Cheng Xiao

> “
> One foot of red silk can be a costume, two sleeves can be waved the wind;
> Three lines of recitation, four actors can raise a battle;
> Five turns are like crossing thousands of mountains, six steps are like trekking ten thousand miles;
> Seven turns of the spear dancing, eight directions all show the breeze;
> Nine colors all depict inexhaustible faces, ten types of roles each have their own wonderful.
>
> ”
> —Introduction prior to debut
>
>

**Cheng Xiao** (澄宵) is a Mandarin Chinese vocal developed and distributed by Dreamtonics Co., Ltd., and released as an AI voice database for *Synthesizer V Studio* in January 2023.

Her voice provider has not been revealed.

## Concept

Like previous Dreamtonics vocals before her, Cheng Xiao was intended to be treated as an official voice database or an indispensable "reference-level" type of singing voice, representing Dreamtonics's brand quality. She is created in the image of a Peking opera singer and is one of Dreamtonics's stylized synthetic vocals.

### Etymology

"**Cheng**" (澄; *Chéng*) means "clarity" and references clean and clear water. It is also homophonic with the color orange (橙; *Chéng*), likely referencing the color of Cheng Xiao's logo. "**Xiao**" (宵; *Xiāo*) means "night" or "evening". Together, the name implies that Cheng Xiao's singing is very pure in the style of Peking opera, and in combination with her logo, it depicts a warm imagery of traditional Chinese nights based on the orange glow of candles.

### Appearance

Like previous Dreamtonics vocals, rather than having an official human-like avatar, Cheng Xiao is represented by an abstract symbol, the letters C and X, which are drawn from the first letters per Chinese character of her name in romanization. The letters are orange with hints of white and blue on both letters. The C is is rectangular-shaped and the X is shorter than the C. Characterization is left to the song producers themselves rather than the product, so Cheng Xiao is open to any form of visual interpretation, allowing the producer to decide what they would like her to look like.

## Voice Libraries

* Cheng Xiao AI (*Synthesizer V Studio*), January 9, 2023

## Additional Information

### Marketing

Cheng Xiao was noted to be part of Dreamtonics's lineup of stylized synthetic voices and was designed for and modeled after Peking opera style of singing. She was acknowledged as the first commercial voice database to be completely dedicated to the genre, unlike Feng Yi before her, who could only achieve the style of singing through the use of her "Opera" Vocal Mode.

Like previous Dreamtonics vocals, Cheng Xiao was treated as an official or standard vocal for the engine, where she could potentially be found in demonstrations of Synthesizer V Studio and its AI capabilities. This also meant that she would be among the first vocals to be equipped with the latest engine updates.

On February 3, 2023, Dreamtonics announced that Cheng Xiao had her own artist association profile on NetEase Music. Creators can use the profile to add to their published songs, providing a more unified retrieval method and a 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 of receiving them.

### Reputation

Cheng Xiao's character status
**Reaction**

As a vocalist without an official character, this allowed producers and fans to create their own for Cheng Xiao, resulting in a variety of designs. Her voice was also noted to sound professional, well done, realistic, and was met with overall positive and impressed reactions.
**Impact**

As a Dreamtonics product to demonstrate the capabilities of Synthesizer V Studio (specifically Synthesizer V AI), Cheng Xiao was considered to be one of the default or reference vocals used for tech demos, allowing for producers to compare and understand the differences per update. she 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.
**Achievements**

* First commercial voice library overall to be completely dedicated to Peking Opera genre.

## References

1. ↑ https://t.bilibili.com/742804307600998440
2. ↑ https://twitter.com/LenKiMo/status/1606215331273265152 - Translation by @LenKiMo
3. ↑ https://t.bilibili.com/758367941937856552

## External links

* Cheng Xiao NetEase Music artist profile