Ring Suzune (lost unreleased VOCALOID voicebank; 2011-2012)

VOCALOID is a voice synthesizing application that has been sold commercially since 2004; like text to speech, but with singing.

Ring Suzune and Lui Hibiki were potential VOCALOIDS announced for the VOCALOID3 engine during its pre-release promotions. All activity from Vocaloid Next has deceased and both of them are currently presumed cancelled.

Confirmed designs of the lost vocaloids. Lui on the left, Ring on the right.

A release date of December 12, 2011 was initially confirmed, Ring and Lui were not released on that date. It is now unknown when or if they will ever be released. In 2012, VocaNext picked up Ring's voicebank to continue development but not Lui's, perhaps because female vocalists have a tenancy to sell better, and nothing was heard about the development of Lui from that point forward.

In February 2012, a beta version of Ring Suzune's voicebank was offered to the participants of "Vocaloid Network", a small-scale fan event took place on March 11, 2012. As the number of fan groups which participated the event was only 19, it is considered that only a small number of people received the beta copy, though it was sent to all those interested. Trial use of the beta version was limited to a month.

Song with vocals by Ring's beta demo

The song linked above is one of the few mixes made using Ring's official demo. There are several mixes on YouTube with a synthetic voice said to be Lui's, but none are confirmed to be legit.

In late 2013, the VocaNext website became inaccessible making the status of this vocal, as well as Hibiki Lui, unknown.

In late September 2014, a message was sent to PowerFX asking if they could resume the Ring and Lui project. PowerFX replied saying that they have already attempted to resume the project. They had contacted YAMAHA, but the company said that a release was not possible. Other companies have not yet been asked or have not revealed their curiosity in public.