Last updated on December 31st, 2023 at 08:05 pm
Having access to male and female choirs for your music is essential since they really can add a lot of personality to your mixes! Choir VST plugins, which are essentially virtual choirs, can help you achieve this in a quick and affordable manner!
In this article, I will be listing the absolute best Choir VST/AU/AAX plugins and libraries I could find, provide you with links to where you can get them, and at the end, I will also list a couple of the free ones which, despite not being nearly as good, are a great jumping-off point.
Hollywood Choirs
Best overall choir plugin and is specially made for film music.
Olympus Micro
At $39 it’s very hard to beat. Most users won’t ever need to upgrade.
Olympus Elements
Upgraded version of Olympus Micro Choir and best for under $100.
Best Choir VST/AU plugins
Now, these plugins are by no means cheap, but they sound incredible!
One of them is fairly affordable, but the issue is that most of the ones I’m going to list require Kontakt in order to work, which will cost quite a bit to get.
However, if you already are a Kontakt user, then investing in these choir libraries may be a great idea!
Let’s get started!
Hollywood Choirs By Eastwest Sounds ($399)
Best overall and tailor-made for film music!
Being the highly successful successor to the “Symphonic Choirs” library, Hollywood Choirs is a choir library intended for film, hence the name. You have absolute control over a full choir with dramatic dynamics – soft and lyrical, to epic and overwhelming.
Hollywood Choirs gives you an excellent way to transform the quality of your cinematic compositions or simply give you another powerful resource to build outstanding productions.
One outstanding feature is the “WordBuilder” engine, which lets you type in any sort of word or phrase and hear it being performed in real-time in unison by the entire choir, and if you need to get things going quicker you can always reach for their 781 phrases preset.
The built-in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Latin phrases give you a wide range of artistic potential, and you can string them together to effortlessly achieve an imposing result in minimal time.
Of course, this plugin comes with all the essential tools to shape the audio, such as attack, decay, sustain and release, as well as adjusting the choir vocal articulations, vowels, and pitched, and non-pitched consonants.
Get Eastwest Sounds Hollywood Choirs here: Sweetwater.
Olympus Choir Elements ($69)
Best Choir Library under $100!
Olympus Choir Elements is a powerful virtual choir instrument for Kontakt, Komplete Kontrol, and S-Series keyboards that offers 63 different voices with all major vowels such as Ah, Ee, Eh, Ei, Ih, Mm, Oh, and Oo.
You’ll find sustains, staccato, and marcatos, with pp-ff dynamic layering and intelligent round robin.
It sounds absolutely phenomenal and extremely realistic, much like the choirs you hear in some scenes of epic movies.
Additionally, it features a fully Automatable UI, allowing for full- and easy control over the performance.
Every preset has access to over 50 integrated convolution reverb impulses and a full 3-band Equalizer. Many presets also have an optional vibrato feature to simulate molto forte.
The Vowelmaster preset provides live sustain and staccato switching for any vowel for each section, with layer blending and stacking, dynamic shaping and total performance control.
Also, it features Soundiron’s FX rack which allows you to tweak the sounds to your liking.
All in all, I think that the Olympus Choir Elements is the best Choir library you can get under $100.
Get Olympus Choir Elements here: Pluginboutique.
Olympus Choir Micro ($39)
Best in terms of Cost-to-Performance!
Now, this would be the stripped-down-, or more basic version of the Olympus Choir pack that I listed earlier.
It’s ideal for any beginner who is just getting started with choir samples since it’s so affordable while still sounding absolutely fantastic.
It features both Men’s and Women’s sections with editable key changes as well as sustains, staccato, and marcatos, with pp-ff dynamic layering and intelligent round-robin, as well as the Soundiron’s FX rack which allows you to tweak the sounds to your liking, just like Olympus Choir Elements.
If you’re looking for a premium-sounding, yet very affordable choir library, this is definitely it.
Get Olympus Choir Micro here: Pluginboutique.
Requiem Light Symphonic Choir ($199)
Best for Epic Cinematic Scores!
Requiem Light is a professional symphonic choir library specifically designed for epic cinematic scoring and dramatic trailer composition.
