MY NAME IS SONIKA!
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Height: 167cm (5'6)
Weight: 58kg (128 pounds)
Voice Provider: It is a mystery
Company: Zero-G Limited
She's green, She sings, She isn't GUMI!
SONiKA is the name given to a voicebank created by Zero-G Ltd and released on July 14, 2009 for Yamaha's VOCALOID2 vocal synthesis engine, modelled on the voice of young British female pop singer. Over the years she has received various official designs, with the most popular ones being Mario Wibisono's and Shinia's (intended for her Taiwanese release). The majority of them commonly depict her as a young girl with long green hair and a ponytail with shiny yellow clothes and star motifs.
High quality in our hearts!
One thing I used to hear from Vocaloid producers is that SONiKA is extremely hard to work with. I always thought this was an exaggeration until I obtained the voicebank for myself. And well... let's just say that they're right to some extent. SONiKA's recordings are not exactly high quality: her voice is quiet and echoey, she's not the best at pronouncing consontants, and she cannot growl. In the community, there's even a rumor that Zero-G recorded SONiKA during a Skype call with her voice provider, and that as a result you can hear a Skype notification sound when she sings certain notes. But allow me to spoil the fun for you, the infamous notification sound in SONiKA's recordings is actually just reverb. Skype was relatively unpopular around the time SONiKA was recorded, with MSN Messenger and TeamSpeak being the go-to options when it came to voice chatting. The truth is that SONiKA was likely recorded in an average house instead of a studio.
But poor quality and Skype jokes aside, don't let this discourage you from using her in your songs. Tuning SONiKA is very much possible, and if you know what you're doing, you are most definitely capable of producing some amazing songs with her. Besides, SONiKA is one of the most unique vocal-synths in the Engloid family. Cool green hair, a soft, melodic voice, pop-star fashion, what more do you want?.
Will SONiKA ever be updated?
Short Answer: Maybe... Maybe not.
In the late 2010s, rumors circulated that SONiKA was finally set to receive an update after a decade. Sadly, a few years later, we learned that her VOCALOID4 voicebank had been canceled. Whether SONiKA—or any of Zero-G's voicebanks—will ever get a proper update remains uncertain. It's been years since their last involvement with the VOCALOID engine, and their relationship with Yamaha might have weakened after VOCALOID5’s release.
But not all hope is lost. PowerFX's voicebanks have recently returned years after the company's departure from Vocaloid. While the V4 update may never see the light of day, SONiKA could potentially reappear in the future as an AI voicebank on another engine.