ACE Studio

ACE Studio is an AI‑powered virtual vocalist that’s frighteningly close to the real thing.

While virtual drummers, bassists, pianists or guitarists have already passed the point where they can generate a believable impression of a human player, virtual vocals have, for understandable reasons, proved more challenging. Vocaloid has been a long‑standing option for a more synthetic style. However, as I experienced when reviewing Dreamtonics’ Synthesizer V in the March 2023 issue of SOS, on the back of advances in AI things have started to move very rapidly when it comes to more natural‑sounding results. Synthesizer V is not the only product riding this wave, though: ACE Studio is also generating a lot of interest. So, if you could use a virtual session singer within your own music production workflow, should you be booking ACE Studio for an audition?

ACE Concepts

ACE Studio operates as a standalone application. However, the ACE Bridge plug‑in (AU and VST3) can be loaded within a suitable DAW, and this provides both sync and audio routing from ACE Studio back to your DAW. The package currently offers some 40+ AI‑based vocalists, each with their own singing style. The AI engine supports Chinese, Japanese and English for all vocalists but each vocal database is ‘native’ in one of these and there are currently five native English singers; Lien, Bianca, David, Naples and Sidney.

The ACE Bridge plug‑in allows you to easily sync ACE Studio with your DAW.

Transport and menu bar aside, the UI offers three main sections; the Singer Library, Arrangement View and Clip View. Located far left is the Singer Library containing a list of available singers. The other two views dominate the rest of the display. At the top, the Arrangement View provides an overview of the various Audio Tracks (for example, to house an instrumental backing track) and Singer Tracks within the current project. Singer Tracks are essentially hosts for the MIDI‑based clips upon which the voice synthesis is based. The contents of individual clips — audio or MIDI — can be shown in the lower Clip View panel and it’s here that the key tools for editing notes, adding lyrics, customising the pitch and automating the singer’s dynamics/character (via a parameter panel at the very base of the display) are to be found.

Two additional panels, the Track Control Panel and the Mixer, can be popped open as required using the buttons located top left. The latter is self‑explanatory (and shown in one of the screenshots) while I’ll say more about the former below.

A couple of other practical points are worth noting. First, ACE Studio is currently only available via a subscription model. An active subscription gives you access to all of the available singers. Second, and in contrast to the difficulties that might arise in using AI‑generated vocals from some online sources (where the copyright of the AI’s training materials may cause issues), the AI vocals you create with ACE Studio are completely licence free to use within any commercial context. There are a few singer exceptions that are highlighted within the Singer Library panel and an online licensing process is available for these.

Studio Workflow

Used as a standalone application, the most obvious workflow involves importing some sort of audio backing track for your song project to use as context for any vocal parts you wish to generate. Once you have constructed whatever vocal parts you need — and these can involve multiple Singer Tracks — those vocals can be exported as audio files to use within your DAW for mixing/arranging alongside the rest of the instruments within the project.

Having selected an AI singer for a Singer Track, you can manually enter notes with the various note editing tools or import a MIDI file (for example, if you have already written an initial melody line within your DAW). At present, it...