It includes three true legato vowels, a variety of classic vowel sustains and staccatos, single-syllable Marcato words, long poly-syllabic Latin sustains and fast, aggressive Latin staccatos, a big selection of classic and dynamic choral effects, a great collection of solo soprano and tenor polysustains and a selection of sound-designed atmospheric pads, drones, and choral atmospheres.
This library features over 4200 samples in 44.1kHz/24-bit quality and everything sounds extremely well polished!
If you’re looking to create music for epic movie scenes, then this would be the absolute best one to do it.
Get Requiem Light Symphonic Choir here: Pluginboutique.
Mosaic Voices ($119)
This isn’t your traditional Choir library, in fact, even though it can reproduce some pretty convincing choir and voice sounds, it can also introduce additional sounds to create cool harmonies.
Each instrument features a unique set of foundational elements designed to be combined and layered into lush, cinematic textures.
It is packed with endless combinations of inspiring sounds that you can use to come up with new ideas, plus it’s quite simple to use.
If you like the music from Lord of the Rings, then you will probably like this library!
Get Mosaic Voices here: Pluginboutique.
Aeris: Hybrid Choir Designer
Vir 2 Instruments’ Aeris Hybrid Choir Designer is a library of Multi-Sampled Male and Female Choirs as well as Bass, Tenor, Alto, and Soprano solo singers that is available for the Kontakt Player (free version).
It features a dual pad engine for creative sound layering as well as hundreds of presets to get you started!
In addition to its high-quality choir library, Aeris features 146 sound pads organized into six different categories, including calm, uplift, distorted, tension, motion, and effects.
It also features a vowel selector where you can switch between Ah’s, Oh’s, Oo’s, and Hums on the fly to create expressive and dynamic vocal parts.
Lastly, all Aeris patches contain four separate LFO slots which can be engaged simultaneously. Modulate your choice of volume, pan, high pass, low pass, bandpass, and pitch.
Get Aeris here: Pluginboutique, Sweetwater.
8dio.com Choir Libraries ($498 to $598)
Here you will find a couple of extremely high-quality samples of various symphonic choirs; from angelic, and lyrical, to orchestral and epic choirs.
These are all highly expensive and require the full version of Kontakt as well, but they do sound insanely professional and are definitely worth getting if you’re working on a high-end production.
However, I don’t think that these are well-suited for the average home music producer unless you’re not on a budget!
Strezov-Sampling Choirs ($59 to $500)
On the Strezov site, you will be able to find a total of 7 sample libraries, which vary quite a lot in price, from $59 all the way up to $500:
- Choir Essentials: Choir Essentials covers 95% of what you will ever need in choral scoring for all media types without any compromises in dynamic range (from soft and delicate to aggressive) thanks to the availability of individual and full sections including a children’s choir vocals.
- Arva Children Choir: This is a children’s choir reference library featuring two separately recorded children’s sections (girls & boys).
- Storm Choir: A 20-piece chamber choir recorded with three microphone positions in Sofia Session Studio.
- Rhodope 2: A real authentic ethnic Bulgarian choir at your disposal.
These sound very realistic, plus it’s the only place where I could find good-sounding children’s choirs.
Just as a sidenote, None of the Stezov choirs require the full version of Kontakt and are designed to work 100% in the free Kontakt Player version.
Spitfire Audio Eric Whitacre Choir ($599)
Recorded by Grammy winner Eric Whitacre and his 22-member choir at “the Hall at Air Lyndust Studios”, the Eric Whitacre choir is one of the largest choir sample libraries I have come across until now (over 200GB of audio).
This library doesn’t run on Kontakt: it’s housed in a new plug-in format designed with the assistance of “design and user experience agency” UsTwo, creators of the Escher-inspired Monument Valley video game. The samples work only with this new sound engine, which comprises two plug-ins: the EW Choir version, and the more elaborate EW Choir Evo Grid, which offers comprehensive control of the singers’ evolving performances (The Evo Grid plugin allows you to work with the “Evolutions”, as Spitfire calls it, which is the way long notes change over time).
There are 22 singers in total: six soprano, five alto, five tenor and six bass. In the Choir section, you will find a total of 170 techniques, while the Evo Grid packs 111 Evolutions.
Although Spitfire call this a Standalone plugin, it’s not since it needs to run within a Host, such as a DAW, but when are you really going to be using it on its own?
If you decide to get this library, you will never need to get another one in order to compose music using choirs and I believe it to be an excellent tool for any composer.
