's release, he was made available on the newly established official Dreamtonics international store, as well as at AH-Software, which mainly targeted the Japanese market, and the Dreamtonics Taobao store, which mainly targeted the Chinese market. On June 13, 2022, Dreamtonics announced that they launched a new official store for the Chinese market built on WeChat's Mini Program. Users would be able to purchase the Synthesizer V Studio Pro editor and Dreamtonics' vocals through the application in a convenient manner, enjoying the automatic real-time distribution shopping experience. From June 13 to July 13, users were able to take advantage of unlimited 10% off coupons in the new store. It was later clarified that the decision to open this new shopping option was made due to Taobao's new restrictions on the sales of virtual goods as of April 2022, especially for restrictions on shipments without logistics since virtual goods would need to be delivered via email. Up until June 30, Saki Standard was the only Dreamtonics voice database to be made available as a physical copy. Kevin, Saki AI, and Ryo later had physical boxes released on July 21, becoming the first Dreamtonics AI voice databases to receive them. Kevin was also among one of the Synthesizer V vocals that could be trialed at certain Japanese music retail stores where customers can use the software that was set up with the stores' PCs.

On June 24, 2022, Dreamtonics announced its first creation contest in collaboration with AH-Software, Animen, AUDIOLOGIE Co., Ltd., and Eclipsed Sounds, LLC with three competition areas: originals, covers, and cross-lingual synthesis. Creators were encouraged to submit their work regardless of language restrictions. Prizes included cash distribution from bilibili, digital copies of certain Synthesizer V voice databases, and the physical boxed copy of ANRI. Kevin was listed as one of the eligible vocals for this contest.

On December 9, 2022, Dreamtonics announced that Kevin, Saki, Qing Su, Ryo, An Xiao, Feng Yi, Yuma, Natalie, Mai, Cong Zheng, and Xuan Yu officially have their own artist association profiles on NetEase Music. Creators can use the profiles to add to their published songs, providing a more unified retrieval method and higher exposure rate for the works. Dreamtonics would provide assistance services to creators at no charge and would not obtain any income belonging to the artist when associating their works with the singer profiles. Based on NetEase Music's policies, creators needed to provide relevant proof of purchase to NetEase Music's customer service in order to associate a virtual singer with their works, thus, screenshots of receipts would need to be prepared in advance. NetEase Music's customer service would then confirm the request and forward it to Dreamtonics, who would approve the requests within five business days upon receiving them.

### Reputation

Kevin's character status
**Reaction**

Upon revelation of Kevin's voice (prior to the announcement of his name), there were comments of excitement and approval from Western fans, especially as he was the first native English male to be announced and made for the Synthesizer V franchise as a whole. As one of the four upcoming English vocals at the time (which included Eleanor Forte AI, SOLARIA, and ANRI), he was met with great anticipation. Western fans were excited for more English vocals to choose from after three years of only having one available since *Synthesizer V'*s release in 2018 (that being Eleanor Forte), filling in a demand for more in this language. He was regarded as a welcome addition to the English roster as well as the overall masculine voice roster (with the only two released being GENBU, a Japanese vocal, and Muxin, a Mandarin Chinese vocal, at the time).
**Impact**

As a Dreamtonics product to demonstrate the capabilities of Synthesizer V Studio (specifically Synthesizer V AI), Kevin was considered to be one of the default vocals used for tech demos, allowing for producers to compare and understand the differences per update. He had a professional feel and made for a good starting AI voice database, which was especially praised for sounding realistic and helped gauge interest in this type of voice database for Synthesizer V as a whole. Dreamtonics also acknowledged that Kevin was a highly anticipated English male AI singing database.

Upon his and Ryo's release, the new Dreamtonics storefront quickly experienced greater traffic than was expected. On February 7, 2022, AH-Software confirmed that there were many purchases from around the world of Kevin and Ryo throughout their first weekend.
**Miscellaneous**

The first song featuring Kevin to reach 1 million views was "Reckless Battery Burns", an original by GHOST and Vane, which occurred on August 25, 2022.
**Achievements**

* First English male Synthesizer V overall
* First English male voice database to be released from Dreamtonics Co., Ltd.
* One of the first male AI voice databases to be released
* First English male AI voice database to be released

## References

1. ↑ https://dreamtonics.com/en/cross-lingual-support-for-synthesizer-v-ai/
2. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin
3. ↑ https://www.behindthename.com/name/kevin
4. ↑ https://www.ah-soft.com/press/synth-v/20220204.html
5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De4cnZkl5pQ
6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir3eb9lwKp8
7. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb8m\_HmBEt4
8. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYey-utSIyw
9. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKwGR08kCSk
10. ↑ https://t.bilibili.com/671200609838301200
11. ↑ https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv17082866
12. ↑ https://twitter.com/ahsoft/status/1542711016860962816
13. ↑ https://twitter.com/shima\_umeda/status/1598220720546676737
14. ↑ https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv17237015
15. ↑ https://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404844858597835082
16. ↑ https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv15113560
17. ↑ https://twitter.com/dreamtonics\_en/status/1489439741544394755
18. ↑ https://twitter.com/ahsoft/status/1490637840417714177