Help Needed in Choosing My Next Female Voice!

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.

Any thoughts or advice?

1 Like

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.

3 Likes

Wow, that is very kind of you! I might take you up on that offer!

A related question…do they post anywhere what the vocal range is of each voice?

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)

5 Likes

Great info @jfa. Don’t suppose you anything on Hayden?

1 Like

I saw this in synthv.fandom.com:
Hayden: G3:F#4

1 Like

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.

1 Like

Thanks for those! It is a useful reference!!

Thank you! But does Kasane Teto sing well in English? I am seeking really convincing American English without any other accent.

Personally, I find Mai an excellent contrast to Solaria (I recently used both as characters in a cover of a Les Miserables song.

1 Like

Is that the free version of Mai or is there also a paid version?

Mai is a free download if you have the Pro version of SynthV.
Free Voice Databases for Synthesizer V Studio Pro

I suppose she does have an “accent” when she sings in English, but I would not say it’s an overwhelmingly “foreign” accent.

I used her for a cover of a Sheryl Crow song

If it Makes You Happy

I use Solaria and Eleanor Forte. Sometimes both together. To me, that’s a perfect match. Some songs Solaria goes better, another songs Eleanor fits like a glove. Love them.

1 Like

I am interested in Eleanor Forte. Where can I purchase this voice? I don’t see it on Dreamtonics store and I am not comfortable purchasing from a site that is not in English.

I bought this one there:
anicute Eleanor Forte AI
And you can choose the language and currency.

I also use Anicute for Elanor Forte, no issues.

But honestly, so far I have bought from Voicemith, Audiologie, Eclipsed, Anicute and of course, Dreamtronics - all have been totally straightforward.

I find all of those voices very distinct.

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 “problem” with doubling voices by adding another voice is the “thickening” sound of vocal doubling comes from each voice being slightly out of tune with the other, giving a “chorusing” effect.

But when the voices are all in tune, they’ll fuse together into a single voice. This can be useful for strengthening a weak voice, but isn’t what you’re 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 that’s likely a lot more work than it’s worth.

You can also tweak the voice with Pitch Shift so it’s handful of cents out of tune.

The doubling voices don’t 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 you’ll generally want them to be less expressive, so the attention doesn’t get pulled from the primary voice.

1 Like

Thank you!

I only own SOLARIA so I can’t 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!

I’ve been hoping to have 2 female voices that sound different enough that they can’t be easily mistaken for the same singer.

A friend has Natalie so he took my song’s Synth V file and rendered her singing SOLARIA’s part then sent me the WAV. I listened to both and couldn’t hear much of a difference. But, to your point about doubling, I found using BOTH WAVs in my DAW had a definite thickening effect! That’s where I came up with that idea for using 2 voices on one track.

But back to my main goal. I’d like 2 female voices that sound distinct. Think Nicks and McVie in Fleetwood Mac. Or, compare Joplin and Slick…very different sounding voices! Miley and Dolly and Billie! Voices you can instantly recognize and won’t confuse with another.

I’m 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.
.
As for ‘doubling’, 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.

1 Like