Vocal sample CDs are still quite thin on the ground, despite the fact that there's a market crying out for them. Symphony of Voices boasts choirs, classical soloists, Gregorian chants, and layered pop vocals, all supplied as CD-ROMs. This was obviously a gargantuan project for Spectrasonics, and their hard work has certainly paid off.

The first three discs cover what could broadly be labeled as more classically oriented sounds. However, this is not to say that they couldn't find a comfortable home in many styles of commercial pop, (remember Enigma?) and there's loads of variety within the collection.

Every combination of vocal texture is covered here, from full choirs to solo boys' voices and everything in between. The recordings are of the highest quality, yet maintain a 'live' element that makes them so much more convincing than their synthesized rivals. Probably the most useable CD for pop samplists is the Pop Stacks disc, where, for some parts, multiple overdubs by the same vocalist are used to give a lush, full feel to the recordings. In other examples, namely the Combination Patches section, three singer's multisamples are assigned to different keys, meaning that when you play a chord, each note of the chord is sung by a different singer. Great idea, and one that offers a huge amount of versatility.

The well selected singers have great tones of their own, and when they are judicially combined, some of the resultant timbres are mind boggling. The sounds on this collection in themselves make it a difficult one to ignore for samplists needing natural sounding vocals for their recordings. Combine that with the intuitive and useful inlay books, including tips and techniques, and the CD-ROM capability, and Symphony of Voices becomes an absolute essential sampling tool.

-Nick Serre