Vir2 Aeris review

A whole lotta vocal power

  • £200
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MusicRadar Verdict

Although a tad (not as much as you might assume) hemmed in by its short range of articulations, Aeris sounds gorgeous and takes you to places far beyond the conventionally choral.

Pros

  • +

    Superb sounds.

Cons

  • -

    Very few.

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Weighing in at 9GB, Vir2's "hybrid choir designer" comprises three Kontakt instruments: Pads (choose two from 145 choral pad samples), User (load your own into the Aeris engine) and the Performance Patch.

The Performance patch gives you six sections to mix and match - full
male and female choirs and four soloists (SATB) - with the caveat that you can't activate the soloists in either gender without deactivating that gender's choir, and vice versa.

Each section has been recorded in two velocity layers, plus three round-robins for the soloists, singing extended 'Aah's, 'Oh's, 'Ooh's and 'Hmm's, selected using keyswitches.

The active sections can be played stacked or mapped contiguously up the keyboard, in polyphonic or True Legato mode, and shaped using individual envelopes and EQs.

As well as Reverb, Compressor, Delay, Skreamer (distortion) and Spread effects, you also get modulation and sequencing of volume, pan, pitch and filter cutoff.

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