What are you favorite choir VST plugins and sample libraries right now, and why? Do you use them in any specific way? Here are my favorites:
Storm Choir 2 by Strezov Sampling
For rhythmic and staccato writing, I love Storm Choir 2. It has an easy to use syllable builder, nice microphone mix options, a stacking mode, and can basically get you a nice sounding action choir straight out of the box. The thing I lack is being able to switch between staccato and marcato to create more variation in the performances, and put more emphasis on the accents.
Olympus Symphonic Choir by Soundiron
For chords and harmonic writing I still use the Olympus range of choirs from Soundiron. It has a great sound in my opinion, but lack a bit in dynamic range and the interface is pretty old and cumbersome.
Omnisphere by Spectrasonics
I know, this is not the most natural choirs you get in the preset bank. But the sound quality and consistency is great, it is easy on the RAM and CPU, and for pad type choirs it still works excellent! =)
So let me hear your thoughts my fellow composers. What are you favorite orchestral choir libraries and VST plugins right now, and why? =)
Mike, I totally agree with your listing. Especially the Choir by Strezov Sampling! I know the guy in real life, their libs are brilliant!
Iād add just two more libraries to the ones stated here:
Eric Whitacre Choir by Spitfire Audio
Itās a perfect all around-er. Recordings and versatility are superb! Iād recommend it to everyone.
Cantus by Best Service
Some may say itās best only for Gregorian Chants, but for me the AAH and OOHs are so deep and usable in all genres. I usually layer them with pad-ish sounds to achieve extra thickness.
Iām happy with the choir libraries Iāve used, I think Iāve achieved the results I wanted, and mentioning which ones I use are found: Tonehammer Requiem Light:
Itās an old library, before Tonehammer was divided into 8dio and Soundiron, but I still use this library, it consumes few resources, I like it very much above all the phrase builder and some effects it has, although its legato joints have certain details. Oceania:
For me it is a great library for epic pieces, the oceanic choir I use it for majestic parts that require great intensity, in addition that its playability is very friendly. The Metropolis Ark choirs:
The Metropolis Ark series is like a jigsaw puzzle, joining the 4 MA bookstores we can get Berlin Choirs hahaha, from epic choirs, soft choirs and magnificent legatos.
Tonehammer, I havenāt seen that name in quite a while! I also use some old libraries, like Symphobia 1 still!
Oceania, yes I need to get that because itās easy to mix between staccato and marcato, and the sound is epic!
Metropolis seems to have many elements that simply works great out of the box. But Iāve heard that matching syllables in choirs is not possible, because they are random?
yes, Metropolis Ark uses random choirs, if it is not required that the syllables have a sequence, it is good to use them, but if not, then the other libraries are much better at that
Problem is if you want female and male choir to sing the same syllables. But yes, other than that I can see it working very fast as you donāt need to program the wordbuilder =)
I would have to second the Eric Whitacre Choir, the interface is incredibly simple to use compared to the East/West choir ( which has its own merits) and the quality is beautiful!
Can you do nice staccato and rhythmic parts on Whitacre Choir? As I write lots of action/rhythmic tracks. I havenāt checked it out other than some demos which were basically that lush sound with big harmonies.
Lacrimosa is one of the biggest choirs ever sampled (200 people). Great for epic music but limited for calm music. The arc patches are usable for calm music but everything above the lowest dynamics sounds too huge. I mostly use it for pretty fast staccatos. The multi vowel patch works really well for that without overlapping the samples which is often a problem from other choir libraries. This is the advantage of Lacrimosa.
But since I got Oceania this is my go-to. Was probably my best buy since a while. Only works for super epic music but this does Oceania extremely well. I believe these are around 40 people recorded who sound way more defined than Lacrimosa - also Oceania has vibration in their voices that Lacrimosa doesnāt has at all. So this is why Oceania sound waaay more epic imho.
But yeah - I actually only have epic choirs. I still need some soft sounding choirs.
