Dreamtonics / Choir Voice Collections

[Piet De Ridder]

Dreamtonics have released three choir packs for Synthesizer V: the Choir Voice Collections.

- Collection 1: features Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices perfect for gospel, worship, and backings for pop, R&B, rock, and electronic music.
- Collection 2: features Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Tenor, and Baritone voices suited for classical, operatic, and cinematic scoring.
- Collection 3: features Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices ideal for folk, hymnal, and ceremonial styles.

"After two years of intensive research and meticulous recording processes, these premium-quality, expressive, and easy-to-use collections for use within Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro promise to redefine virtual choir creation, offering composers and music producers unparalleled realism and control."

Until February 28th, these three collections (which can be purchased separately) are reduced in price by 20%, which translates into $149 instead of the usual $179 per pack, and $299 instead of $537 for the bundle.



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[Erik]

Impressive !
The plug-in was on sale a few weeks back and I almost purchased it, for some pop songs demos - i’m terrible at singing. The in-depth video seemed convincing, for my limited use at least.

[Duncan Krummel]

This was an easy purchase for me. I regularly write for local choirs, and mockups are super important to convince community choirs to take a chance on new works. I had been using Dreamtonics' previous solo voice libraries for this; even with extensive editing, the pop sound was always present. So, these choir voices are already a huge step forward. I'm redoing mockups of several choir pieces right now, so while it's still early days, I can give some thoughts.

First, the negative:

• It boggles my mind how much folks seem to think classically trained singers scoop. Just out of the box, the choirs sound like classically trained singers singing with pop inflection. Thankfully, you can edit away all of the scoops, but it's extremely tedious.

• Similarly, the humanization parameters (note start, phrase end, and pitch) are all far too extreme. Out of the box, it sounds like a decent, not great, choir sight reading a piece for the first rehearsal. I've set these all to 0.25x, but since these parameters are attached to the Notes Panel and not the Voice Panel, I can't save these as part of a preset. Each new mockup requires I set these fresh.

• The timbre of the sopranos and altos tends towards the nasally at times, rather than staying rounded with a lifted soft palate towards the top end of the staff. It's a significant improvement over the pop vocal libraries, but singing above the staff for sopranos is neither rare nor challenging, so this is slightly disappointing. I'm going to play with the mouth opening parameter to see if this improves anything.

• The timbre of tenors and basses tends towards what I'll describe as an old smoker's voice. It's far too breathy and gravely. I have yet to hear lower voices, tenors especially, properly recorded in any choir library on the market. Yes, this includes Dominus, EW Choirs, Voxos... you name it. I fully believe the singers they record are fantastic, but they are not having them sing correctly, or something, because the result is always too strained a sound, or - as in this case - too geriatric (no offense to any older readers; the voice is just the only instrument that ages with us). Some of this is mitigated through reducing the breathiness and tension parameters, but the core sound still suffers slightly as a result.

• The 3 choirs source phonemes from different libraries. Choir 1 (the pop, gospel choir) is the only natively english choir. Choir 2 (classical, cinematic) is sourced from Chinese, and Choir 3 (folk, classical) is sourced from Japanese. The borrowing of similar phonemes across languages is brilliant, and I'm so glad that's something Dreamtonics has invested time into, but it does lead to an "English with a bit of an accent" sound. I use a custom library of pronunciations that grows with each piece I mockup, but there's still an amount of further editing needed each time, and it's never 100% there.

• Small complaint from me, but I had created 2 custom scripts to translate MIDI CC data into loudness and tension curves for dynamics. I found the right setting for the solo voices, but the choirs seem to follow a different curve. I'll just have to spend some time figuring this out.

EDIT: I need to add two more complaints. SynthV adds breaths before the onset of phrases. Love this. But, sometimes it's an extremely aspirate, disjointed breath. Choirs that have worked together over even just a few months begin to breathe together, and proper inhalation often follows the tempo of the music. This does not do that, and perhaps that's expecting too much, but I have yet to find a way to edit this. Also, the pronunciation of "the" used to be interpreted correctly when preceding a vowel vs. a consonant, but this isn't working anymore, requiring manual intervention.


Okay, now the positive:

• Not unique to the choirs, and I sometimes would like even more control, but the amount of parameters available to edit the performance and timbre of the voices is fantastic, and I really hope SynthV doesn't fall prey to enshittification as time goes on.

• The parameters to control number of singers, spacing, and virtual placement is a thing of beauty to have built in. Spacing in particular is something few other libraries even consider, but - especially since all of the professional choirs I've sung with have performed in mixed position - being able to space out singers and overlap between sections creates a sound no other choir library currently gets close to. The number of singers also has a very true-to-life effect on the sound. I didn't think I'd use the virtual placement at all, and it IS fiddly and small, but it works extremely well for a mixed position sound.

• Dreamtonics has added a parameter for consonant strength and duration. This is fantastic, and a little bit goes a long way. I've reduced Choir 1's strength by 0.2%, and this blends with Choir 2 beautifully. The consonant's are audible and present without sounding exaggerated (looking at you, EW choirs).

• Finally, while I still have my complaints about the timbre at times, the ability to go to extreme ranges across all SynthV voices is still something I appreciate. I don't want to write for a 1-octave range. I want to write for what real, trained singers can do.

Anyways, despite some persistent shortcomings, I'm really pleased with the results I'm getting right now. I'm only really interested in mockups, but I would cautiously say that this could have some real applications in final recordings. I'll keep playing with it.

[Lawrence]

Thanks for the comprehensive review, Duncan.

I have Synth V Studio 1.211 or something like that. Did you buy it all new or did you upgrade along some path?

It seems you bought the entire bundle-was that for the number of additional voices or am I misunderstanding the new packs? I’m only using Solaria at present.

It seems to require quite a lot of work to attain really good results. Does it generally feel fiddly or just a matter of setting up templates?

[Duncan Krummel]

I bought into SynthV after 2 was released. I haven't purchased any third party voices for it, only Dreamtonics' own releases, and only a few solo voices at that. I don't really do commercial pop music, so I was primarily looking for something I could do explicitly choral and musical theatre mockups with.

I did indeed buy the choir bundle. I tested each one a bit, but it was limited to 40 notes for each voice. Not enough for a full piece, but enough to know I'd use all 3 choirs at different times. Right now I'm finding the best results for choir to be blending 6 voices from Choirs 2 and 3 per voice, with slightly different settings.

In terms of the amount of work, I think it's probably a reasonable amount for a decent result; I just hate double clicking a bunch of pitch points to remove scoops that shouldn't be there in the first place. But it's not egregious to set up basic presets and move them around. I'll put a dropbox below to some mockups I've returned to over the last 2 days. I would estimate that - after recording parts and establishing presets I'll actually use - it takes about 5-10 minutes of editing the actual output to be acceptable to me for a mockup. I have yet to go in and painstakingly try to create a better performance, but I'll bet you could get pretty good results with a day's work per track.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/7g13bcml ... qbjrv&dl=0

[Lawrence]

Wow.

Great sound, very nice music. Thanks for posting.

[RobS]

Impressive Duncan! Very nice harmony… to me it still sounds like a modern/jazz choir, more than a classical one but I think I’ll be buying this, thanks for the review

[Duncan Krummel]

Rob, thanks for the compliments! I agree with you; it’s a big step in the right direction, but not quite there yet. On the flip side, I’ve had reasonable success approximating a children’s choir, and a choir of cambiata voices. Mostly useful to me as a way to mockup choral pieces for elementary and middle school choirs.