Voxos: Epic Virtual Choir | Sonic Control

The VOXOS & Vocal Library Buying Audience

The Cinesamples corporate name says that the libraries the company produces are for film/TV, and by extension, game scoring. This is a very large audience to be sure, but it's not the only target audience. There are literally, in the US alone, over 300,000 churches many with choirs and many with choral writers. There are about 1200 US schools granting degrees in composition and in all of those schools harmony and counterpoint are required. Nor have we begun considering the large number of music publishing companies who have large choral works for either direct sale or for rent.

As such, VOXOS can be for film/TV and game composers and composers outside film/TV/game, choral directors needing a tool to create teaching tapes or MP3s for choir members who can't read, and students of harmony and counterpoint since part of that study involves looking at the basis of Western Harmony, the Bach Chorales.

Consequently, a well done vocal library has the marketing potential to be the second 'cash register ka-ching' following a well done string section.

So, to fairly evaluate VOXOS, and either of the other three libraries (East West, Tonehammer and Vienna) and partially with Spectrasonic's Omnisphere (which contains portions of Symphony of Voices), we must consider the whole sales picture, not just the narrow strait of film/TV and game, no matter how large it may be.
It's perhaps worth mentioning that every year roughly 10,000 students take harmony and counterpoint which is a good reason for every library to consider having sound sets for both Sibelius and Finale.

Then, as we know by our collective experience, finding a choir to sing your works is about as easy as getting a permit to prospect for gold in the Promenade in Santa Monica. As with the orchestra, a solid choral library is needed, particularly with separate SATB so lines can be edited as with a string section.

So my approach is to test VOXOS with real choral music to see what we have on our hands.

VOXOS Description VOXOS: Epic Virtual Choirs from Cinesamples is a 35GB SATB vocal library with individual soprano, alto, tenor and bass, along with a boys choir, solo boy vocalist, solo soprano, solo alto, and a phrase builder using syllables culled from Mozart's Requiem. But that's just the hors d'oeuvres! You also get Legato Sections and Choir Effects. Rather than list all the features (which would be half the review there are so many). The library was recorded in Seattle in the Bastyr Chapel Recording Studio, home to many film/TV soundtracks. The choir was captured using four mic positions.

Vocal Ranges
As with any orchestral library, you must know the ranges of the actual instruments compared to the ranges of the sampled instruments so you know what you have to work with. I did that with VOXOS by comparing the VOXOS SATB ranges to the definition as used by the Harvard Dictionary of Music.

By comparing the ranges, we find that Cinesamples gives an extended range on all of the voices, especially with the upper pitches, except for the Basses where it stops at C4 (where Middle C is C4). My experience as a choir director echoes that of the Harvard Dictionary of Music in that the Basses can go up to the E4. So on the next update, I suggest extending the Bass range up the major third.

VOXOS and The Bach Chorales
Testing VOXOS and other vocal libraries with the Bach Chorales? Have I Gone Batty?

Hardly.

The Bach Chorales are four-voice choral arrangements written using what academically we call Species 1 Counterpoint between the Soprano and Bass, and mixed counterpoint in the Alto and Tenor voices. If you want to learn how to write superb vocal arrangements, you start here. The Bach Chorales go beyond the standard hymn book arrangement because of Bach's sheer depth of writing.

To find out what people and vocal sample libraries can really do, the Bach Chorales are the starting point. To be sure, we will be looking at a variety of choral styles to see what's possible. But we start here first. Another reason is that unless I've missed something, I haven't seen any vocal library demos with the Bach chorales. I think it's time.

So, we'll test drive the VOXOS sopranos with Johnny B in the driver's seat.

Bach and Soprano Ranges
For this portion of the review, I analyzed the soprano ranges of every single Bach chorale, all 390 of them, as found in the Street Smart Guide to the Bach Chorales.

My objective was to find the highest pitch Bach wrote the sopranos for and then test VOXOS within that practical range usage.

Comparing back to the VOXOS soprano range, Bach wrote 0 chorales where the high pitch was above A. A total of 8 had a high point of A, and of them, none had a high point of Bb. The heaviest concentration of high points was between D and F#. So if you're looking to write a realistic soprano part, VOXOS is right in the pocket. To test VOXOS I've selected one phrase from each group of high points. In looking at these phrases, be aware that the high points rarely come at the end for drama as we would write them today in 21st Century songs. In many cases the high pitch is approached and left in step-wise motion.

Note: All of the examples were "moused" into Logic 9.1.3 with little editing so as to avoid any sense of favoritism. No reverb was added. You're hearing VOXOS sopranos right out of the box.

Conclusion - VOXOS Sopranos
If this were a classroom I'd grade VOXOS as A-, The Bach Chorales are demanding especially with the number of repeated notes used in the melodies some of which were set by Martin Luther two hundred years before Bach worked with them.

Repeated notes, even with Kontakt 4.1, are a challenge for any library, vocal or not. Effective editing should produce outstanding results for the composer. Of particular note are the high G and A which are full without being screechy or massively out of tune as some sopranos can be, especially untrained sopranos in a church choral setting.

Another pleasant delight thanks to Mr. Bach is discovering that as the Sopranos ascend, they do NOT sound synthy. They are delightfully human.

While it may seem odd on a first review to just focus on the VOXOS Sopranos, I did so because it's common to write a soprano soli section, or just use sopranos as an independent soli line within a full score. The VOXOS Sopranos are full but airy. Puccini sometimes wrote the sopranos in his choirs in triads, but for film/TV/game scoring, using the VOXOS Sopranos in open fifths, fourths, sixths and thirds produces a lovely sound. Quartal harmony (F, Bb and Eb sounding simultaneously for example) is particularly beautiful.

So the writing opportunities with the VOXOS Sopranos are really quite exceptional giving film/TV/game and traditional choral composers a wonderful sound from which to work.


CINESAMPLES RESPONSE
The only trouble with mousing is there's no velocity changing where we have different envelopes in the lower velocity for different attacks. Mike Barry, Developer.

DISCLAIMER
VOXOS was provided for this review as an NFR. Alexander Publishing is a Big Fish Audio dealer and therefore represents VOXOS the Alexander Publishing web site.