I’ve had a go with Ace Studio to generate a rendering of some choir parts written in Dorico. I’ve spent 2-3 hours getting to know the software and making some basic adjustments to vibrato, and I think I can do more to improve the sound.
Currently this has to be done by exporting midi from Dorico and adding / pasting the lyrics into Ace Studio, but it doesn’t take too long to do. Then I exported the orchestral parts as audio from Dorico and combined both of them in Cubase.
Choirs in Ace studio are built up by adding a series of individual singers to each track (up to 8 in my example).
It’s not really ready for prime time yet, but I think it could be useful for seeing how lyrics fit with each other and against the music. It’s better than Cantamus in that respect as at least it’s possible to get an approximate choir feel.
I haven’t got the lyrics mapped 100% correctly yet, but that’s going to be easy to fix.
The tempo mapping is not perfect either - I’ve stretched the voice part in Cubase so it ends at the same place as the orchestra but in the middle the two don’t have the same tempi. I expect I can adjust things manually in Ace Studio to make that better.
It lacks a wide selection of classical voice types at the moment, especially in the sopranos and altos, and it sounds like everything has gone through a phaser!
The choir and orchestra don’t fit together well, but I think with work I can improve the match.
I would also really like an ‘English English’ rendering setting.
Hi Richard,
I’ve been eyeing ACE software for a while, now. Haven’t done the leap into it, so I’m curious about your experience and expectations of the results you’re getting, as well as the workflow, like you described in the beginning of your post.
From your sample I hear solo voices singing together. Is this sample a first attempt to create a more symphonic choir? I ask because from what I’ve gotten so far, my impression of ACE is for certain types/styles of music. At least that’s what the company seems to have put out to the public through their examples.
In any case, I would appreciate any further insights into ACE, as well as insights from others that may have other vocal/choir VST’s that are using. (e.g.: East/West has a complex program for choir)
Thank you for sharing.
I was hoping that their recently released new version would make it possible to generate good choir renders with lyrics.
You’re right, choirs in Ace Studio are made by combining lots of individual voices. This might work if there were a lot of classical choir singers to choose from, but so far there aren’t.
I’m going to cancel my subscription because it’s not there yet for this use case.
But I think the underlying technology is very impressive and maybe in a year or so, if they add the right singers, it will be genuinely useful.