Lola and Leon

Post by **Neil B** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:56 am

Wow!
I've just had a demo and training video demo of the new Zero G "Lola" and "Leon" software packages.
Can computers sing? They can now! Shame I'm still on Win 98.

I believe they are available from Time and Space in the UK.
There are downloadable MP3's apparently with various styles from hip hop to Ave Maria.
They're not perfect. They're first generation, but I'm speechless.

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 8:52 am

Yeah, pretty amazing, eh?

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 11:07 am

Yeah, amazing, and also introducing a new copyprotection, so now u need to have a LAN card in the DAW, just to use a friggin app! not just for registering, but for USE!

so there goes another interrupt.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 11:32 am

Lots of demos by people who have bought it over on KvR. They ALL sound absolutely woeful. Maybe you could use it as experimental voice stuff, but if you're going to do that just use a vocoder & some effects.

It also seems to take forever to program a single phrase, ie: about an hour per word

Oh, and it has some serious bugs which means it doesn't work properly as a VSTi plug.

EDIT: But when they get one of these that works properly, I'll be first in line to buy

[ This Message was edited by: Spirit on 2004-02-25 11:33 ]

Post by **Neil B** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 12:23 pm

Thanks for setting the record straight Spirit - he always has been a good salesman in the shop !!!!

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 5:57 pm

I wonder if Miriam will be better. Maybe the thing is over hyped. I hope it improves. It would be nice if it had speech recognition so you wouldn't need to learn the phonemes.

I agree the copy protection is a horrid idea. I still might buy the software eventually but if some other company makes one with a less intrusive copy protection I would get that instead. The reason that companies can get away with this is because there is little choice in the market place. One day I hope all the good software will be open source. That is one way to get rid of illicit software piracy and intrusive copy protection.

[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2004-02-25 18:12 ]

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 4:13 am

piddi wrote:

Yeah, amazing, and also introducing a new copyprotection, so now u need to have a LAN card in the DAW, just to use a friggin app! not just for registering, but for USE!

Sod that!! We have a similar problem at work...one of our teams has to use 'ClearCase' as their revision control system which is brilliant, but licences cost...about the same as Switzerland, so there's a remote 'license server' machine at our customer's offices. If the link to that (or the machine) goes down, then we're left with 10+ people who can do absolutely nothing, not even look at any source files!

Royston

[ This Message was edited by: Counterparts on 2004-02-26 04:49 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 7:02 am

what's the trouble ? an ethernet card got to have a unique hardware id by definition, that's part of the standard.
You probably don't even need a LAN running to use that id for an encryption/decryption process.
Imho it's as acceptable as the CWA scheme, it's even more simple to handle.

cheers, Tom

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 7:12 am

Ah. I'd interpreted it as meaning that the software communicated through the LAN card to some server for authentification (and subsequent use of the software).

That really would be a PITA!

I can't see why they've chosen this route though...there's lots of ways to derive a unique identifier for an individual machine without having to resort to the MAC address of the LAN card! Over-engineered madness.

Royston

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 7:16 am

well, another thing is potentially blocking another PCI port.

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:28 am

Well, I'm not about to connect an Ethernet card on my work machine. It's not even connected to the internet or a network.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 10:08 am

On 2004-02-26 07:12, Counterparts wrote:
...I can't see why they've chosen this route though...there's lots of ways to derive a unique identifier for an individual machine without having to resort to the MAC address of the LAN card!...

you can bet that the protection frequently uses this adress during runtime - a unique number generated for a challenge-response procedure just to register the stuff probably wouldn't withstand a single day.

That routine in question is almost certainly not LAN or driver related as this would be far too obvious and traceable.
But you wouldn't accept the vocal qualities anyway, would you, Paul ?

I've only listened to a few of their demos. Tt's an interesting approach to sound generation, but 'practical' results seem even less expressive than the least talented idol show participants

cheers, Tom

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 10:19 am

I thought that I should at least check out the demos so that I know what I'm talking about!

Technically, I was very impressed, but...the sound is soooo coooold

(shiver)

No heart, no warmth. I don't think that the likes of Paul Robeson have much to worry about!

Royston

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 1:37 pm

I think it all depends on how you use it. A synthesizer can be expressive or cold. It's just a tool neither good nor bad.

Adding lyrical content gives it another dimension over instrumental music.

Instead of making it more realistic, what they really ought to do is to go in the other direction and make it like a synthesizer with tons of knobs and sliders to make unique unreal singing. Of course this idea is far too original for them to implement it. The goal is almost always to copy something else rather than to do something new. I wish everyone would get more creative.