The Eight Best Choir VSTs: Free And Paid Vocal Plugins For Epic Choral Sounds

If you’re looking for the best choir VST for your film scoring, music production, demoing, or whatever you’re up to, but don’t know where to start, there’s no need to wail in fear. Headliner has put together this choir compendium for you so that you can find the best vocal VSTs without needing to head to your local cathedral to ask the choir master.

Whether you need a great free option, an affordable piece of virtual choir software, or you basically have enough money to record the St Paul’s Cathedral Choir in your living room, we have you covered with eight of the very best options you can acquire. We’ll look at the traditional sounds, those geared towards more epic sounds for trailers and scoring, and even the more experimental.

So, once you’ve done your vocal warm ups, it’s time to crown the best choir VSTs. And stay tuned for the end, as we share a pro tip used by working composers for combining VSTs with real singers for truly authentic and professional results.

Spitfire LABs Choir

Spitfire LABs, the free-to-download arm of Spitfire Audio, has gained a strong reputation for producing VSTs that will have you hollering ‘I can’t believe I didn’t pay a penny for this.’ And that is no less the case for the Spitfire LABs Choir, one of the best choir VST plugins, even up against some of the expensive ones. It’s based on Spitfire’s Eric Whitacre Choir (definitely check out the full version of that). Recorded by the Eric Whitacre Singers at Air Studios, London, the way these samples and textures evolve as you sustain the notes and the textures weave in and out is brilliant stuff.

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Orchestral Tools Manifold Free Studio Voices

Before we move onto the best choir VSTs requiring your hard-earned cash, let’s look at one more £/$0 option. A free-to-download choir VST plugin from one of the big names, it is part of Orchestral Tool’s free Manifold toolkit which covers lots of other instruments also. If you need oohs, ahs, and ohs, coming from male and female ensembles, with lots of articulation options, without parting with a single penny, then say hello to these tools.

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Spitfire Audio Originals Epic Choir

We could have included loads more of the best choir VSTs from orchestral VST maestros Spitfire Audio, and you should check them all out for yourself. But…whisper it quietly…we actually prefer how the Originals Epic Choir sounds to the much pricier, top-billed Eric Whitacre Choir. This is our most affordable choir VST, while being very high-quality. Also recorded at AIR Studios and this time using a 50-piece choir of London’s finest voices, this vocal VST is stacked with features. You can separate the sopranos and altos with the tenors and basses when you need higher and lower ranges, choose from short and long articulations, and even vowel-bending textures based on gothic and mediaeval chanting. Epic, indeed.

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Arturia Augmented Voices

This is the virtual choir software for the Enya fans out there. If you want to get more fun and experimental than just another regal-sounding choral vocal VST, Arturia’s Augmented is surely the choir plugin with your name on it. Robert Dudzic, composer for movies such as Ready Player One and Guardians of the Galaxy, is a famous user. It proudly calls itself an ‘organic-synthetic ensemble’, as you can range from realistic choir sounds, to those Enya and Titanic style oohs and aahs. With voice arpeggiators, percussive leads (perfect for pop and rap productions), and even ambient keys using the plugin’s sample engine, a great time is guaranteed.

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Steinberg and SoundIron Olympus Choir

SoundIron are a fairly underrated VST company, offering some fantastic sampled instruments, largely at reasonable prices. And here, teaming up with Steinberg (the people behind Cubase) they land their best choir VSTs spot with Olympus Choir. And, like the titular Athenian mountain where the Greek Gods would hold court, this is some mighty virtual choir software that deserves the big-name fame of a Spitfire or Native Instruments. You will have a hard time finding another choir VST with this level of authenticity, and detail that most plugins have a very hard time landing on when it comes to the human voice. This is a perfect choir VST for film scoring, thanks to the 63 voices at your command. Godly stuff.

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8DIO Requiem Professional

8DIO Requiem Professional is another excellent, high quality choir plugin worthy of more fame and a higher price tag (you won’t breach the £/$100 mark). It’s not guaranteed that it will see you compose something as majestic as Mozart’s own Requiem, but what you can count on is one of the best choir VSTs for film scoring, demoing vocal parts, and much more. You can easily crank the epic vibes to 11, with stunning legato intervals from extra quiet to loud, sustains, staccatos, Latin chants recorded at different speeds, and over 1,000 choral effects.

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Native Instruments OMNIA

We mentioned this choir VST plugins rundown has some heavyweight names in it, and that very much applies to Native Instruments. And with OMNIA, you can count on a highly detailed and realistic vocal VST. Like our previous two entrants, Native have really gone down the epic route with this one, so film scoring and big music productions will certainly benefit from this one. A 40-piece choir that lets you edit choir parts to your own specifications, the Syllabuilder feature is a fantastic way to edit both vocal phrasing and transforming the sounds to what you’re after. This choir VST was created in collaboration with Stresov Sampling, and if you scroll down to our final entry…

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Strezov Sampling Storm Choir Ultimate

As we just teased, Stresov Sampling complete things very nicely indeed with Storm Choir Ultimate, also the most expensive virtual choir software, hitting your wallet to the tune of approximately £/$500. Stresoz justify that price thanks to having some of the best sampling technology in the biz, and are known for some of the most human-sounding instrument samples available. Their choir VSTs are often touted as the company’s flagship offerings, and with very good reason. If you are balking at that price, all of Stresov’s more affordable virtual choir software is worth checking out. That said, Storm Choir is an outrageous beast — as soon as your fingers hit your MIDI keyboard, it will feel like the 20 piece choir is stood directly behind you. As well as how ridiculously real this thing sounds, features such as the Syllabuilder, Slavonic vibrato tone, and the editing of female and male voices make this a special investment.

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Pro tip from professional film composers for the most authentic virtual choir software results

Yes, the best choir VSTs above sound incredible. But can they truly replace the real thing? Some are completely happy to always go for choir sound libraries over using real singers. If you’re on a budget but want the best results possible, why not go for the best of both worlds?

Many professional film composers bring in one or two solo vocalists to sing the main vocal parts and then bolster them with a choir VST plugin as harmony beneath. With a bit of careful mixing, you can get incredible results this way. So good, that perhaps it will set you on the path to having enough money to hire a huge choir one day. Either way, we wish you a joyous time finding and then composing with the best choir VSTs.