The only drawback I can think of is the price since I would expect to get a full orchestral plugin for $600 with these choir samples included.
Get the Eric Whitacre Choir here: Spitfire.
Fluffy Audio Dominus Choir ($379)
Choir Library that focuses on Latin Syllable singing.
This is an extremely natural-sounding choir library out of the box. Just load up a preset and it will sound more realistic than most of the other libraries out there.
Just like the Holywood Choirs plugin, Dominus lets you create words that the choir will sing in unison. However, you don’t just type in the words but rather move blocks that have different syllables and form words like that.
For example, you begin by selecting one of many starting syllables. The final sound in the selected syllable determines the starting sound of the next and so on. This launches you down a rabbit hole until your word is complete. Starting with a selection of “do” would then allow you to pick “omi” which would then allow you to pick “inus” to create the word “Dominus”.
You may be thinking that this way of building the words makes absolutely no sense, but the genius of this method is that because each adjacent syllable must begin with the last sound of the previous, they can be sung together in a very realistic and natural way.
You can also choose the rhythmic value for each of the words and the tempo gets synced to your DAW’s project tempo.
The one con about this choir library is that, while it can sound incredibly realistic, it can’t create the typical cinematic staccato performance, I mean it can, but it doesn’t sound realistic.
Dominus is a Choir Library that focuses on Latin Syllable singing and that does that really well. It’s important to note, however, that it does require the full version of Kontakt to work.
Ger Dominus Choir here: Fluffy Audio.
Free Choir VST/AU Plugins
In this first section I will list free plugins; they don’t sound as realistic as the premium ones, but if you’re just learning about music production, or if you just need to add some subtle choir effects, then these should be enough to cover your needs.
| Name | Format | Operating System |
|---|---|---|
| Virgin Choir | 32/64-bit VST | Windows & Mac |
| DSK ChoirZ | 32-bit VST | Windows |
| Sonatina Choir | 32/64-bit VST/AU | Windows & Mac |
| NST Choir | 32/64-bit VST/AU | Windows & Mac |
| LABS Choir | 32/64-bit VST2/VST3/AAX/AU | Windows & Mac |
| Free Orchestra by Project Sam | KONTAKT | Windows & Mac |
| Alter/Ego | 32/64-bit VST2/VST3/AAX/AU | Windows & Mac |
| Vowel Ensemble | Kontakt, MuLab Multisampla | Windows & Mac |
| Haunted Choir | KONTAKT (Full version only) | Windows & Mac |
Virgin Choir by ANGLE (Windows, Mac)
Virgin Choir is a VST plugin that generates the sound of a female choir with a very convincing sound quality.
The plugin is entirely free, and includes several features that professional plugins usually integrate: multiple articulations with easy key switching, velocity sensitivity for the choir singing, a sequencer mode, and some more.
I downloaded the 64-bit version and loaded it up in my DAW and it just worked right from the start, without any issues.
For being free, it’s actually quite damn impressive.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Before considering using Virgin Choir, please note that the plugin cannot be commercially used because of the samples that were used to create it.
Make sure to start by reading the included README text file first before doing anything else since you don’t want to run into any problems.
Download Virgin Choir here (Video description and click the download links):
DSK ChoirZ (Windows Only)
While not providing the most realistic Choir sounds, it still is an incredible plugin, considering that it’s completely free.
You should definitely give it a shot since it can certainly help with adding some personality to your songs.
You can create three layers of choir tracks which you can choose from a total of 32 choir samples.
Effects like reverb and chorus can be added and the controls for each, while being very simple and straight forward, can help you shape the sound to your liking.
If you ask me, Virgin Choir sounds a lot more realistic, but since it can’t be used for commercial purposes, DSK ChoirZ ends up having a lot more to offer.
Check the DSK Choirs official website here.
Sonatina Choir (Windows, Mac)
Sonatina Choir are samples taken and edited from the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra.
You can choose to reproduce female and male choirs, or both at the same time.
These are probably the most famous free choir samples, the thing is that, in my opinion at least, since these samples are pretty old, the sound quality isn’t really that great.
It sounds a bit like the choir samples you get on a Casio Keyboard.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that they are necessarily bad, since depending on the kind of music you want to create, this type of sound may be what you need.
Download Sonatina Choir here.
