New choir library from Spitfire

[Guy Rowland]

Spitfire Whitacre Choir

Hard-wired to humanity, nothing gets to the heart of music like the human voice – and Spitfire’s most anticipated release to date is a choir that captures the breathtaking range of our most personal musical instrument. Crafted and conducted by Grammy winner Eric Whitacre and showcasing his elite family of singers, this encyclopaedia of the voice will enrich your composition. It will also blow away any dusty perception of the choir as a niche, occasional ingredient, reserved for angels and demons. With these sounds at your fingertips, you will start to think differently about the human voice. For this library, we returned to the luxury of Lyndhurst Hall at Air Studios, which means Eric Whitacre Choir shares the acoustic DNA of Spitfire’s orchestral catalogue, and will work hand in hand with those libraries.

88550 SAMPLES
279.1 GB UNCOMPRESSED .WAV
164.6 GB DISK SPACE REQUIRED
170 GB DISK SPACE REQUIRED DURING INSTALL
MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.10 or later, Intel Core 2 Duo
PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit) Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2
DEDICATED PLUGIN
USER MANUAL
APPLY FOR EDUCATIONAL DISCOUNT

Introductory discount of £399 / £549 on Nov 8

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/prom ... cre-choir/

(NB - the Spitfire library is their own proprietary player, and also has an EVO grid).

EDITED - originally the post had 8dio's Insoludus as a new release which was WROOOONG. It is on sale til Nov 1st at half price of $298 though.

[Jaap]

Insolidus is already an older library from 8dio, released somewhere in the midst of 2017 I believe.

[Guy Rowland]

Insolidus is already an older library from 8dio, released somewhere in the midst of 2017 I believe.

Wow, shows how up to date on 8dio libraries I am! Removed the Insolidus content, thanks Jaap.

[Jaap]

Insolidus is already an older library from 8dio, released somewhere in the midst of 2017 I believe.

Wow, shows how up to date on 8dio libraries I am! Removed the Insolidus content, thanks Jaap.

They released I believe already a new sort of follow up after that, Silka, though I don't have both, I love the sound and specially Troels his demos for them.

Regarding the Spitfire choir. I just skimmed through the walkthrough a bit yesterday and to me it sounds like an awefull lot of gigabytes for just oohhs and aahhs and suprised that there are no phrases in it. Sounds pristine though, but I did not hear anything yet that really convinced me or sound as "revolutionary" as stated on some other places. East West Choirs, Genesis from Audiobro, everything from the ARKs + Time from OT and Oceania will do the job fine for now for me.

[Guy Rowland]

Yes, similar thoughts - a £99 for those nice ooh and ahh tones in a simple library would do me nicely.

[Thorsten Meyer]

I am really on the edge of what to think about Eric Whitacre Choir, any experiences to share?

[Jaap]

@Thorsten, I had put my faith in you

And yes Guy, agree and they seemed to have release Core and Pro or likewise versions for other libraries and this one looked like a perfect one as well for this. For something around 100 euro for a core version I could see some potential in this.

[playz123]

I am really on the edge of what to think about Eric Whitacre Choir, any experiences to share?

Here's a bit of what I wrote elsewhere. Probably a bit too "gushy" for this forum but I am sincere about everything I offered.

"One word: "Gorgeous". I've been totally immersed in both the choir patches and the Evo library for hours now, and IMHO it's probably the best choir library for my purposes that I have ever purchased. And for the record, I have at least 8 other choir libraries....all from well-known developers. No, it does not offer some of the features other libraries do, BUT then again, in turn it is not designed to compete, rather to enhance. More importantly, what it DOES do is provide sounds and features other libraries simply do not have. Beautifully crafted, and awe-inspiring and captivating sounds truly reflect Mr. Whitacre's approach towards choral music. If you are looking for epic, then of course, look elsewhere. But if you want a choir library that has the potential to transport you to a softer, more gentle and moody place, then this choir is definitely worth considering. And there's far more depth to this library than indicated by the videos. Finally, I have most of the libraries Spitfire has released, and feel this is probably one of the top 3 or 4. Well done, Spitfire; you 'nailed it' this time! We waited patiently for a long time for its release, and the wait has been worth it."

[Ashermusic]

I won't be buying it because I don't need it and I can get similar. "breathy" stuff with Hollywood Choir going through Adaptiverb, but I do think it sounds exceptionally nice.

[Lawrence]

As to choirs-for anyone who has it, how is Requiem Lite holding up?

$399 is too rich for my needs, but I wouldn’t mind some more vocal legato In my arsenal. The only legato I have is in Metropois Ark 1, and though very nice, it’s limited.

[Jaap]

As to choirs-for anyone who has it, how is Requiem Lite holding up?

$399 is too rich for my needs, but I wouldn’t mind some more vocal legato In my arsenal. The only legato I have is in Metropois Ark 1, and though very nice, it’s limited.

