Since I’m so looking forward to Cantai implementation in Dorico, I tried an experiment with an SSATBB arrangement. Except for a few pronunciations (I did no tweaking of the lyrics from my Dorico export), I think this is a fairly good representation.
This is one of a series of choral responses I’ve been working on. Cantai did a good job of rendering these choral voices.
Here is another one. So looking forward to the Dorico implementation.
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Pretty impressive!
Thanks. Combined with the outstanding qualities of Dorico, I think the Cantai implementation will be a very good thing. 
It sounds good, congratulations!
Some “s” are a little too loud and I heard that in some demos too. Do you know if those are due to a specific singer or group of singers?
Thanks. I suspect the hard ‘s’ sounds may be baked into the choir voices. There were only ‘choir (female)’ and ‘choir (male)’ voice options available (besides the solo voice options). The nice thing is that I didn’t alter any of the lyrics in my Dorico export; Cantai just processed the xml file. I believe (hope) that combined with Dorico it’ll be even better. 
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To my ear, these all sound like male-only voices. I don’t hear any SS or A. Am I missing something or is that intentional?
Here it is with the women a bit stronger in the mix.
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Much better. Thank you!!!
I must say, I fear there is still a long way to go from these examples. They sound like a local American parish choir. Diction is fine (that’s never the problem with these AI voices) but the sound is really raw and un-involving to me. SynthV is in a completely different class as things stand. Still the way it’s planned to integrate into Dorico is interesting if the actual musical quality can be improved. One or two of the operatic solo voices are not at all bad but even for this sort of choral music, there’s nothing I would say is useable so far. While recognising that it is to some extent a matter of taste.
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I’m hopeful that the news of the new choral group Cantai is adding will give us a more professional and less ‘pop’ style in the choir options. I’ve also found that, at least currently, the effectiveness of the choral voices is largely dependent on the range of the piece. A big advantage to Cantai in Dorico will be the ability to have it work with a minimum (hopefully) of tweaking to make it fit
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Yeah. It’s that ‘hopefully’ part that’s giving me pause. If it turns out to be great, then I will have to pay more for it than if I had jumped in early. It’s a gamble. But I decided to let him use other peoples’ money, rather than my own, in getting the product out. At 86 years of age, I don’t have much gambling instinct left.
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I agree that this is potentially the most exciting aspect of Cantai. I actually like tweaking the voices in SynthV because that’s how you make music but I also wouldn’t mind if the basic “loudness” part of the dynamics could respond to Dorico and above all that tempi and time signatures were automatically synched – this necessary preparatory work can take some time.
Do you know when the choral group is planned? That will be interesting, anyway!
I think I saw a post by turingopera in this forum that mentioned their signing a well-known professional choral group that will be part of their program. My hope us that Cantai will prove good enough to use for publishing demos of my works. For that purpose, the dont have to be perfect, or even professional- sounding; just reasonably good representations of the work. It’d be better than my only current option of NP or Olympus oohs and ahhs. A big plus is that Cantai follows the tempo and dynamics natively. That’s a big plus, IMO.
Here is an original work of mine rendered with Cantai from my Dorico xml export. It’s not too bad. Granted, the Choir (Men & Women) as it stands now seems to be groupings of pop vocalists, but if they implement true choral singers, the potential could be huge. We have a while to wait yet before we see vocal rendering becoming as close to the ideal many of us would like, but in the meantime, I’m going to try and not let the ‘best’ become the enemy of the good-or even not too bad. If I am able to utilize Dorico’s ability to allow for 2nd time and on D.S. only playback (Musescore can’t) with an actual sampled choir instead of grouped pop voices, I’ll be a happy camper.
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My takeaway from these examples is that, I’m surprised at how realistic they sound, however I’d murder my choir if they sang that way. Supposedly we will be able to turn down the vibrato in an advanced menu, and thank God for that! There is WAY too much warbling going on from a liturgical choral (non-operatic) perspective. But these are surprisingly good demos, even if I don’t care for them stylistically. Honestly, they’d probably pass for real if people weren’t paying attention. And that’s amazing, in all honestly. And exciting.
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the amount of vocal scooping going on would preclude me from using these voices for my choral music. I’d fire the whole choir if I came to a rehearsal and heard that kind of voice.
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Precisely. Scooping and vibrato you could drive a truck through. Firm ‘no’ to both from me.
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I totally agree. But, they’re not too bad-even if not what I’d like to hear in a choir. I didn’t do any tweaking of the Dorico xml-this rendering was ‘out-of-the-box’ rendering by Cantai. The only current options are ‘Choir (female)’ and ‘Choir (male)’. Of course the vibrato and scooping is a bit much . That’s because I suspect the current “choir” voices are just the current pop/solo voices grouped together to make a choral sound. When (if?) Cantai integrates actual sampled choral voices, it’ll have real possibilities. They can be useable as demos-with the understanding that that’s all they’re meant to be. They certainly give a better representation than generic’ ooh’s and ‘ahhs.’
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That’s the beauty of Synth-V; You can completely emiminate scooping and control vibrato, as well as many other atributes. The UI is pretty good as well. But I could still be interested in Cantai when I hear the anounced new choir set.
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exactly my sentiments. After all, it was the new choirs bundle which got me into SynthV in the first place as it combines a few really nice soloists with the ability in most cases to produce a nice choral sound. But you do need to work on the voices to produce more refinement than is the case out of the box – for around a day I was not that impressed until I realised what you can actually do with the voices (and there’s still more to learn). So Cantai will have to produce choirs which are not only a significant step forward but also have at least some ability to mould the voices to what you’re trying to express. Otherwise there’s not much point.
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