Review: All Saints Choir by Soniccouture

Following on from the “Conservatoire Collection”, which was recorded at the prestigious Birmingham Conservatoire, Soniccouture scouted another historical location, namely the “All Saints Church” in Tooting, Surrey. With such a unique building, a huge organ and the “New London Chamber Choir”, Soniccouture present us with the “All Saints Collection”. The collection is comprised of a choir and an organ instrument with the focus of this review on the sublime choir instrument. Will Soniccouture deliver another beautiful hand crafter instrument? I think I’ll let the singers do the talking!

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Review: All Saints Choir by Soniccouture

The All Saints Choir is a traditional church soprano, alto, tenor and bass (SATB) choir. To begin, this is not your huge theatrical choir with massive dynamics, thunderous roars and multi syllable staccato chants, this is an intimate, beautiful and detailed ensemble choir. That said, using the cluster mode it can go .from stark beauty to extreme terror with up to 12 atonal voices of horror in cluster mode. There are also some handy sound design patches which give the library added dimension. Before we go any further though, let’s take a look at the main choir ensemble.

All Saints Choir sells for £269 or on sale at £188.30 from Soniccouture

Thoughts

Upon loading, the GUI instantly grabs you and it shares all of the character and refinement that we have come to expect from Soniccouture. It’s classy, uncluttered, sleek and is very cleverly set out. There are no hieroglyphics to decipher, it is all extremely clear. The gorgeous photography by Ed Al-Shakarchi sits proudly in the middle of the GUI. The main patch loads with the soprano and alto sections only with the mid microphone in use. I quickly click on the tenor and bass sections and begin to play, changing and blending the four microphone positions on the fly. The natural sound of the All Saints church is sublime and blending the close, front, mid and far mics enriches that sound further. First impressions, this is a beautiful sounding choir. You are transported into the heart of the church as though you are attending a choral recital. This is the level of detail and character the All Saints Choir has. Incredible.

The A, I and U vowels are already loaded with the option to load the O, E and M sounds too. I quickly load these and find them to be key-switchable, which can be moved to either below the choir or above. The full SATB choir sounds great, but to really appreciate the room, I’m looking for some reverbs and general eq.

On the effects page, you’ll find a plethora of delay, eq, filter, distortion , stereo spread options, with of course, a large selection of reverbs. From this page, the sound design aspect of the All Saints Choir becomes very apparent. I’m a huge fan of sound design and I tip my hat to Soniccouture for adding a good amount of high quality on board effects and sound design options. So far so good. Second impression is this is a gorgeous sounding ensemble quiet, heavenly in fact with some great sound design options and a good selection of reverbs.

Now, there are a couple of points I have left until later in this review. Firstly, when the main choir patch loads up, it is automatically in poly legato mode and it’s here where I carried out my initial testing and formed my first opinions. The legato scripting in my view is excellent and you have the option here to set how large you want the legato range to be in steps. If you want a polyphonic legato that is an octave then you can, yet you run the danger of different sections overlapping. Should you want this to be slimmer, say four semi tones either way, you can do that also. Polyphonic legato is no easy feat and as I continued to play, the true legato was very well scripted, although I had some minor issues with velocity responsiveness. Often while playing four parts, the moving parts would jump out at a higher volume if I did not keep a consistent velocity. This is true for the majority of libraries although the tolerance was set far lower so it was more sensitive. I found myself having to really concentrate on my velocity as opposed to my playing and arranging. After a while I did get used to this and with some added reverb via the effects page and balancing of the sections via the four independent volume controls, it was less noticeable.

Having decided I would most likely use the poly legato for doing quick four part sketches, I moved to the single legato mode. For final mixes, I would record each section individually to have more control. Here, the results were excellent and using the modwheel to control the “sing” knob, I was creating once again magnificently expressive and beautiful legato choir lines with dynamics, emotion and flair. The level of realism created was superb and I was once again transported into the All Saints Church. The top mode, polyphonic, allows you to play all four parts of the choir in unison, without any legato. This enabled the creation of traditional swells, dynamics and for me, a more traditional choir performance. Again, this articulation is sublime.

The final mode is the cluster which can only be found within the polyphonic mode. Within the cluster you can select up to 12 atonal voices and use the cluster control to change the intensity. Each voice can be set to a different pitch and the further you turn up the control, the more apart and erratic the voices become. This is great for horror and tension scoring and I really liked starting at 100% and bringing the control down to 0% to create a dissonant choir becoming a perfectly harmonised one. The clusters are a great tool and show the more menacing and versatile sound of the choir. As stated before, there are various sound design patches, both traditional and cluster based which expand the instrument further using the onboard effects. There are only ten of these yet I think they serve as a good starting point for your own sound design. In addition, there are NKI instruments which cover the single sections, various mic positions and the Górecki sections. Aside from different mic positions, I couldn’t find much difference. Maybe the settings are to emulate the sound of the composers vocal works? Either way, they sound great. In terms of value for money, the choir sounds fantastic and the options and sound design are fantastic.

My third impression is really my conclusion. I think this is a gorgeous sounding choir and really captures the All Saints sound. I love the overall timbre, varied mic positions, sing knob control and the legato and clusters. I think the standard polyphonic patch is perfect for adding texture and harmony. I also think each of the six letter articulations sound smooth, clear and are very well sampled. The poly legato for me is not really what I’d use for final mixes so really the fact that it isn’t perfect isn’t at all a big deal. I’d say the only other option I’d really like to see is the ability to change the length of legato. That aside, this is one fine choir instrument and Soniccouture has done themselves, the All Saints Church and The New London Chamber Choir proud. If you are looking for a beautiful, harmonious SATB choir then I think this is a serious contender for your money. Rich, highly playable and full of character, a definite recommendation!

Facts

14 GB Library, 9 GB with NCW compression
24/48khz stereo sampling
30,494 samples
4 microphone options
6 vocal articulations (a, i, u, e, o, m)
True Legato sampling
Legato + Poly Legato mode
Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass sections recorded individually
Cluster: multiple atonal detune module
Recorded at All Saints church in Tooting, Surrey

All Saints Choir sells for £269 or on sale at £188.30 from Soniccouture

Demos of All Saints Choir by Soniccouture

Videos of All Saints Choir by Soniccouture

Contributor Pete Checkley reviews All Saints Choir by Soniccouture
“Boutique developer, Soniccouture have a brilliant track record for producing some of the most unique and quirkiest libraries on the market. From their Box of Tricks to The Canterbury Suitcase, their charm, innovation and love for what they create is evident throughout. Following on from the “Conservatoire Collection”, which was recorded at the prestigious Birmingham Conservatoire, Soniccouture scouted another historical location, namely the “All Saints Church” in Tooting, Surrey. With such a unique building, a huge organ and the “New London Chamber Choir”, Soniccouture present us with the “All Saints Collection”. The collection comprises of a choir and an organ instrument with the focus of this review on the sublime choir instrument. Will Soniccouture deliver another beautiful hand crafter instrument? I think I’ll let the singers do the talking!”