What are everyone’s thoughts about these for someone wanting to make mockups on a tight budget. Cantai looks promising, but it’s still basically vaporware when it comes to working withing Dorico. Synth V2 looks mildly complicated, as does Omnivocal Beta, though the latter has the advantage of being part of Cubase 15 in all versions. I’m considering the Cantai pre-order at $150, but there’s no guarantee they will ever ship. Omnivocal Beta works now, and with the lowest level of Cubase, I can get access for $100.
What to do, what to do. I don’t need operatic voices, just clear singing with English and possibly Spanish, Italian, and French.
Those of you with experience in one or more, which is my best option at this point in time?
I’m an early adopter of Cantai, still waiting patiently. I bought Synth V about 6 months ago and can say it really does what it claims. There are many tweaks for sure, but one of the best things about it is you don’t necessarily need to do much to get a convincing rendition (phoneme tweaks mainly). You get one male voice for free upon purchase and other voices cost ~ $70.
Yeah, I like Synth V, but it’s more complicated than the others and it’s a bit pricey if you want more than the included voice. I’m more interested in writing for children’s chorus, so the female voices would work better. I think I saw where Synth V had plans for children’s chorus, though.
I recently purchased the elements version of Cubase 15 in order to get the omnivocal tool at low cast. Still learning to use it, so can’t comment yet on how well it meets my needs, which are non-operatic solo pop-style voices and/or classical choir vocals. I think it is going to be adequate for the first of these, and probably not suitable for the second usage. But I do feel it was worth the $100, because I’m not just investing in a word-pronouncing singing app but also in a playback system for all musical sounds that is much more sophisticated than what Dorico offers. I plan to import all my vocal Dorico scores into Cubase to meet this need.
Also, since it is Steinberg, I am fairly confident that at some point omnivocal (or something very similar) will become part of Dorico, and by that time I will know how to use it. ( I hope.)
That’s sort of where I am right now. Cantai might be better once they get it to work with Dorico, but Cubase might get there faster, and you get the DAW, which is something you’d probably need with any of these anyway. Let me know how it goes. The video makes it look easy, but that was made by a guy with a lot of hours using Cubase.
Yes, the video makes it look easy, though it also moves too fast. My main problem is not the video. It’s the DAW itself. I have never used one and until I bought this one had no idea how they worked. Or even, really, why!
If you are more familiar with Dorico than with the DAW, you might also want to consider the following approach at the moment until Dorico/Cantai/Omnivocal has the potential to do everything in Dorico.
Steps in Dorico:
Write everything in Dorico (incl. tempo changes and dynamics)
As an early adopter, I can use it in Musescore, and as I wrote in another thread, there is something that is clearly problematic with Cantai : you cannot use dynamics ! It will only change how loud the sound will be, there is no change in timbre or expression (which is 90% of dynamics in singing — you still want the audience to hear you, the sonic quality of the singing changes). I consider this a big issue.
The Omnivocal plug in was the primary reason I upgraded to Cubase 15.
I’ve only tried it once and only briefly. The results were good enough to persuade me that with ongoing development, more vocalists and groups of singers it could be the way to go. I think it’ll be quite a while before we get to a position where it doesn’t instantly feel like computer-generated singing but in the short to medium term it should be OK for mock-ups.
In case that you want to enter phonetics directly, this is also possible, though a little bit limited at the moment to available phonetics (compared to IPA). I think it is nice, that you can also add „taking breath“-phonetics, so not only plain text.
My hopes are pinned on Cantai. I’ve given them the money for the perpetual license and I have NOT had success with their online rendering tool despite following their instructions for submission. I will be looking for a refund if they do not produce within the next 6 months. Their notices about the VST being available soon is really becoming annoying. They should publish a target date and deal with it promptly in my opinion. If it’s implemented for Musescore, it would seem that implementation in VST would not be all that far away…
NP spoiled all of us. Just select the playback template and press Play. For my part, I’m not interested in exporting to one program in one format, then exporting to another… I don’t want to type in strange phonetic language… I don’t want to mess with dynamic curves, etc, etc. Yes, I realize it’s quite complicated. But so is NP, and I just sent an orchestration demo to a client yesterday as a simple export yesterday which I was quite pleased with. It gets the job done.
I realize expecting this of a choral engine is probably unrealistic with the present state of things, but that’s where I am. And I imagine many other composers/arrangers as well. I also paid for Cantai, honestly with nominal expectations, and I will wait until something comes along that just does it with no extra fiddling.
Way back when, I was that way about orchestral condensation. I waited and waited, and eventually my faith was rewarded. I’m hoping for the same sort of reward on the vocal issue! (But I couldn’t wait forever, so I bought Cubase 15 elements. Not a perfect solution, but better than nothing.)
I’m used to working in more than one program to get the job done. I use Adobe CC to create score cover and jacket, front matter, and promotional materials starting with Photoshop or Illustrator and ending with InDesign. Having to use a DAW for choral works will now just be one more step in the process. I’d rather have a one thing does everything tool, but blanche at the learning curve for that.
Perhaps if there were some sort of automation ability for import and setup using a template, it wouldn’t be so daunting.