I own Synthesizer V with SOLARIA and Hayden. I would like to have one more English female voice so I am comparing SOLARIA with Natalie and the new Felicia. But honestly, I am not hearing a tremendous difference in these three voices.
I have tried comparing them, each singing the same song, each in a similar style, but I am just not hearing a big difference that would work as two distinct female singers in a song.
One advantage I can see to them being similar is you can use two different voices singing the same part and get a nice doubling/thickening effect.
They are all very good but I guess I was hoping for more distinction between them.
You can send someone (like me) who has the desired vocals a song. A short part (verse or chorus) with the instrumental mp3 and the synthV vocal part (.svp). And in return, you will receive the result mixed with each vocals. This can probably help you to hear the differences.
Good question!
What I have found:
Eclipsed Sounds:
ASTERIAN: Bass (E2-D4) + Falsetto (G4-C5), Language: English
SAROS: Tenor (B2-C5), Languages: English, Spanish
SOLARIA: Mezzo-Soprano (E3-G5), Language: English
NYL: Alto (B2-C5) + Falsetto (C#5-F5), Language: English
Google and me:
Natalie: Mezzo-Soprano (E3-G5)
Weina: Mezzo-Soprano+ (G3-A4)
Kevin: CounterTenor (E3-G5)
Felicia: Contralto (F3:E5)
SOLARIA is my number one English female voicebank. I have numerous others (Gumi, Maki, Eleanor, Qing Su, Mai, Rikka, and more recently, Felicia), but my favorite alternative voice to SOLARIA is Kasane Teto. Teto has such a distinctive voice, that huskiness that no one else has. She has surprising nuance in her singing and also quite a bit of power. I love using her solo as well as in harmony parts.
I use Solaria and Eleanor Forte. Sometimes both together. To me, thatâs a perfect match. Some songs Solaria goes better, another songs Eleanor fits like a glove. Love them.
I am interested in Eleanor Forte. Where can I purchase this voice? I donât see it on Dreamtonics store and I am not comfortable purchasing from a site that is not in English.
Solaria has a very up-front pop brassy voice. I think Natalie has a softer voice that is especially nice in the mid to lower register, sounding a bit like Karen Carpenter. Felicia has a broad, dramatic voice reminiscent of Adele.
The âproblemâ with doubling voices by adding another voice is the âthickeningâ sound of vocal doubling comes from each voice being slightly out of tune with the other, giving a âchorusingâ effect.
But when the voices are all in tune, theyâll fuse together into a single voice. This can be useful for strengthening a weak voice, but isnât what youâre looking for here.
Instead, you might consider using a VST specifically for vocal doubling. The sound of doubling comes less from a difference in timbre and more from a slight difference in pitch. A vocal doubler will dynamically move the doubled voice in and out of tune.
If you want more control, you could just draw in the Pitch Deviation by hand, but thatâs likely a lot more work than itâs worth.
You can also tweak the voice with Pitch Shift so itâs handful of cents out of tune.
The doubling voices donât even need to be a different singer. Just modify parameters such as Tension, Gender and Tone Shift. You can get a lot of timbrel variety from a single voice just by doing that.
While you could add some pitch variety by adjusting the expression parameters, the problem with that is you need to keep the doubled voices as background voices. So youâll generally want them to be less expressive, so the attention doesnât get pulled from the primary voice.
I only own SOLARIA so I canât really do a proper comparison. But when I listen to all three, side by side using their webpages, having them each sing the provided sample songs (Amazing Grace, Trainwreck, etc.) I am hard pressed to tell them apart!
Iâve been hoping to have 2 female voices that sound different enough that they canât be easily mistaken for the same singer.
A friend has Natalie so he took my songâs Synth V file and rendered her singing SOLARIAâs part then sent me the WAV. I listened to both and couldnât hear much of a difference. But, to your point about doubling, I found using BOTH WAVs in my DAW had a definite thickening effect! Thatâs where I came up with that idea for using 2 voices on one track.
But back to my main goal. Iâd like 2 female voices that sound distinct. Think Nicks and McVie in Fleetwood Mac. Or, compare Joplin and SlickâŚvery different sounding voices! Miley and Dolly and Billie! Voices you can instantly recognize and wonât confuse with another.
Iâm prolly hoping for too much from a commercial product intended to fit many genres.
Maybe something like VocoFlex is what I need in addition to Synthesizer V? I tried using the Little AlterBoy plug from Soundtoys to slightly shift formant but it quickly ruins an otherwise realistic vocal from Synth V.
Thanks again for your ideas. Any other inputs are welcome.
Listen at 0:37 where Mai is singing then at 0:50 Solaria cuts in - to me they are super different, this is an example, not unique - I find all the voices unique when you explore them as @dcuny said.
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As for âdoublingâ, I render voices one at a time and assemble the final mix in my DAW, minimising the chances of waveform synching but @dcuny is correct, changing parameters as simple as trermolo default frequency can make a big difference.