| Zero-G Ltd. | |
| Type: | Public |
| Genre: | Music and video |
| Foundation: | [1] |
| Location: | London, England |
| Area Served: | British Isles, European Union |
| Industry: | Software, Internet |
| Products: | Products |
| Services: | |
Zero-G is a British company that develops sound libraries, sound effects and audio loops. It also develops "singing" synthesisers using the Vocaloid engine developed by Yamaha Corporation.
In the early 1990s, Zero-G released the Datafile series, a trilogy of sample libraries comprising samples taken from the personal collection of Zero-G's founder, Ed Stratton. They were widely used in electronic music in the 1990s, particularly British house and drum and bass. The samples were unlicensed and the packs are no longer commercially available.[2]
Zero-G has also released other known sample packs such as the Cuckooland series, Planet of the Breaks, and Ethnic Flavours.
Zero-G developed an English edition of Vocaloid software. They subsequently were given recommendations by Crypton Future Media to Yamaha Corporation.[3] The company then went on to releasing both the first Vocaloid voices and the first English voices. The first Vocaloids, Leon and Lola, were released by Zero-G on 3 March 2004, both of which were sold as a "Virtual Soul Vocalist". Leon and Lola made their first appearance at the NAMM Show on 15 January 2004.[4] Leon and Lola were also demonstrated at the Zero-G Limited booth during Wired Nextfest and won the 2005 Electronic Musician Editor's Choice Award.[5] Zero-G later released Miriam, with her voice provided by Miriam Stockley, in July 2004. A patch was later released to update all Vocaloid engines to Vocaloid 1.1.2, adding new features to the software, although there were differences between the output results of the engine.[6]
After interest in Vocaloids grew, Zero-G began reselling their Vocaloid products again on their website, and were considering to update their box art to match current Vocaloid trends better.[7]
Zero-G's first Vocaloid 2 product, Prima, came out on 14 January 2008 with voice of a Soprano opera singer. The second Vocaloid 2 product, Sonika, is marketed as being able to speak any language, even though she is primarily an English vocalist.
An edition of Sonika was released in Taiwan on 1 August 2010. Users can choose to use the original English or traditional Chinese interface, however it does not have a Chinese language input method or a Chinese singing voice. This is the first edition of Vocaloid software widely released to speakers of Chinese.[8] [9] [10]