Altus

Altus, the Voice of Renaissance

Often misunderstood and wrapped in mystery, the countertenor is another milestone in Eduardo Tarilonte's series of exceptional voices. Altus brings you a real countertenor for your Renaissance and
Baroque music productions, for films, documentaries, video games, and new age music.

Unparalleled realism ... Pure inspiration

Altus is a unique solo vocal library featuring José Hernández Pastor, a countertenor with a magnificent expression and a truly beautiful and unique voice. Altus aims for easily creating your own ultra-realistic melodies, without using any phrases. Altus offers a powerful and innovative word builder which combines 26 words (136 elements including words and their syllables) with 5 true legato and portamento vowels (a, e, i, o, u), all at your fingertips in one patch.

Altus offers:

• 5 different true legatos and portamenti (a, e, i, o, u)
• a powerful phrase arranger with words, 2 different articulations (fast and slow speeds).
• words can be split into a total of 136 words/syllables
• words can be combined with true legato vowel playing while the corresponding vowel is automatically selected
• 130 beautiful phrases
• 15 soundscapes, created from vocal samples
• dry recordings allow you to match the reverb amount exactly to you needs.
   

 
Altus allows you to connect any word with all 5 true legato vowels to build realistic melodies without using any pre-recorded phrases.

1.3 GB (lossless compressed) and over 3,000 mono samples in 44 Khz / 24 bit.

Minimum Free Kontakt Player or Full Kontakt Version 5.8.1 required

José Hernández Pastor is a singer specialised in early music, using his voice as a countertenor. He is considered a singer with a magnificent expression and a truly beautiful voice. He was born in Valencia 1974 and entered the Schola Cantorum d’Algemesí in 1979 as a singer, where he started his musical studies with Diego Ramón I Lluch. In 1995 he obtained his degree as a piano teacher in the Official Music School of Valencia. Besides his young age, he has already been conducted by Jordi Savall, Dominique Vellard, Joshua Rifkin, and many more. In his successful career as a countertenor, José has played many concerts across Europe like in the Kölner Philarmonie, the Konzerthaus of Vienna, and the Spanish National Auditorium. In 1988 he and Ariel Abramovich (vihuela) founded the duet “El Cortesano” achieving great success.

Excerpt:

You can’t fault Altus as a collection that sets out to do something and does it incredibly well.
The focus is narrow, which is a huge strength but also a weakness as it obviously isn't going to appeal to everyone. But as I've continued to use Shevannai and Cantus since reviewing them I have found myself turning to them for all sorts of reasons and all sorts of different genres, and have been surprised at how important they have both become, even inspiring new genres of my music (my spiritual house album will be on sale next year, I promise)

You cant't fault Altus as a collection that sets out to do something and does it incredibly well.
The focus is narrow, which is a huge strenght but also a weakness as it obviously isn't going to appeal to everyone. But as I've continued to use Shevannai and Cantus since reviewing them I have found myself turning to them for all sorts of reasons and all sorts of different genres, and have been surprised at how important they have both become, even inspiring new genres of my music (my spiritual house albumwill be on sale next year, I promise)

Best Service has factume est autem rursum (done it again) Magna opus, fellas! MT

Auszug:

Der Klang:

Was Eduardo Tarilonte hier mal wieder geleistet hat, ist spektakulär, die Stimme ist klar und durchsetzungsfähig, die Auto Vowell Funktion und die Legati Modi lassen den Gesang sehr authentisch erklingen. .......

FAZIT:

Altus von Eduardo Tarilonte ist etwas Besonderes, sowohl der Gesangsstil wie auch die Stimmlage hört man so oft nicht, ich könnte mir vorstellen, dass Altus ganz wunderbar in Musikproduktionen eingesetzt werden kann, die sich vom Mainstream etwas abheben wollen.

