Sonokinetic Tutti Vox review

The latest in Sonokinetic's growing line of phrase-based Kontakt Player libraries sees the acclaimed Dutch samplist capturing a 48-piece choir and turning the resultant 41,000+ samples into three separate instruments: Tutti Vox Core, Lingua and Spoken.

Each comes in full and Lite versions - the first featuring four mic options (Close, Decca, Wide and Far), the second a fixed stereo mix - and the whole soundbank is supplied in 16- and 24-bit formats.

The interface is typical Sonokinetic, putting sexy design and iconography ahead of immediately intuitive workflow, and thus requiring a brief acclimatisation period.

Tutti Vox Core is the main event, serving up a wealth of atmospheric vocal FX, laid out over two octaves, with each key triggering a phrase chosen from one of four categorised sets.

There are rises, falls, glissandi, clusters, beds, shouts, whispers, Latin words, vowels, looping soundbeds and more on offer, many of them with 2-, 4- and 8-bar variations. Options available to each phrase include adjustment of level, pan, effects routing (Filter, EQ, Convolution reverb and Delay) and host-relative playback speed, plus a score view.

Tutti Vox Lingua facilitates the construction of vocal lines from a 'Word Book' of Latin words and looping vowels, for chordal playback, triggering separately mappable/adjustable/mixable Bass, Tenor, Alto and Soprano sections.

In Quick Play mode, you just string together a phrase of up to eight words (four keyswitchable phrases can be stored in a patch), which are stepped through with each successive note or by keyswitching. In Advanced mode, each section of the choir is assigned its own four-bar phrase, and playback resets with each new note. Note changes within words are made possible using the sustain pedal or legato playing.

Finally, Tutti Vox Spoken arranges the full Word Book across the keyboard, for less structured phrase construction.

All three Tutti Vox instruments sound magnificent, but Core stands out as probably the most powerful, usable vocal FX library we've ever come across - film score composers simply won't believe their ears.

On the downside, you can't mix mic channels without loading multiple instruments, and obviously, Lingua and Spoken are limited to the sounds of the Word Book.