Whether you’re creating music or mixing projects for others, you don’t always have the luxury of calling the lead vocalist back into the vocal booth to record new parts. For situations like that, you’ll need to turn to vocal instrument plug-ins and effects. Team members here at Sweetwater have compiled a list of the best vocal instrument plug-ins that they think will help you achieve the best results every time. Let’s get into it!
Best Virtual Instruments for Vocal Sounds
Best Service Cantus
Want to add a formidable liturgical sound to your projects? Then you’ll want Cantus. This plug-in comes with 400 Gregorian chant phrases. You get 24 words, three articulations, and five legato styles to customize your chants. Finally, this Kontakt library comes bundled with 19 soundscapes to inspire you to push your productions further.
Best Service Ethno World 6 Voices
Ethno World 6 Voices comes packed to the brim with voices from around the world. The library includes 177 solo voices and choirs from Cameroon, Guinea, China, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Northern Africa, Spain, Mongolia, and many more musical traditions. Ethno World 6 Voices is a lights-out choice for sound design and music alike.
EastWest Voices of Soul
EastWest collaborated with C.C. White to create Voices of Soul. The virtual instrument includes 66 sample-based instruments and 604 unique phrases. Voices of Soul is a great choice for situations where you need sultry female vocals. And, since there are tons of phrases and samples in every key, this instrument easily slots into any process.
EastWest Hollywood Backup Singers
Having Hollywood Backup Singers at your disposal is the next best thing to real-life backup singers. This virtual instrument packs an amazing library of instruments and phrases. With EastWest’s awesome WordBuilder vocalization engine, you can program the instrument to sing the words you type. There’s also an “LES” vowel type for Pink Floyd–esque rotary vocals.
Klevgrand Pipa
Adding vocals to a track is easy with Pipa. This vocal synthesizer plug-in from Klevgrand takes thousands of real vocal samples and runs them through a hybrid wavetable and granulating synthesizer to achieve insanely expressive results. And, since there are both male and female vocal sounds, there’s always a useable sound within Pipa.
Klevgrand Jussi
Need a male vocal but don’t have anyone who can come into the studio? Just fire up the Klevgrand Jussi vocal synth. This plug-in offers four voices per note with selectable waveforms, throat-emulation parameters, and velocity-controlled formants. Just pair Jussi with your velocity-sensitive MIDI keyboard, and you’re ready to create stunning textures.
Output Exhale
Play the human voice with Output Exhale! Aside from creating amazingly useful textures, you can take full advantage of the plug-in’s tempo-synced effects, delays, loops, and motion features to create constantly shifting, emotive parts. From ethereal choirs to individual vocalists, Exhale is a great choice for sound designers and DJs alike.
Vir2 Aeris
Choose Aeris if you’re looking for a realistic choir instrument. It’s a sample library for Native Instruments’ Kontakt player that’s full to bursting with dynamic and textured vocal harmonies. We particularly enjoy that Aeris has an adjustable vibrato parameter controllable via the mod wheel on your MIDI keyboard.
Best Service Shevannai
The high-fantasy fans among us will absolutely love Best Service’s Shevannai virtual instrument. It contains 4,000+ samples of words, phrases, and whispers all programmed by Eduardo Tarilonte. With this plug-in at your disposal, you’re set up to create cinematic soundscapes straight out of Middle Earth.
Best Vocal Processing Plug-ins
iZotope VocalSynth 2
iZotope VocalSynth 2 is ready to become your go-to plug-in for radio-ready sounds in the box. At its core, it’s a multi-effects plug-in complete with five vocal engines, seven stompbox-like effects, and three operating modes. If you need to massage a track, then VocalSynth 2 is the way to go. What’s more, VocalSynth 2 communicates seamlessly with all other iZotope plug-ins.
Waves OVox
Waves’ OVox plug-in is powered by the company’s Organic ReSynthesis (ORS) technology. Feed your vocals to this plug-in, and it resynthesizes the source to create completely new sounds with the expressive nature of the original. The OVox plug-in also includes vocal tuning and harmonizing, a talk box effect, a vocoder, and so much more.
Antares CHOIR Evo
Have a song that requires choral vocals? With Antares CHOIR Evo, it’s easy to turn a single vocal performance into 4, 8, 16, or even 32 distinct voices. After you generate the extra vocals, CHOIR Evo allows you to spread them into a custom stereo field for remarkable realism in any context.
Antares Harmony Engine
When you get a project without vocal harmonies, you can add them in with Antares Harmony Engine. Use the plug-in’s throat-modeling technology to process each harmony you generate through a model of human vocal cords. Of course, Antares also includes ultra-accurate pitch detection for fast and predictable results.
Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
Powerful pitch- and formant-shifting effects await when you purchase Little AlterBoy from Soundtoys. This plug-in has a simple and intuitive interface that’s capable of subtle fine-tuning and otherworldly hard-tuned effects alike! If you’re looking to imbue vocal tracks with serious character, then choose Little AlterBoy.
Eventide Quadravox
Eventide designed Quadravox in the spirit of the company’s well-loved Octovox plug-in. Quadravox is a harmony and delay plug-in that gives you four separate voices with individual controls for level, pan, delay, and pitch. Each voice includes individual bypass and quantize parameters, granting you plenty of freedom to dial in the perfect sound.
Zynaptiq Wormhole
Feed Wormhole a vocal source, and the plug-in bundle will return an otherworldly ambience in an instant. You can take advantage of the unique dry/wet morphing effect to draw up robot, monster, and alien voices to your heart’s content. However you choose to use the plug-in, Wormhole is sure to spark your creativity.
Polyverse Manipulator
Polyverse purposely engineered their Manipulator plug-in to be anything but subtle — and it delivers flawlessly. This pitch-shifting plug-in includes five effects: pitch, formant, and harmonics shifting alongside frequency modulation and grains. No matter how you set the knobs, you’ll enjoy bewilderingly bewitching sounds.
Amazing Vocals Are Just a Click Away!
If you’re tired of dull-sounding vocals, then be sure to give your Sweetwater Sales Engineer a ring at (800) 222-4700. They’ll be happy to help you identify the vocal sound that you want and equip you with the plug-ins you need to expand your vocal harmonic horizons.