Raèld Choir

Raèld Choir turns one sung vocal into a choir. Not one voice copied many times: every singer it makes is a different person, who comes in a little early or late, sits a few cents from the note, has their own vibrato (or none), their own voice colour, breath and loudness. They stand in sections on a stage, sing in a room, and their "s" and "t" stay tight with yours without ever being a copy of them. Choose the kind of choir and how many singers, from 1 to 128, and what they sing: your melody, in octaves, in parts of the key, in chords, or the chords you play on a keyboard.

Installing

1. Close your DAW.
2. Unzip Raeld-Choir-1.0.0-Windows.zip from the download page or your purchase email, run Raeld-Choir-Setup.exe and follow the steps. The plugin goes into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, where every DAW looks; a standalone app can be installed too.
3. Open your DAW and rescan plugins. DAW plugin lists show it without the accent, as "Raeld Choir", so type "raeld" in the plugin browser.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and any VST3 host (FL Studio, Ableton Live, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Bitwig...), or the standalone app. Sample rates 44.1 to 192 kHz, any buffer size. Mono, mono-to-stereo and stereo tracks. A large choir uses a good share of the processor (see Processor use).

If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" when you run the installer, click More info → Run anyway.

Activating your license

1. Open the plugin. The activation screen appears; if it doesn't, click LICENCE in the rail under the unit.
2. Paste your key and click ACTIVATE: the Raèld Choir key from your purchase email, or your All Access key. You need an internet connection for this step.
3. That's it: Raèld Choir is unlocked on this computer.

Each key covers 3 computers. To move to a new one, open the license screen on the old one and click DEACTIVATE THIS PC first.

Without a key the plugin runs as a demo: the sound drops out briefly every 45 seconds. Everything else works.

Quick start

1. Put Raèld Choir on a dry lead vocal (one singer, no reverb or doubling yet: the choir follows what it hears, and brings its own room).
2. Turn CHOIR TYPE: Women, Men, Mixed, Church, Concert, Gospel or Children.
3. Turn VOICES to the size you want. The marks on its dial are the sizes: 2 a double, 4 a quartet, 8 an ensemble, 16 a chamber choir, 32 a choir, 64 a concert choir, 128 a mass choir.
4. Turn HARMONY: UNISON to start. For harmonies, set the song's KEY and SCALE and try CHORDS.
5. Set INTENSITY, ROOM and MIX to taste. Don't like these people? Press NEW SINGERS for another choir; UNDO brings the last one back.

The unit

Raèld Choir is a rack unit in black anodised aluminium. Left to right:

Who sings

• CHOIR TYPE: the kind of choir. Each has its own sections, their ranges and voices, its own vibrato and timing, its own intensity and room (table below).
• VOICES: how many singers, 1 to 128, shared among the type's sections. The choir's loudness stays about the same as you add singers: a bigger choir sounds fuller and smoother, not louder.
• HARMONY: what the sections sing (Harmony).
• KEY and SCALE: the song's key and scale, for SCALE and CHORDS (dimmed in the other modes). They belong to the song: presets leave them alone.

Under every knob a small backlit window shows its value; hover over any control for what it does.

The display and meters

• The stage: the choir on its stage in perspective, every singer in their place, the front row nearest you. Each section's singers stand out while it sings.
• The top line: the harmony mode, the room in use and the quality. Messages (a new choir, A copied into B) show here for a moment.
• The foot line: V the number of voices, N the choir's number, the key, and the chord the choir sings now (CHORDS and MIDI).
• IN and OUT: LED ladders, your vocal coming in and the vocal with the choir going out. The white segments start at 0 VU (-18 dBFS); the red ones near full scale.
• The section lamps under the display: one per section, with its singers, lit while it sings.

How it sounds

• CHORD AT LEAST: in CHORDS, the shortest time a chord lasts, in your DAW's tempo: 1 beat, 2 beats or 1 bar.
• INTENSITY: from soft and breathy to full and powerful. The middle is the choir type's own. It changes the tone, the vibrato, the breath, the consonants and the level together, as singers do.
• ROOM: the type's own room, or Dry, Studio, Chapel, Church, Cathedral or Concert Hall.
• MIX: 0 is your vocal exactly as it came in; 100 % is your vocal and the choir.
• NEW SINGERS: a different choir, every singer drawn afresh. The same choir number always gives the same singers, so your session sounds the same every time.

The choir types

Each section sings in its own range: on a man's voice the women's sections go up an octave, on a woman's voice the men's go down one. Set LEAD VOICE under ADVANCED if it guesses your voice wrong.

