I haven't bothered downloading anything yet (getting the CC+ HD delivered in a few days since I don't have the time nor the bandwidth to download everything and I'm getting ready for a hospital trip so it makes no sense to waste time trying to select stuff - I need another 4TB external drive anyway so for once Thomann's offering wasn't total garbage) but I've heard that Hollywood Choirs in particular (never really noticed it on Symphonic Choirs when I had it in Kontakt but I have to admit I haven't used it a lot and never paid too much attention to it so I have no idea if this applies to that too) barely has legatos and that they're the main sore point of HC. Which choir library(es) would complement it (them?) well? I've tried quite a few over the years and heard a few more in the last day or so and none of the ones I've heard sound like they'd fit (gotta be honest, most of them sound too processed and sloppily sampled)

With "complement" I mean something I could throw together in a mix and not have them sound noticeably different from each other - at least not enough to be distracting or outright jarring.

Both free and paid - though if I'm gonna have to use Kontakt it'd better be really good. Not gonna bother listing all the libraries I've tried (not that I remember most of them) since I'm sure people are gonna suggest them anyway.

Edit:
on the whole lack of legatos thing, that's only partly true - the legatos are there, just on lower velocities from what I've been hearing and obviously an afterthought. I'm not gonna become an EW shill after buying a subscription (give me a few more months) but a lot of the people who really hammer HC don't even think about why it doesn't attempt to do (slur) legatos well (due to the nature of the library itself) and basically just ignore the Word Builder and call it a novelty - but that's the actual goddamn point of the library. You can actually make it sing whatever you want (and implementing legatos for it would be near impossible) and not just have gibberish syllables or pseudo-latin phrases that mean fuck all. I feel like these people have never actually used choirs as more than decorations or fillers.

 

Last edited: May 20, 2022

HC goes with Soundiron Mars and Venus
SC goes with Fluffy audio Dominus Pro

 

I'll give Mars and Venus a listen, I've seen a lot of people recommend Olympus (and I even had Olympus Elements for Ableton Live) but I thought they didn't fit together at all.

Think I've heard Dominus Pro but I'll give it another listen, thanks.

 

Maybe Wotan, Freya, Arva, and Storm Choir from Strezov Sampling?

 

Storm Choir definitely doesn't fit with them, I find it to be way too nordic-y and over the top. I'm looking for legato vowels and I'm not really interested in phrase-based ones. I'll give the others a listen.

 

Oceania from Performance Samples - maybe to epic, but give it a listen ;)

 

Gave them a listen and I really don't like either of the Soundiron ones, the samples themselves sound pretty bad imho.
Dominus seems very phrase-oriented but I'll keep it in mind - definitely like the samples a lot more than Soundiron's but I'm still not entirely convinced.

The first three might work, they still seem very phrase-oriented but I like the legato samples a lot more than Dominus'.

I gave Oceania a few listens a while ago, I like it but I feel like it's VERY staccato-oriented. I also really don't like how it's basically just unintelligible gibberish, even more so than other libraries.

 

Yep, Wotan and Fredja fit pretty good compared to olympus, they have similar cinematic tone and vibrato (i dont use those strezov's choirs btw)
Till here you won't find another good choir, coz the rest are more orchestral oriented or too epic or contains strong vibratos and tones and so.

 

I don't mind orchestral-oriented choirs at all, when I said "two main choirs" in the title I meant Symphonic Choirs too (the orchestral ones)

 

I was pointing only HC. For SC there was vilharmonic voices of prague, similar wordbuilder and tone but developer removed it from their catalogue