I’ve had a go with Ace Studio to generate a rendering of some choir parts written in Dorico (my notation software). I’ve spent 2-3 hours getting to know the software and making some basic adjustments to vibrato, and I think I can do more to improve the sound.
Currently this has to be done by exporting midi from Dorico and adding / pasting the lyrics into Ace Studio, but it doesn’t take too long to do. Then I exported the orchestral parts as audio from Dorico and combined both of them in Cubase.
Choirs in Ace studio are built up by adding a series of individual singers to each track (up to 8 in my example).
Here's the file on the Steinberg forums - warning - it will download the mp3!
https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/stein ... 25ca8c.mp3
It’s not really ready for prime time yet, but I think it could be useful for seeing how lyrics fit with each other and against the music. It’s better than Cantamus in that respect as at least it’s possible to get an approximate choir feel.
I haven’t got the lyrics mapped 100% correctly yet, but that’s going to be easy to fix.
The tempo mapping is not perfect either - I’ve stretched the voice part in Cubase so it ends at the same place as the orchestra but in the middle the two don’t have the same tempos. I expect I can adjust things manually in Ace Studio to make that better.
It lacks a wide selection of classical voice types at the moment, especially in the sopranos and altos, and it sounds like everything has gone through a phaser!
The choir and orchestra don’t fit together well, but I think with work I can improve the match.
I would also really like an ‘English English’ rendering setting.