EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Hi Sean,

On Nov 24, 2003, at 4:01 PM, Sean McCoy wrote:

> Has anybody tried these out yet? The recorded demos sound nice, but 
> they
> don't have a program demo so it's impossible to tell how flexible the
> samples are. It's hard to imagine a really useable classical solo vocal
> library, but here's hoping....
>
> http://www.beladmedia.com/index.html

I own these.  How flexible would you like them to be?  IMHO, I believe 
that they will become more flexible when the Extended set will become 
available.  The DIVA Classical Soloists is vibrato heavy (and that's 
the way that they are intended).  They are beautifully recorded and 
certainly usable.  If you plan on making them sing actual words, it is 
possible (although still limited) but it will be more difficult.  The 
standard vowels are there as are some consonants.  Soloist 2 of the set 
pretty much only covers 1 octave which makes it less flexible and 
soloist only covers 1 and a half octaves.  I would have preferred a 
full two octaves for both so that you're not constrained to certain 
keys for a melody.  The attacks on the original samples have been 
trimmed as the developer indicated to me that the attacks were simply 
too slow to get very consistent playing out of them.  The editing is 
pretty good and is playable out of the box.  It translates pretty well 
to exs-24 from Gigasampler (I used CDXtract for this).  They really 
work well for haunting moods as well as some of the pretty and 
beautiful stuff you hear from the demos.  They are not intended to be 
screaming fff vocals so keep that in mind.

Simply looking at the name may mislead you a little (Classical 
Soloists) as you won't be sequencing an opera with them.  As you can 
tell from the demos, they do sound wonderful.  I am quite happy with 
them and looking forward to the Extended addition to this library.  
With straight tones as well as delayed vibrato and 2 octaves to work 
with, I believe that the set will be more useful together than by 
itself.  The nice thing is that owners of the 1st set can upgrade to 
Extended for only $49.95.

There is no utility like there is for Voices of the Apocalypse and, 
given the samples that are there, it would probably be difficult to 
form words in the same way (not that it is completely impossible).  
There are short syllables that have been sampled but, IMHO, they lose 
some of their usefulness because they are pitched and are only 
available at that one pitch.

If you plan on doing similar pieces of music with this library then you 
will find it useful.  If you are planning on having it sing a bunch of 
lyrics then you'll probably be disappointed.

Hope this helps in your decision.

Fernstudio

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