19 May 2020
Since Waves Ovox and Vocalsynth 2 both currently have big discounts - about US$68 for Ovox (down from US$149) on the Waves website, and US$49 for Vocalsynth 2 (down from US$199) through Plugin Boutique, I wanted to share my perspective as someone who has trialled both and decided on Vocalsynth 2.
Both are good, but the level of non-overlap in features is substantial, and it comes down to what you want to focus on. The way they compare will also be different for Reason and non-Reason users because Reason Players can enhance Vocalsynth 2 in some of the ways that the Note Mapper feature does by itself in Ovox.
Ovox has a wider variety of feature types, once you factor in LFOs, built-in sequencing of effects, harmonics, the Note Mapper, the arpeggiator, and the freedom to switch note source and synth input. Some of those features are really innovative, and it comes with a lot of widely varying presets. But I wanted to be more convinced of its usability. A big focus in both the marketing and feature set of Ovox is it's ability to dazzle with shimmering effects. But it struck me in the ads that some effects seemed a little out of control, and my trial didn't convince me otherwise. Among Ovox's many presets, there are few I would use out of the box or even with small adjustments, and the amount of Note Mapper detail and effects routing included in many of these creates a good deal of work for you if you want to tame them into something more suited to the music you're working with. There are notes mapped to chords you don't want, often too many harmonics interfering with the tonality of your music, and arpeggiator notes and formant triggering that often don't seem to produce on-time results. I didn't like the amount of fine-tuning needed to make the patches work acceptably well. But if the distinguishing features of Ovox are more important to you than they are to me, I'm sure you can learn to do better than I did at the fine-tuning.
I chose Vocalsynth 2 because it's more centred on what I want, which is a way to use MIDI input to synthesize lush vocal doubling and harmony with better results and a much greater variety of sounds than Reason's Neptune offers. I find Vocalsynth 2 more user-friendly, intuitive and straightforward than Ovox for this purpose. I find many of its patches are just what I want, most of the rest are easily usable, and the controls are catered to more detailed and intuitive ways to fine-tune the traditional elements of a voice synth and vocoder. Important for me is that it has more ways than Ovox to create subtle differences in the stereo field to create wide doubling and backing vocal harmony. And I decided I won't miss the Ovox Note Mapper because I find using Reason Players a more convenient and flexible way to program harmony into the Reason instrument that triggers the voice synth notes. Finally, though a smaller factor in my decision, the current discount on Vocalsynth 2 is better than the one on Ovox.
Perhaps it's fair to say there are more types of things Ovox can do that Vocalsynth 2 can't compared to the other way around, but there are also more ways to fine-tune the few things that Vocalsynth 2 concentrates on. Since those fewer things and the level of adjustment both align with my interests better than Ovox, Vocalsynth became the clear choice for me even after a relatively short trial compared with the hours I spent on Ovox.
Is it Antares that one should look at för more realistic stuff or other brands? 
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