Ableton Forum

I am looking for a very well sounding choir/vocals that works great with Ableton.
I would appreciate all your recommendations!

Thank you!

I really like Exhale and Ethera for modern type of music, but both are using Kontakt. Exhale can be used with the Kontakt Free. There is also Olympus Elements from Soundiron for Live, which is more on the symphonic side.

Thank you!

I second Exhale - it's an amazing plugin.

If you're looking for more traditional choirs, East West has a crazy realistic choir. You can even program words into it and it will sing them! I think I saw a post here about that somewhere.

However, East West don't use Kontakt and instead use their own engine which is horrible.

octo8 wrote:I am looking for a very well sounding choir/vocals that works great with Ableton.
I would appreciate all your recommendations!

Thank you!

EWQL Voices of Passion, SonoKinetic Solo Vocal Bundle, Realivox Ladies, and Realivox Blue are some of the best vocal plug ins on the planet.
And the EW Play engine works very well with Live 9, it has a different workflow than NI Kontakt, but has special articulation and ram settings. I used EWQL Play on 150 tracks in ableton and remaiined stable playing 300+ voices.

miekwave wrote:

octo8 wrote:I am looking for a very well sounding choir/vocals that works great with Ableton.
I would appreciate all your recommendations!

Thank you!

EWQL Voices of Passion, SonoKinetic Solo Vocal Bundle, Realivox Ladies, and Realivox Blue are some of the best vocal plug ins on the planet.
And the EW Play engine works very well with Live 9, it has a different workflow than NI Kontakt, but has special articulation and ram settings. I used EWQL Play on 150 tracks in ableton and remaiined stable playing 300+ voices.

Really? I've had horrible experiences with Play. I had a bunch of EW stuff (all sounded great), but samples would randomly drop. It kinda got unpredictable. I have a teacher buddy who has the same problem so he won't use EW products with his class as a result. My experience was the exact opposite of yours - mega unstable for me.

That being said - I never messed with the settings. Maybe I'll try again! If you got any magic tips let me know - that stuff sounds so sexy.

Shift Gorden wrote:

miekwave wrote:

octo8 wrote:I am looking for a very well sounding choir/vocals that works great with Ableton.
I would appreciate all your recommendations!

Thank you!

EWQL Voices of Passion, SonoKinetic Solo Vocal Bundle, Realivox Ladies, and Realivox Blue are some of the best vocal plug ins on the planet.
And the EW Play engine works very well with Live 9, it has a different workflow than NI Kontakt, but has special articulation and ram settings. I used EWQL Play on 150 tracks in ableton and remaiined stable playing 300+ voices.

Really? I've had horrible experiences with Play. I had a bunch of EW stuff (all sounded great), but samples would randomly drop. It kinda got unpredictable. I have a teacher buddy who has the same problem so he won't use EW products with his class as a result. My experience was the exact opposite of yours - mega unstable for me.

That being said - I never messed with the settings. Maybe I'll try again! If you got any magic tips let me know - that stuff sounds so sexy.

Here is how I resolved Stability Issues

Video Example: EWQL Final Fantasy VI intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dttTCGkgi6g

a. Load All Samples into Ram (allowable ram)
b. Use a seperate PLAY instance for each track, for example I created my own template pack that loads

example:

Drag 'n Drop SO Strings Preset -

Group:
1. Violins I (Ensemble)
2. Violins I (Solo)
3. Violins II (Ens)
4. Violins II (Solo)
5. Viola (Ens)
6. Viola (solo)
7. Cello (Ens)
8. Cello (Solo)
9. COntrabass (Ens)
10. Contrabass (Solo)

c. Patches Load into Ram - You should have at least 16GB minimum, EWQL won't work on less than 16GB
d. I use Samsung 850 PRO (SSD) - The best drives for EWQL (IMO) are Samsun 850 Pro and Intel NVME 750 PCI
e. In Processor Settings, you need to turn Throttling OFF in BIOS, also go in POWER settings and disable Screensaver, disable HDD throttling (sleep/hibernation)
f. Be sure to use a clean OS slate when loading EWQL, putting your CPU to Hibernation or Sleep will cause lots of underrun errors, so do not use Sleep or Hibernate
g. Use 44.1k/24 512 Buffer when composing, 96k/24 when rendering
h. Write Compositions to audio, then revert back to 96k/24 with 64 buffer
i. Disable internal soundcard, use native driver for your interface with EWQL, not ASIO4ALL
j. Optimize Drives as following (example)
c: OS / Programs
s: EWQL Samples (SSD)
p: Projects Drive (7200 or ssd)
t: Temp / Cache drive (128gb SSD, samsung 850 pro 128)
b: Backup drive (4tb 5200)
k. Use dedicated discrete USB ports per controller or interface, do not mix n match ports to have a clean IRQ slate
l. Use Realtime HW MOnitor when working on EWQL project,
m. Keep your CPU under 100 degrees and NOT THROTTLING
n. If working on new LIVE project always SAVE AS before contiuing - if you do not save as before startig EWQL parts, your confusing reference file locations
o. Overclock CPU by 10% or 15% for more VST/Plug In proc load
p. Use more cores to handle more track counts


- - -
Audio server (VEP) is the most reliable

I have purchased Olympus Elements as recommended, before all of your answer, yet I think it is quite good - also because I need something well tested with Live natively (as they state it!).

