Virtual Singer

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: When starting music while Virtual Singer is active, the vertical line showing playing position in my piece moves irregularly. Why?

While music is playing, several tasks are performed at the same time. Each task has a priority level. Here are the most important tasks, sorted in decreasing order of priority:

Playing music: Building the digital sound signal from written notes. This is the most important task because stopping it, even for a short time, causes breaks or crackles in the music. How this task is processed by the computer can be set up in Configuration>Digital output configuration.
Calculating human voices: This is a complex task, but it can nevertheless be performed while music is playing. This calculation must always be completed ahead of the music: if the music catches up, the singing voice will become uneven.
Displaying scrolling score and playing position vertical line: This is performed only if time remains, because a smooth music output is more important.

This is why, when playing a complex piece or when asking for human voice calculation while playing music, the playing position marker may move intermittently. As soon as the human voice is completely calculated, the movement becomes smooth again.

Notice that a red arrow blinks above each singer icon while its voice calculation is in progress.

Question: Several sung staves are included in my document, but only one singer appears in the Virtual Singer palette. What should I do?

Singer icons are located on stage according to their power and panning location. If several singers have the same power and panning value, their icons can cover each other. Move the icon of the first singer slightly to reveal the others.

Question: If I change settings for a voice linked to a staff and I want to send the .MUS file to a friend, do I have to send him anything else?

No, because all information about voice settings is stored in the .MUS file.

Question: What if my friend does not own Virtual Singer?

Then the staff which is sung on your computer will be played with the staff standard instrument on his. Tell your friend to install Virtual Singer!

Question: I defined a voice, but I do not want anyone else to edit it. How can I do that?

Protect your document from editing (File>Protect menu option).

Question: I defined a voice and I want to send it to a friend. How can I do that?

In the voice editing window, save this voice and send its file (with a .PRV extension, located in the "Voices" subfolder of Virtual Singer) to your friend. He'll have then to copy this file into his own "Voices" subfolder. You can send your voice file to us if you want it to be included in the default voices list.

Question: There is only one staff in my document, but the Virtual Singer progress bar says three human voices are computed. Why?

Proabaly because there is a three-note chord on this staff. Since a human being can only sing one note at a time, Virtual Singer generates several voices to sing chords. Please note that this can increase the computing time drastically...

Question: Why can't it also sing in Swedish, Swahili or Smurf?

You can't define another language yourself. However, if you know the pronunciation rules for a particular language, please do not hesitate to tell us. Ideally, we would like a text file containing, for as many written words in the language as possible, the corresponding pronunciation in SAMPA (or other phonetic notation). In addition, we need the list of phonemes in the language as well as samples of how they are pronounced.