If I were to only pick one choir from the the choice of Hollywood Choirs or Dominus, what would you recommend and your reasons for the decision...or whether neither of them for something else. Would like to hear your opinions and thoughts.
I have both but it would be overeaching of me to do a clinical comparison because I greatly prefer Dominus for personal reasons having to do only with the mysteries of my musical tastes. I don't use choirs commercially, so it's just a matter of my whims. I bought Dominus for me, and it plays in real time so beautifully and sounds so fabulous (to me) that I'm loving it like no other VST in my experience.
So here are few random thoughts...
I feel Hollywood Choirs buys a lot of range and possibility at the cost of being technical in a rather computer geeky way (my opinion). Dominus is custom built to be more narrowly focused on something I absolutely love made accessible through simple technologies that are cast in musical terms. I was able to figure out the intricacies of Dominus in one evening, while the Hollywood Choirs Wordbuilder remains puzzling to my lazy brain. I've been a computer geek, now I wan't to be a musician.
Dominus can't make sentences, to which I add "thank goodness!" It can't even construct simple grammatical Latin phrases. No matter, I'm one of those people who almost never listens to the words. I can't understand most of the words in "Spem in Alium" either, but I bet I could do a fair sonic approximation with Dominus.
Dominus can be played out of the box in a very musical way with syllables lined up with notes and beats dictated primarily by playing style, or by simply reassigning note lengths to various syllables. Let's see...this syllable needs to come in a little later, I'll add a dot to the note just before. Or maybe I'll play that syllable a tiny bit longer.'
I may set up "Lacrimosa" to drag out the first few syllables, and adjust "Beatam to be my word of choice for a longish second-to-last syllables. Without the hindrance of Grammar, one can simply line up the custom adjusted, meter-biased words on the keyswitches and bring them in as the musical meter demands. Problem solved, no millisecond sliders, no GUI's. Sometimes a little tweaking in the note editor is called for as when trying for those lovely cluster dissonances beyond the reach of my hamfisted playing. But with those simple, musical-feeling methods, all solvable problems can be addressed.
So that's it. Hollywood Choirs is magnificent, no question about it. But Dominus knows what I like and delivers it with simplicity and elegance.
