What's currently the best library/plugin for vocals?

[Xleth]

Hello,

Is there a consensus as to what is currently considered the best sample library/plugin for vocals?

I'm looking for one that meets the following criteria:

- 1 sample every 1-2 notes at maximum (e.g. 1 sample for C1 and C#1, another sample for D1 and D#2 etc. or one for each semitone, but not one sample for three or more semitones).

- Solo voices (a single person singing)

- Choir (multiple people singing in unison)

- All natural pitch ranges

- Children (ideally both girls and boys) and adults

- Round-robin samples

- Short vowel sounds as well as long loops (ideally with Loop-Until-Release)

- Separate banks for soft/moderate timbres (or, alternatively, decent velocity layers).


Is there such a library?

Thank you.

[Mike Greene]

I don't think there's any single library that covers all those bases, but here are some that cover some of these things:

For choirs, you have some great choices:
8Dio has Requiem Pro and a Liberis, which is a symphonic children's library. Both include stage recorded solo vocalists as well.

SpoundIron has Requiem Light (Tonehammer split into 8Dio and SoundIron, so they split the Requiem baby in the divorce) as well as the Olympus Symphonic Coir, the Mars Men's Choir and Venus Women's Choir. These all get great reviews.

Cinesamples has Voxos Epic Virtual Choirs, which also has a lot of fans. This is mostly choirs, but like the 8Dio and SoundIron offerings, also includes some soloists.

Vilharmonic is a brand new company that has just announced "Voices of Prague," which sounds very promising.

EastWest has "EWQL Symphonic Choirs." It's a little older, but the Wordbuilder is pretty cool when it works. The also have Voices of Passion for solo female vocals. There are reviews on various sites about this one.

Bela-D has some pretty cool solo vocalists. These are also on the older side, but I've always loved the tone of their singers.

Realivox is my own company, but for solo female vocalists, I dare say it's worth a look. 5 singers chromatically sampled, each doing 30 keyswitch-selectable articulations, with full sampled legato for all. Voices can be stacked for pretty decent sound sections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WcWFpUbVxo

[Xleth]

Thank you for the informative post.

[Karmacomposer]

Realivox sounds AMAZING. If I could afford it, i'd buy it right now.

Mike

[ZenPunkHippy]

Realivox is my own company, but for solo female vocalists, I dare say it's worth a look. 5 singers chromatically sampled, each doing 30 keyswitch-selectable articulations, with full sampled legato for all. Voices can be stacked for pretty decent sound sections.

Hi Mike,

Your demos are very impressive, particularly the sustained legato phrasing. Not something I've heard before in a vocal sample library, but this is exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks for posting

Peace,
Andy.

[BKKJohn]

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I like the Realivox Ladies library very much! When will there be a Gentlemen library?

John Melcher
www.johnmelcher.net (http://www.johnmelcher.net)

[Mystic]

Not a fan of the Relivox stuff. Sounds too robotic to me but in their defense, solo voices are really REALLY hard to capture at the moment. It will be a few years before we're able to do it well at this point.

In addition to Mike Greene's list, I'd say SoundIron's Mercury Symphonic Boychoir is worth a look.

I have a feeling EW is working on a new Choir so I expect we might hear something on that within the next 12 months.

[BKKJohn]

I need male and female solo voices (preferably SATB) for "classical" music, something like The Swingle Singers. I don't quite understand how the phrase editors work for either Realivox or Bela D Media (if I program an 8-syllable phrase, when does the sample change from one syllable to the next?).

The biggest frustration in evaluating these libraries is the audio demos. They're mostly over-orchestrated "film" music with the vocals buried deep in the mix and awash in reverb. I'd like to hear the voices solo, or with soft piano accompaniment. I'm not interested in the writers' composing chops.

Do the five singers in Realivox "Ladies" have different ranges? "Blue" might be ideal (if it sounds good enough) for a female voice because of the extensive set of consonants and vowels. But there's nothing for men.

Bela D, which has SATB for $125 each, also requires the full ($399) Kontakt version, which comes loaded with 43GB of samples I don't need (and I don't need it for anything else). That's $900 for the set, >$200 more than the full VSL Solo Voice library (which admittedly has a very limited range of sounds).

John Melcher

[Mike Greene]

We do plan to release a male version in a few months.

Also note that we have a 30 day refund policy, so you can buy the Ladies (or Realivox Blue) and see for yourself whether they will do what you need. If not, send me an email and I’ll give you all your money back. So there’s no risk, plus we have no unhappy customers this way.

Regarding the phrase editor, check out the video below. It explains the phrase editor in Realivox Blue, which is in some ways different from the Ladies (Blue has a wordbuilder, while the Ladies is restricted to 58 certain syllables.) But the principle of Phrase Legato and Vowel Legato are the same, so the process works with either:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXfpziN01uM

[bigcat1969]

Blue is amazing! I'm the worlds most non-gifted musical messer arounder and even I have fun getting her to sing. To me she sounds better than vocaloid.
I think there is an update coming for her soon?

[BKKJohn]

Thanks! The video clears it all up - and lets me hear the sound in much greater detail. To my ears it sounds a bit mechanical for blues but should work perfectly for "art music".

I prefer the variety of 5 voices of Ladies, but the extended vocabulary of Blue (and a forthcoming male version) seals the deal. I'll be ordering very soon!

John Melcher

[Fleer]

And then there's SoundIron Voice of Gaia Strawberry (and Francesca).

[garryknight]

Clara's Vocal Kontakt Library is pretty good. I used it to do the vocals in the first and last parts of this track The other vocals are mainly MidEast Vocals which I also recommend, and Realivox Blue which I heartily recommend and use on most of my tracks that have vocals.

They all require Kontakt 5, though Blue only requires the Kontakt 5 Player.

[TrekStar]

Also note that we have a 30 day refund policy, so you can buy the Ladies (or Realivox Blue) and see for yourself whether they will do what you need. If not, send me an email and I’ll give you all your money back. So there’s no risk, plus we have no unhappy customers this way.

wow...that's cool, I'm deeply impressed...(Scratching my head and thinking about buying "blue")

[quantum7]

I have thousands of $$$ in vocal libs, mainly because no single vocal library can do everything you may want it to do. The human voice is the most complicated instrument to capture IMO, and every library will have strengths and weaknesses mostly due to the performer, and not necessarily how each sample dev presents it, although some do better than others. Vocal libraries are extremely important to the type of music I produce......so naturally I am compelled to own nearly every vocal library out there.