NST Choir by BigCat Instruments (Windows, Mac)
I was pleasantly surprised by the overall sound quality of this choir plugin.
It features a library of over 30 voices that is divided into “All, High, Mid, Mid2 and Low voices” that can play different sounds such as “Mmm”, “A”, “E”, “I”, “O” and “U”.
Additionally, Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release, Volume, Pan and Reverb controls are also included.
These choir samples sound pretty good right out of the box, but I think that in most cases you will need to tweak them a bit with EQ to really get them to fit in a mix.
Other than that, these are awesome!
Download NST Choir Here.
LABS Choir by Spitfire Audio
Spitfire Labs has launched its Labs project a few years ago which consists of a number of free sampled instruments that sound absolutely spectacular and I’ve used many of them to produce music at home.
It’s hard to believe that they are giving all of them away for free since they definitely sound like a premium product, but they are!
Choir was recorded at the Air Studios in London in 2017 and it consists of samples of the Eric Whitacre Singers and it’s one of the more realistic choir sounds I’ve ever heard come out of a free VST.
What’s even better is that it doesn’t require the use of KONTAKT and it’s got its own free dedicated plugin that works as VST2, VST3, AAX and AU.
Download LABS Choir here.
The Free Orchestra by Project Sam
Even though this isn’t strictly a Choir VST but rather a full orchestral Plugin, it does feature a choir section that you may find useful!
The choir section of this plugin sounds phenomenal and it could easily be compared to LABS Choir and Virgin Choir, and it was recorded at the Symphobia concert hall by 6 altos, 6 tenors and 6 basses.
One thing I love about this plugin, aside from the great sound quality, is it’s interface since it looks great and is very easy to navigate, and it features controls such as Attack, Release, Lowpass Filter, Vowel, Reverb and even a Limiter.
Now, it runs on KONTAKT (6.2. or higher), but luckily it works on the free version which can be beneficial to you if you’re interested in using KONTAKT but don’t want to purchase the premium version just yet.
Download the Free Orchestra here.
Alter/Ego by Plogue
This isn’t your traditional choir VST that comes with pre-recorded samples of a choir but rather a text to speech recognition software that also allows you to add a melody and even harmonies to that text.
All you have to do is enter the text to want the plugin to reproduce and then you can play the notes on the keyboard and it will add a melody to that text.
It can come in handy when creating some quick harmonies that don’t sound all that natural (maybe for a hip hop song?) and that also sing the words of the song, since all other choir VSTs usually only allow for vowel swells, or other simple sounds.
All in all, it’s an amazing tool to help you create harmonies for your music!
Download Alter/Ego here.
Vowel Ensemble Choir Pack by Mihai Sorohoran
This Vowel Ensemble is available for Kontakt and MuLab and for being a free sample pack, it sounds absolutely fantastic (you can listen to it here).
Here you have access to soprano & alto samples, as well as tenor and baritone.
It’s worth noting, however, that these samples are not available for commercial use for free, only for your own personal projects!
You can download the Vowel Ensemble here.
Haunted Choir by Fluffy Audio
This Plugin comes with a total of 2GB worth of samples and it features polyphonic legato, 4 mic positions that you can mix and add reverb, and all were recorded in a concert hall.
If you’re looking for that ominous choir sound to create scary sounding movie tracks, or maybe the soundtrack for a scary game, etc., then Haunted Choir may be just for you.
Lastly, you can choose between different rooms, from concert hall to cave, medium hall and plenty of others, as well as adjusting the length of the notes.
Download Haunted Choir here.
You’ll need a MIDI Controller
In order to be able to use these plugins properly, you will need some sort of MIDI Controller.
While you can use your mouse to map the MIDI in your DAW, it’s a lot faster and easier to do it with a keyboard/controller.
My recommendation here is for you to get something like the M-Audio Oxygen 25 MK IV MIDI Controller which you can find at Amazon at a very affordable price, plus it comes with some extra software like Pro Tools First.
Conclusion
If you don’t need to use the samples for commercial purposes, then Virgin Choir might be a very good and free choice!
However, if you need these software for commercial purposes, then I’d highly recommend getting a premium one, mostly because all of the free plugins I listed don’t sound as good as the paid ones do.
If you’re just starting out and need something that’s affordable and that sounds great, then Olympus Choir Micro might be the right fit.
