MV's Plugins

Have you ever used Antares Harmony Engine Evo in MIDI mode to create vocal harmonies? Or, maybe a hardware MIDI vocoder (eg, Digitech Vocalist) that lets you sing as a choir by yourself in a live performance? Have you ever heard Kurt Bestor perform "Prayer of The Children"? This plugin does that, and it does that (mostly) better than any other solution I have used. This is an enormous compliment to the developer because all of the competition costs hundreds of dollars and come from big studios.

I'll compare Midichoir 3.1 to some other midi-controlled choir options (there aren't many) so you can see how great this plugin is.

---Midichoir 3.1 Winning Features---

1-Super simple setup. This plugin sounds great for various uses right out of the box. Routing is easy as pie (if you know how your DAW works). It doesn't glitch. It just works and sounds good.

2-Nice-looking interface with clearly marked and simple controls.

3-Low processor use and low latency. Low enough that I can use it for live-performance even on older computers. That is a big deal because this means I can replace more expensive hardware devices with this plugin.

4-If you are able to access the non-ui sliders, you can mess around with things like portamento time (which no other plugins like this have programmed at all), gates, compression, low pass, detune, delay, sustain, vibrato, all of the La Voz Cantande programming that goes into this, and so on. That makes this plugin very automatable and even more versatile.

5-The developer is still actively working on the plugin and providing updates. He's a nice fellow too, so make sure to donate on his website if you get good use out of the plugin.

---Midichoir 3.1 compared to the 2023 version of Antares Harmony Engine EVO---

Harmony engine does a few things better than midichoir 3.1, but (surprisingly to me) the overall sound in midichoir 3.1 is noticeably more natural.

1-Stereo imaging control sliders for each voice.

2-Formant control sliders for each voice.

3-Control of how fast the pitch shift algorithm snaps.

---Midichoir 3.1 compared to Nectar---

Nectar does a few things better than midichoir 3.1, but it's really an electronic music tool, and doesn't sound natural at all.

1-Stereo imaging for the voices.

2-Lots of presets for many different sounds.

---Midichoir 3.1 compared to Reaper scripted MIDI choir---

1-There is nothing better about this approach unless you are a genius developer. =).

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I'm very impressed with this plugin, soundwise it's by far the best free vocoder I have found and it's actually on par with many paid ones as well. I was searching for a good vocoder VST for a while now and I'm very happy to find that one of the best options out there is actually free. It doesn't have as many options to customize your sound like some other plugins do (e.g. VocalSynth 2), but classic vocoder sounds are very well possible and since you can use your synth of choice as an external carrier signal, you have a wide variety of possibilites anyway.

I also think everyone who likes this vocoder should check out the "Midi Choir" plugin made by the same developer. It simply pitches your voice to the MIDI notes that you play and has a higher polyphony than La Voz Cantante, meaning that you can play chords with more than 3 notes at a time. It sounds really good as well.

If anyone runs into problems, because of the lack of a 64-bit version for this plugin, you should look into jBridger, an application that converts 32-bit plugins to 64-bit.

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This vocoder is fantastic! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS TECHNOLOGY IS free.

Story: Music is just a hobby for me, and for some time now, I've been researching how to emulate Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" sound--that synchronized, harmonized sound that's popping up in LOTS of interesting tunes these days--namely Amber Run's "Haze", Jacob Collier's "Danny Boy" and "Hide and Seek" (from the Maida Vale session) and other improvisations. I kept searching for "harmonizers", and it seemed like I was going to have to drop a few hundred bucks in order to get that sound I was looking for, but then I found this! It's more than adequate for my purposes. I used the TAL-vocoder for a while--also free, also very good, but not quite what I was looking for. Now I'm spending all of my free time with June Lee's transcription of Collier's "Danny Boy" learning to play and sing it at the same time. Very fun.

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Despite being a free plugin, this is perhaps the best vocoder I tried to date. As the name suggests, it is intended not for those ugly robot-voices or sci-fi effects but to actually *sing* ! With an accurate choice of the proper carrier (for example by using an external analog synth as I do, even if the builtin synth does a nice job already) you can literally produce choirs or even solo vocals with a fidelity I would have never expected by a vocoder. This goal is perhaps achieved by the choice of using as many as 512 bands. The author made definitely a great job. Only drawbacks, if we want: no 64-bits version available; with Reaper I often experience crashes when loading a project with multiple instances of Cantante (but I can't tell whether it is a bug with Reaper or with Cantante itself). If you are looking for something more than just robot-voices, well, try this vocoder and consider a donation!Read Review