I still use them, forgot to mention them earlier, but they have been in my arsenal for quite some years and with the update (to version 3.0 I believe?) they got nicely maintained. They blend nicely with all kinds of VI's and with the long marcatto's and with building your own syllables you can get some nice results. Also on the softer side they are ok, but there are others better, but for getting a nice thick and full choir sound they work splendid in combi with orchestral stuff and in hybrid settings.

[Luciano Storti]

Requiem Light is showing its age in my opinion. I still try to use it as a layer in big orchestral pieces for trailers: it does that marcato style pretty decently and powerfully. As far as legato its ok. Same with syllables, a bit limited. Since they redid the interface, v3 was it(?), it feels cluttered and trickier on the eyes. Right now for powerful marcato choir I go to Oceania, and for legato I still love Mystica (although it’s only female).

EWC sounds stunning, but also very specific. I simply don’t use choir in that way. Insolidus is starting to look very good as well, for the temp sale price. And still need to look at Silka.

[Jaap]

Though I am still very positive about it, Luke makes some fair points though. I always find the trick with Requiem Light that it needs a certain kind of "sloppy" midi to stand out. For me it also a matter of knowing the library quite well. I bought it when it was still Tonehammer and same like with some stuff from the old Eastwest Symphonic Library, Symphobia or something that is not from the last years, I know when I need a certain kind of sound or workaround, that I can rely on it. I guess its a different beast when you purchase it now and/or are used to other choirs which you got earlier.

[Guy Rowland]

Yes, agreed with the above posts. For the big ol Latin chanting, Requiem Lite is pretty perfect with some careful midi timing. Legato not so hot, even in 3.0 which was actually a pretty disappointing update.

Tonally, Time Macro's choirs feel not dissimilar to EWC.

[Tanuj Tiku]

Just watched some of the walkthrough. It all sounds lovely to me. Great sound, I must say.

There is a beautiful quality to the sound and it sounded very well balanced to me.

I must say that Spitfire have been moving forward in a very clever manner. It seems to me that for now, building phrases and writing melodies that really soar seems to have hit a basic brickwall with standard sampling techniques. The legatos sound decent but suffer from the same problems as with pretty much anything else.

Building realistic phrases out of pretty much any sample library as a concept from the ground up seems to be a dead end for now.

So, everyone seems to be moving into other directions and not really paying much attention to legato or designing tools which actually help you program a musically convincing phrase. That is usually the worst problem with nearly all samples.

It is more about colours, broad strokes and things which the composer has less control over but ultimately can augment productions in a very nice way. I have mixed feelings about this over all but certainly these are some fantastic sounds!

I recently got couple of libraries from Performance Samples and while I have some issues with the sound at times, I must say it works extremely well compared to larger libraries like Spiftire, EW, VSL, OT etc in creating musical phrases, melodies etc. I think some of these new companies might be on to something and as their R&D budgets increase along with production standards and source of players, we may be on to a new era of sampling.

After using Performance Samples, I feel my EW brass library is wildly outdated suddenly if I want to make melodies and have a performance aspect to samples (EDIT: With limited context). EW still has its use for me for orchestral works but Performance Samples for example brings in a whole new dimension which simply cannot be achieved as easily or convincingly with standard libraries.

EWC sounds like something that may be project specific and that would be a good way to put money down for it first which later extends into exploration for non-specific projects.

[KyleJudkins]

completely lacking legato, or pushing dynamics - that silky smooth choir sound is absolutely nailed with dominus

just saying

and tanuj, I feel like spitfire has basically become more of a company that makes beautiful keyboard patches than virtual instruments...

because ultimately, that's how the folks at spitfire generally write, and that's what they want out of a library - and new composers might not know the difference anyways, which is probably their business model...


I own a boat load of spitfire stuff, and I just feel like its usually from the ground up designed to be keyboard patches

[Guy Rowland]

Hmmm.... I think there's some truth in what you say Kyle - I agree they make products for themselves which can be both a good and a bad thing - but I feel you've used way too broad a brush. Their recent solo string library, for example, seemed incredibly impressive from a performance perspective. And not sure how Eric Whitacre can be "completely lacking legato" when in fact it has multiple legato patches.

[playz123]

I’d be interested in also reading opinions from respondents who, like me, actually purchased the library and have been working with it.

[KyleJudkins]

Hmmm.... I think there's some truth in what you say Kyle - I agree they make products for themselves which can be both a good and a bad thing - but I feel you've used way too broad a brush. Their recent solo string library, for example, seemed incredibly impressive from a performance perspective. And not sure how Eric Whitacre can be "completely lacking legato" when in fact it has multiple legato patches.

I was talking about dominus and I'm glad you caught it, because it's staccato, not legato that it won't do.

and some spitfire stuff is reasonable, it just seems like how the instrument works is an afterthought compared to lush keybeds. blaney can torture them into submission, but I feel like composing with spitfire libraries lends itself to ignoring how the instrument functions and just writing whatever sounds good while you're playing

when I hear demos I don't hear a choir, I hear a choir patch on a keyboard.