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  • Anyone with experience in using sampled choirs?

    Sorry, a little off-topic - at least until the VSL choir appears [[;)]] - does anyone know which of the current sampled choirs would work best with German text? - Or text at all for that matter? It's hard to tell from the few demos around because they don't seem to try much.

    (Or do I have to wait until the VSL 'choral text-tool' appears with the 'vocal cube?' Can't wait actually!! [:)] )

    Thanks for any input,

    Simon

  • I have Quantum Leap Voices of the Apocalypse. It's not too bad, but the version I bought is 100% manual. There's a new version with a tool that makes it easier, but no upgrade path as far as I can tell, which really angers me. Otherwise it's pretty good, and on top of a thich orchestration sounds very realistic. It should work fine for German. There are only a couple vowel sounds in German that don't exist in English, and you can problaby fake them with the English sounds.

    Personally, though, I'd wait for Vienna.

  • I have the "Symphony of Voices" 5-CDROM set and I love it. It has mostly vowel sounds and evolving vowel sounds, along with a lot of phrases and such. I wrote a piece that uses it for all the vocal parts -- you can give it a listen here:

    www.mp3.com/kerrymuzzey

    I also just saw that Ilio is releasing the Vitous Classical Choirs set, and the demo on their website sounds pretty good.

    Kerry

  • Hi Kerry I always thought you were a girl hehe. Miroslav can go jump in a lake, I heard a demo of that new library and it doesn't sound as good as the old libraries and it's $800.00! I think this guy takes pleasure in ripping people off [:P]

  • I had bought the Voices of the Apocalypse about a year ago and recently got their free utility for doing text. It seems to work and is pretty amazing. It is somewhat like the performance tool in that you use it along side Giga and type in the syllables you want, selecting from a list of all the vowels and consonants, and then load them. The notes then play with those syllables. It is not absolutely perfect words, like a live choir, but as far as I have experimented with it is an exciting development. It seems to me that it would be very good with Latin text, like Do-mi-ne, Ky-ri-e, etc. They also have a version of that tool that you pay for - more elaborate and maybe better though I haven't tried it.

    As far as I know there is NOTHING else that does words other than a few set already-performed ones, like the Symphony of Voices, or the Miraslav with a few EE and OH and Ah vowels, etc. But the V.O.T.A. is the only complete all consonant, all vowels sampled choir in existence.

    By the way, I do NOT agree with that trashing of Miraslav. Yeah, his stuff is expensive but was fantastic quality for the time it came out and still sounds damn good. The choir he did is more current in technology, and sounds quite impressive though it doesn't have all the syllabic voicing like the V.O.T.A.

  • That's nice if Miroslav's stuff sounded good long ago but when years later and the price is still super high I call that ripping people off. VOTA sounds a lot better to me than his new choir and VOTA is almost half the price.

  • Thanks very much indeed guys! [:D]

    I'll think about it. The official demos available are not up to much so it's down to people's advice like yourselves.

    Does anyone from the Vienna team have some info for us on when the VSL choir idea might take shape? Are we talking months... or years [[:|]] ?! Seems like it'll be popular!

    Thanks again,

    Simon

  • Miroslav has the best strings out of anyone I've heard (including Vienna - sorry!) But the programming is not that good by today's standards, and yes it is way too expensive for that library, so it's not worth it.

    It turns out I DO have Version 2 of VOTA (who knew?) and I can use the text tool, and yes it does work pretty well, but the documentation is all but nonexistant so I can't, for example, figure out how to perform multiple parts.

  • Have the Miroslav strings changed from the original unlooped SampleCell ones that came out ten years ago? If not, I have to disagree with that opinion.

  • And I own both Symphony Of Voices and VOTA. Both are good, and I wouldn't want to live without either library. Both have their strength and weaknesses. The VOTA utility is VERY cool for forming phrases, but not perfect. It DOES take some work, but it's worth it! I agree about the Miroslav. It's old, it's limited, it's too expensive. The Miroslav libraries are just in general overpriced, and nowhere near as good as what we have today. Yes, I do own Miroslav as well, so I speak from experience.

    Devon