This is not a word-building choir like a $500 library. LABS Choral is a collection of "oos" and "aahs" recorded in an intimate space. It is soft, breathy, and profoundly beautiful. When played in the high register, it sounds celestial; in the low register, it feels like a medieval chant.
Verdict: Unfairly good. If you make music and don’t have LABS installed, you are actively working against your own creativity.
When Spitfire Audio—a company known for $449 Hans Zimmer strings—launched LABS as a free series, most pros assumed it would be a collection of half-baked, lo-fi placeholder sounds. They were wrong.
Today, LABS is arguably the most important free virtual instrument library ever created. Not because it replaces Kontakt, but because it removes the friction between an idea and a recording.
LABS focuses on variety and creativity rather than exhaustive articulations. Categories include:
This is a two-in-one instrument. It includes one-shot drum hits (kick, snare, hat) sampled from old vinyl records, plus a library of dusty, warped drum loops.
Every Labs instrument has a "Swell" knob (a waveform icon). This adds an automatic volume fade-in (attack). Turn it up to 50% for a bowed or breath-like start to every note. Turn it to 100% for an eternal, cinematic rise.
These are the workhorses for film scoring.