Ich bin überzeugt davon das Altus seine Fan-Gemeinde finden wird, neben der Solo-Stimme ist insofern auf den Einsatz des Wordbuilders verzichtet wird auch ein polyphoner Modus möglich, allerdings ist hier, meiner Ansicht nach, der Stimmumfang welcher geboten wird (14 Töne inklusive Halbtöne) etwas zu knapp bemessen um echte Chorsätze zu erstellen.

Preis und Vertrieb:

Altus wird von Best Service in Deutschland vertrieben und kostet aktuell 149,- Euro, meiner Ansicht nach ein recht fairer Preis für das Gebotene.

Kompletter Altus Test bei Buenas Ideas

Excerpt:

...Altus features the melodious vocal talents of counter tenor José Hernández Pastor. Although a classical counter tenor covers a comparable range to an alto, here the Kontakt instrument spans just over an octave, which is slightly limiting in terms of key. This Best Service opus is best suited to a Renaissance or Baroque setting. The library's highlight is its haunting solo voice, its realistic legato and slow or fast articulation chosen by how smooth or hard you play. ...

Fazit:
Altus ist die wohl einzige Library, die spielbare Multi-Samples eines Countertenors bietet. Angesichts ihres ausgezeichneten Sounds, der authentischen Legatoartikulation sowie des gelungenen Wordbuilders sieht man gerne über den etwas künstlichen Protamentoklang hinweg. Mit ihrem expressicen, ätherischen Charakter macht die ausdrucksstarke Gesangsstimme dabei nicht nur in der REnaissance. und Barockmusik eine gute Figur.

Excerpt:

No matter what you can do, or what you can’t, all Tarilonte’s voice libraries sound very authentic. So, if you spend some additional time combining various articulations, tweaking some controllers, you get a real vocal line, a vocal line which is a bit limited by the number of different voices, but still no one should recognize that those limited number of syllables or words come from a sample library.

After all, it sounds as real as a real vocalist can sound (that’s the trademark for all Tarilonte’s libraries).

full Altus and Cantus review at Sound Bytes Magazine

Fazit:

Cantus und Altus bieten eine Vielzahl an Möglichkeiten für natürliche, mittelalterliche Gesänge. Neben den umfassenden Funktionen des Worldbuilders zur Erstellung eigener Verse können viele fertige Phrasen sofort verwendet werden.

Die Bedienoberfläche ist übersichtlich, die Arbeit geht schnell von der Hand und macht Spaß. Garant dafür ist nicht nur die intelligente Sample Architektur, sondern die stilprägenden, in hervorragender Audioqualität aufgenommenen Akteure, deren Gesang den Hörer sofort in die jeweilige Epoche versetzt. Filmmusik-Komponisten profitieren zusätzlich von den Klanglandschaften mit mischbaren Ebenen. Lediglich der kompromisslos authentische und daher begrenzte Tonumfang der Akteure stellt eine gewisse Einschränkung dar. Die Preise sind angemessen.

Fazit - Auszug-

..........dass diese Library in ihrer Gattung einzigartig ist, so dass es (außer mit einem „echten“ Sänger) wohl keine andere Möglichkeit gibt, einen Countertenor in dieser Form mit einem Keyboard spielen zu können. Wer auf genau diesen Klang steht und bereit ist, sich eingehend mit dem Instrument zu beschäftigen, der wird mit einem Gesangssound belohnt, den man so wohl in keiner anderen Library findet.

Ganzer Testbericht für Altus bei Recording.de

Excerpt:

The Voice

As I was impressed with Cantus, I was more surprised here when I heard Altus for the first time. I couldn’t wrap my head around its voice. I don’t mean that in a bad way but more of how different it sounds from any other library I heard. Never the less, Altus sounds great and most importantly it sounds authentic. If you ever bought any of the Tarilonte`s libraries you know that this developer will go an extra mile to bring the true authenticity to your doorstep.

Conclusion
Altus is a great sounding and very high quality library and although it may not be everybody’s cup of tea (due to the nature of the voice) it is worth giving it a try. It is light on the CPU and it has a simple but great graphic interface. You do not even need a full version of Kontakt to run it as it works with Kontakt player as well.

Full Altus review at T.A.S.