Here is how I resolved Stability Issues

Video Example: EWQL Final Fantasy VI intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dttTCGkgi6g

a. Load All Samples into Ram (allowable ram)
b. Use a seperate PLAY instance for each track, for example I created my own template pack that loads

example:

Drag 'n Drop SO Strings Preset -

Group:
1. Violins I (Ensemble)
2. Violins I (Solo)
3. Violins II (Ens)
4. Violins II (Solo)
5. Viola (Ens)
6. Viola (solo)
7. Cello (Ens)
8. Cello (Solo)
9. COntrabass (Ens)
10. Contrabass (Solo)

c. Patches Load into Ram - You should have at least 16GB minimum, EWQL won't work on less than 16GB
d. I use Samsung 850 PRO (SSD) - The best drives for EWQL (IMO) are Samsun 850 Pro and Intel NVME 750 PCI
e. In Processor Settings, you need to turn Throttling OFF in BIOS, also go in POWER settings and disable Screensaver, disable HDD throttling (sleep/hibernation)
f. Be sure to use a clean OS slate when loading EWQL, putting your CPU to Hibernation or Sleep will cause lots of underrun errors, so do not use Sleep or Hibernate
g. Use 44.1k/24 512 Buffer when composing, 96k/24 when rendering
h. Write Compositions to audio, then revert back to 96k/24 with 64 buffer
i. Disable internal soundcard, use native driver for your interface with EWQL, not ASIO4ALL
j. Optimize Drives as following (example)
c: OS / Programs
s: EWQL Samples (SSD)
p: Projects Drive (7200 or ssd)
t: Temp / Cache drive (128gb SSD, samsung 850 pro 128)
b: Backup drive (4tb 5200)
k. Use dedicated discrete USB ports per controller or interface, do not mix n match ports to have a clean IRQ slate
l. Use Realtime HW MOnitor when working on EWQL project,
m. Keep your CPU under 100 degrees and NOT THROTTLING
n. If working on new LIVE project always SAVE AS before contiuing - if you do not save as before startig EWQL parts, your confusing reference file locations
o. Overclock CPU by 10% or 15% for more VST/Plug In proc load
p. Use more cores to handle more track counts


- - -
Audio server (VEP) is the most reliable

Thank you so much for posting this, mate - totally appreciate it!

eduardo tarilonte
http://www.samplelibraries.com/

Shift Gorden wrote:
Thank you so much for posting this, mate - totally appreciate it!

Just remember, if you have disk / dropouts or sample drops, 99% of the time you have throttling somewhere. To reduce throttling
a. Prevent Page File from swapping Ram, especially if your ram is at 85%> full. Page swapping usually occurs when you have more RAM used up.
b. Keep Ram Below >85% Full and keep its temps low. Should have 1866 dual channel or faster Ram. For best Ram Performance, get 2133 Quad Channel Ram with plenty of "Unused" ram
c. Prevent or Reduce DISC from throttling by using dedicated drives. If your Seagate or WD HDD gets hot, usually it will auto compensate by slowing down to make tempertures lower to prevent drive damage. If you're using SSD, plug it into a 6.0GBS port, if you're using an external disc, make sure your external disc is getting discrete power (usually 3.5v or 5v)- because you might be drawing too much power from your USB/TB ports.
d. Try not to draw POWER from your USB ports - Power your devices desperately if possible, as slated above, power draw from USB ports might be too much for it to handle the demand of HDD or SSD - For MIDI controllers, I use a discretely powered 7-Port USB 2.0 hub, this way it does not draw (too much) power
e. Use discrete drives with dedicated jobs if possible, for best performance you would have Samples SSD, OS HDD or OS, Backup/Media HDD, Temp/Cache Flash
f. Processor - Monitor all cores and understand how your cores work with your tracks/plug ins

If you like the synthetic choir sounds of the Roland VP-330 you may like these presets I have done:

http://www.oakleysound.com/Live9_FX.zip

Included in the above bundle are some interesting experiments with vocal filters based on the ones in the Roland VP-330 and using Live's own EQ8. These are designed to process the output of a synth directly either hardware or soft. They sound best when driven by a raw saw waveform like that from Operator or Analog. To get the ensemble sound of the VP-330 you can then pass the output of the rack through Valhalla's Ubermod which has a pretty good RS505/VP330 style ensemble preset.

Also included in the ZIP file are emulations of the Yamaha FX500's Soft Focus and Chorused Echo presets. Those two are designed to be used in an effect returns track so they're completely 'wet'.

Another nice vocal source for Ableton is to use various free choir/vocals/recorded samples, such as the one from Music Radar with Simpler and Sampler. Lately I like using the updated Simpler to play around with human voice, it's just fun and quick to work with. Later run them through various Ableton FXs and Harmonizers, iZotope Vocal Synth, 2Caudio B2, Output Movement, etc. My favorite used to be Alchemy and the Dream Voices library, really hate their move and not using it again in my new Win 10 system.

Omnisphere actually has some good choir patches. There are picks from sample libraries from various sample CDs they had through the 90s. Some of them definitely has that Rolandesque sound.


Another library is the VOXOS library. It is kind of big though so you will need alot of ram (and Kontakt). But it has some great choir patches.

Hi,
I have to take back this topic.
I use Olympus Elements, but I find it very CPU limiting. I have newest MBP 15' with 16GB RAM, but very often I get 70% CPU load on one single track.

Any other vocals that are free to test? Or totally free?
I cannot spend more money to buy another.