Harmony

• UNISON: everyone sings your melody, each section in the octave its range needs.
• OCTAVES: the upper sections an octave above your melody, the lower ones an octave below.
• SCALE: each section sings a part counted in steps of the KEY and SCALE: the melody, a third, fourth, fifth or sixth above or below, or an octave. Set each section's part under ADVANCED (by default: the melody, a third below, a fifth below, an octave below).
• CHORDS: the choir finds chords of the key that hold your melody, keeps a chord while the melody stays inside it, and changes on your DAW's beats (CHORD AT LEAST). The top section sings your melody, the bottom one the chord's root, the others the notes between, never crossing.
• MIDI: play chords on a keyboard: the choir sings the notes you hold, the top section the highest, the bottom section the lowest. Let go and the choir rests.

Sending it MIDI

Raèld Choir is an effect with a MIDI input. In most DAWs, route a MIDI track or your keyboard to it. In FL Studio: add a MIDI Out channel to the Channel rack and set its Port to a number; in Raèld Choir's wrapper (the cog at its top left, Plugin options / Processing) set MIDI Input port to the same number. Play or draw chords on the MIDI Out channel.

ADVANCED

ADVANCED in the rail opens a window beside the plugin with everything the unit leaves out until you need it. It's hidden at first; your session remembers whether you left it open.

• QUALITY: High Quality (the default; about 119 ms of delay, which your DAW makes up for automatically) or Real-time (about 10 ms, for singing through it live; the choir then always sings just after you). A bounce or freeze always processes every singer at full quality.
• LEAD VOICE: Auto, or tell it your voice is low (male), high (female) or a child's.
• FORMANT: moves every singer's voice colour up or down without moving the notes.
• LEAD and CHOIR: the levels of your vocal and of the choir. OUTPUT: the final level.
• CONSONANTS and BREATHS: how loud the choir's "s", "t" and breaths are against yours (made fresh for the choir, never copies).
• DISTANCE: how far back you listen from: less direct sound, a darker one; the room stays. WIDTH: how wide the choir and its room spread.
• DE-ESS: softens the choir's "s" sounds (not yours). LOW and HIGH: the choir's tone, shelves at 200 Hz and 6 kHz, ±12 dB.
• The section mixer: each section's LEVEL, PAN, WIDTH, COUNT (Auto shares the voices by the type) and its PART in SCALE, with the stage seen from above.
• How far the singers differ: TIMING, PITCH, VIBRATO, CHARACTER (voice colour), TONE (breath and brightness) and LEVEL; and FOLLOW, how much of your own vibrato the singers copy (at 0 each sings their own).

The rail

Under the unit, apart from it: the preset menu with < >, UNDO and REDO (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y), A / B (two complete settings to compare; A > B copies the one in use into the other), ADVANCED, SIZE (the window from 85 % to 300 %, or drag its corner; remembered) and LICENCE.

Every control: drag up or down, hold Shift for fine moves, the mouse wheel, the arrow keys when it has focus, double-click for its default. Stepped controls click into their positions. Everything can be automated in your DAW.

Presets

Presets never change your key, scale, quality or lead voice. Save your own from the preset menu.

Processor use and latency

Every singer is their own person, so a big choir costs processor time. Measured on one core of the test machine (48 kHz, stereo, playing): a choir of 32 about 9-10 %, a concert choir of 64 about 12-13 %, a mass choir of 128 about 19-21 % (more on a busy computer, and more while bouncing). While playing, the 24 singers nearest you get the full processing and the rest a lighter one; a bounce or freeze processes all of them fully. If a large choir crackles, raise your DAW's buffer size or freeze the track.

Latency: High Quality about 119 ms, Real-time 10 ms, reported to your DAW at every sample rate so everything stays in time.

What we measured

• Many people, not copies: no comb filtering or phasing at any size from 2 to 128 singers (the swings a copied voice shows are absent); the choir's "s" and breaths are new noise, never your recording.
• In tune, in time: each singer within a few cents of its note on held notes; the singers spread about 13 ms in time and 5 cents in pitch at the defaults; chords on the beat with no wrong notes or crossings on our test material.
• Steady loudness: from 8 to 128 singers the choir's loudness changes by about 1 to 2 LU.
• Exact: the latency reported is the actual delay at every rate; the same settings give the same sound every time and at any buffer size; MIX at 0 is your vocal bit for bit; bypass is click-free.
• Rooms: each room's reverb time within 5 % of its design.

All measured on synthetic singing with a known pitch. In Real-time, a choir singing high above a man's voice can vary in level from note to note; High Quality, and every bounce, holds it steady.

Troubleshooting

• The vocal is out of time with the beat: make sure your DAW's plugin delay compensation is on (it is by default in every major DAW).
• No choir in MIDI mode: the choir rests until it receives notes; check the MIDI routing above.
• The choir sings in the wrong octave: set LEAD VOICE under ADVANCED.
• Crackles with a large choir: raise the buffer size, use fewer voices while writing, or freeze the track.
• It sounds smeared: give it a dry vocal; reverb or doubling on the lead makes the choir follow them too.

Questions: support.