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Does Hollywood Choirs Hold Up?

thx for this great review!
It's what i suspected since the release.
It's not sounding good, and the concept is also lacking.

Who needs a worldbuilder, when all you can hear is strange words coming out of the speakers?

So more praise to the "old" libraries of Soundiron and Fluffys Dominus!
 
Decent review. It highlights the good and the bad, without wasting time on the information you can get from the producer. It does feel like the update SC never had (although that did have SATB plus boys, if I memory serves).
 
I would be a little more patient for Something coming from England, just sayin'.

Look into Strezov as well.
 
I have a few of the Strezov choirs and they are good. As is Olympus Elements.
I favor fairly dry libraries as a rule.
 
yes i did, and it's right now, to be fair, only related to the demos i heard.
HC is not convincing for me, but thats just my humble opinion.
 
yes i did, and it's right now, to be fair, only related to the demos i heard.
HC is not convincing for me, but thats just my humble opinion.

Which you are certainly entitled to,. We all like what we like and do not what we do not. I think Nick's demo sounds great and when I play HC here, I like what I hear.
 
I have the Olympus Elements and boys choir, quite good. When I'm lazy I use Omni.

Choir is definitely one of the holy grail of sampling though.

I have a few of the Strezov choirs and they are good. As is Olympus Elements.
I favor fairly dry libraries as a rule.
 
Great honest review, very helpful, thanks a lot! EW is offering a crossgrade for owners of Symphonic Choirs to Hollywood Choirs this week (Platinum for $399). Still on the fence about this. It seems like the question comes down to do I really want to upgrade the word builder to a newer version for $399? Or should I just use that money to buy Strezov Choirs, Olympus, or Requiem?

Honestly, the demo at the very end of your review video sounds just amazing. So it seems HC sounds pretty awesome if I use its word building patch...
 
Cory did also publish a written review here:

Hollywood Choirs by East West and Quantum Leap Review
Today we are having a close look at Hollywood Choirs – a cinematic choir library developed by East West and Quantum Leap. I’ll be covering the library’s look, sound and usability to give you an overall idea of what to expect from the library.

EastWest/Quantum Leap are partner companies responsible for the production and creation of critically acclaimed libraries such as Stormdrum, Symphonic Orchestra and the Hollywood Orchestra series many years ago. The two companies parted ways during the production of the Hollywood series and regrouped to release a new addition to the series called Hollywood Choirs.

Hollywood Choirs is designed for cinematic and orchestral use via East West’s PLAY engine, featuring multiple mic positions, a variety of vowel and consonant sustain for both male and female sections, and a robust word-builder designed to create custom lyrical performances.

Continue:

Hollywood Choirs by East West and Quantum Leap Review
https://www.strongmocha.com/2018/01/13/hollywood-choirs-by-east-west-and-quantum-leap-review/
 
I used it last month when it was free during their competition. To be honest I wasn´t really satisfied.
The WB felt uncomfortable as in symph choirs. Some samples where buggy and I got some hickup sounds and unsmooth transitions. As to the sound it was quite good but for me not suiting the price.
Here´s a short track I wrote with it trying to get some comprehensable latin out of WB
 
I used it last month when it was free during their competition. To be honest I wasn´t really satisfied.
The WB felt uncomfortable as in symph choirs. Some samples where buggy and I got some hickup sounds and unsmooth transitions. As to the sound it was quite good but for me not suiting the price.
Here´s a short track I wrote with it trying to get some comprehensable latin out of WB

Wow, sounds awesome! Thanks for posting the song. It seems that it worths the $399 crossgrade price to me...
 
I used it last month when it was free during their competition. To be honest I wasn´t really satisfied.
The WB felt uncomfortable as in symph choirs. Some samples where buggy and I got some hickup sounds and unsmooth transitions. As to the sound it was quite good but for me not suiting the price.
Here´s a short track I wrote with it trying to get some comprehensable latin out of WB


Very impressive! But I completely agree about the word builder being uncomfortable to use. I found that the word builder is kind of a gimmick to me, fun to mess around with (absolutely hilarious at times to type in some ridiculous vulgar phrase and have a choir sing it back to you nicely xD)

In practice though, I just found it takes such a huge amount of time and effort to make something even remotely convincing, its just not worth it. I think its an incredible achievement to have any sort of programming that can emulate human speech AND singing but for me personally I think the work necessary to use the word builder is just not worth it in practice. The vowels and legatos are very nice in Hollywood Choirs though, but if it weren’t for Composer Cloud I cant say i would buy it for its full asking price, especially compared to products from Strezov and FluffyAudio. I have Storm Choir II and man it sounds excellent.

But man you definitely did an excellent job with your piece, one of the more convincing uses of Hollywood Choirs Ive heard!
 
Really? Thank you! Means a lot to me :). Keep in mind that just one sentence in WB took me a loong time.
I thought all you need to do is choosing the latin words in the word builder phrase list and that's it. Wondering what kind of tweaking you have made that took you a long time? Thanks.
 
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