Review: Tutti Vox Kontakt Virtual Instrument by Sonokinetic

Sonokinetic Tutti Vox Review

After reviewing the Capriccio library for Kontakt, now it’s turn for another remarkable Kontakt virtual instrument made by the same guys: the Tutti Vox, and, as you might as well imagine, this is a choir sample library. Again, I urge you to go to Tutti Vox web page and just watch the demo videos, cause they are amazing! I’ll wait for you.

Well, now you’ve seen what this library is capable of, let’s check it out, shall we?

Overview.

As Sonokinetic describes it in their own website, this is a 48 piece orchestral cinematic choir next generation sample library. I don’t know if all of that marketing is necessarily true, but, one thing is for sure: this is an amazing 48 piece cinematic choir.

So, this library contains three different instruments -as well as lite versions, which have minor differences-: the Tutti Vox Core, the Tutti Vox Lingua, and the Tutti Vox Spoken.

Core.

The Tutti Vox Core is basically an instrument for choir SFX, it works in a very cool way, it has four different parts with different keyboard zones: Glissando & clusters from C3 to D#3, vocal FX from E3 to G3, Beds Atonal from G#3 to B3 and Beds Tonal which cover the octave between G#4to G5. The first three parts work pretty much in the same way, this is, you assign one sample to each of the four available notes in that part, for the first part you can choose between glissandos and clusters, and they can have a duration of 2 bars, 4 bars, or set them to loop (tempo sync’d of course).

Next, for the second part, we can choose between words, vowels and shouts, which can be set to loop too. Finally, for the atonal part, you can choose from 30 bizarre, atonal motifs, this a includes things like laughter and whistles (amazing by the way). The fourth part works a bit different, you can choose between 14 samples, but, here, as this is tonal you can play chords or individual notes in the range of an octave. As with Capriccio samples, you can preview samples right in the sample picker window.

The only difference between the regular and lite versions is the mics placement option, which, of course, it is not present in the lite version. There are four positions to choose from; Close mics, Decca tree, Wide (which I guess is X/Y configuration) and Far. This brings up lots of possibilities to work in diverse contexts.

Next, there are four different effects to apply: a multimode resonant filter, three band eq, conv. room simulation and a delay.

On the top right corner, you’ll find a preferences icon. Here, you can set all parameters, for each sample zone (volume, pan, fx, etc), so, very deep possibilities in here.

Lingua.

The second instrument is the Tutti Vox Lingua, and this will probably be the most used one, because, here you can actually make the choir sing… words. There are two modes, quick play, in which all voices will sing the same word and advanced mode in which you can set different words for each voice (that is basses, tenors, altos, and sopranos). You can select many different words of one, two, three or four syllables, plus long note and short notes vowels.

The quick play mode, has four presets (which you can change on the fly with key switches) with a length of eight words each, so, every time you hit a new chord, it advances one word but, there’s a trick…if you don’t want to advance to the next word, you might play legato and it will keep triggering the same word.

The advanced mode is far more complex, not only you an set different words for each voice, but, it will actually play the other way around, so, if you play legato, it will advance in a 4/4 four bar loop, but every time you don’t play legato, it will restart from the first measure. So, you might have to actually practice a little bit your keyboard skills in order to master this amazing instrument. Again, you can choose between the same four mics placement, and have the same four FX. You can fine tune settings for global velocity, and level and pan for each of the voices.

Spoken.

Finally, the last instrument is the Tutti Vox Spoken, which is of course for spoken words. You can think of this as a mixture of the Core and Lingua instruments. You have 5 different zones mapped across the key bed. Zone 1 is for vowels and goes from C1 to C#2, from D2 to D3, we find 1 syllables words, from D#3 to F4 2 syllables words, from F#4 to E5 3 syllables words and finally from F5 to E6 words of 5 syllables.

There’s kinda word pad where you can check the word’s order, and you can, of course, set the level and pan for male and female voices. There are no FX in this instrument, but you can change the mics placement and set velocity amount too.

Conclusions.

This is an amazing library, and I think it is very cool for scoring. I’ve had this for a couple of days now, and already using three instances of it for a project I’m working for. The Core instrument it’s brilliant for creating atmospheres, and the Lingua instrument it’s just epic! You just have to play through some harmonies and you are good to go with a beautiful choir.

Samples are very well recorded, and you have the option to use 24 bit or 16-bit samples which are an extra bonus. The mics placement options and the FX make this instruments very versatile, I mean, using some FX and with some creativity, you can make this sound like a synth pad instead of a choir. This is a very impressive and expressive instrument. One thing I almost forget to mention is that you can control the volume with the mod wheel, so, expressive crescendos and diminuendos are really easy to achieve.

My guess is that anyone who’s working on cinematic music should have this in their arsenal!

You can buy Tutti Vox Kontakt virtual instrument directly from Sonokinetic website.

[author image=”https://www.producerspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/piggy-sounds-logo.jpg” ]Rafael Hofstadter is a recording and mixing engineer and sound designer with 10+ years experience in playing and programming synths, recording, mixing and producing pop/rock/folk albums. He also runs piggysounds.com.[/author]