Why electronic organs fail to impress in their grand tutti full organ

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

In the old days of analogue organs, generator frequencies were used double up in variations for all the different stops, just like unit or extension pipe organs. Of course the Tuttis would not satisfy. Many brave members of the EOCS made analogue instruments with individual oscillators for every note of every stop and achieved remarkable results.

Digital instruments theoretically overcame the problem but so called toasters have always been renowned for disappointing on full organ.

I became involved in electronics for the reasons documented on
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/
I wanted to put the instrument on the concert platform as an inspiration and therefore it became essential to use a really top rate instrument.
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/hugh-potton-1/
was our first concert - I'm not at all sure about the MP3 compression so the recordings there are not entirely representative of what the performer and 3 instrument achieved. Since then the instrument has improved significantly in every way and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usBggyS5Nk
and more recently with further improvements
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_eJ60PmtM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W2QdAOwhjY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi2pdYou-Rs
give an idea of the results achieved.

The other day a bad connexion on an amp taking the 16 ft open wood of the original instrument off to the "self destruct" low-frequency sub-woofer caused me to look at the original instrument again and its voicing.

With digital organs, we pull out the stops and each sounds as it should. But without the expertise of pipe organ voicing, the stops do not speak in the right ratios and so on full organ, they simply don't add up. It's partly on account of dynamic range of which the speakers are capable also.

I pulled out the Bourdon, then the Open Wood on the pedals - and there really wasn't enough difference between them. And the Choral Bass 4 did not sing through above the Violone and Octave. Then on the Great, the Posaune was not greatly above the Open Diapason and on the Swell there simply wasn't enough progression from the Violin Diapaison to the Oboe to the Trumpet and nor did the Clarion sing out boldly above. Having now given attention to all of these, the whole original instrument, without my further additions, is transformed. The next concert should be exciting!

http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/hammerwood-rscm-hunter/
are arpeggios on each stop of the pipe organ here
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/harrison-and-harrison is a 1920 vintage Harrison and Harrison
and
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/makin/ are arpeggios on each stop of the then three manual Makin before improved speakers and voicing.
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/ahlborn-202
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/content-220
are two rather useful extension units.

Best wishes

David P

[dragonser]

Hi,
I think you have hit the nail on the head about electronic instrument needing to be voiced to suit their location.
Of course I think it is a real skill to be able to do this with either a Pipe or Electronic Organ.
I wonder if some Digital instruments may be easier to voice than others ?
I don't know how easy it is to voice either Hauptwerk or Midizter , it seems that the advanced version of Hauptwerk does have the ability to voice the individual samples.

regards Peter B

With digital organs, we pull out the stops and each sounds as it should. But without the expertise of pipe organ voicing, the stops do not speak in the right ratios and so on full organ, they simply don't add up. It's partly on account of dynamic range of which the speakers are capable also.

I pulled out the Bourdon, then the Open Wood on the pedals - and there really wasn't enough difference between them. And the Choral Bass 4 did not sing through above the Violone and Octave. Then on the Great, the Posaune was not greatly above the Open Diapason and on the Swell there simply wasn't enough progression from the Violin Diapaison to the Oboe to the Trumpet and nor did the Clarion sing out boldly above. Having now given attention to all of these, the whole original instrument, without my further additions, is transformed. The next concert should be exciting!
 

David P

[revtonynewnham]

Hi

Yes - any organ really needs to be voiced to suit its environment (pipe or electronic).  It's often said that the best stop on an organ is the room, and that's often true.  That said, a well designed extension organ can sound almost as good as a straight organ - but note the "well designed".  In his larger instruments, Compton went to great lengths to avoid adjacent octave extensions on the key ranks, so, for example, the Diapason Chorus would be drawn from at least 2 ranks, something like 16.4 from one and 8.2 from another, plus a rank or ranks for the non-unisons (because of the tuning issue).  However, straight is always best, because then the voicing of each rank can be optimized for its place in the tonal structure.

Turning to electronics, some of the old analogue jobs with independent oscillators rather than frequency dividers could sound pretty good in a reverberant environment.  However, even then the Tutti usually failed.  Aside from voicing and having a multiplicity of tonal sources (and I wonder just how random the phase relationships of computer/digitally generated sounds are) the other big issue is loudspeakers.  Speakers excite the air differently to pipes, and trying to add sounds electronically to feed one speaker does not give the same effect as feeding them through separate units and letting the sounds add acoustically.  Then there's the inherent distortion in moving coil speakers, which I guess will change the sound somewhat.  In the main, it's the speaker systems that let down digital organs - and that's an area where, to a large extent, there have been no major changes in the last 50 years, just relatively small tweaks and different materials to (hopefully) improve the sound.  Using multiple speakers, each fed from different stops or parts of stops is probably the way to go at present, but is a costly and space-consuming exercise, as David knows!  Also, it's often impractical in smaller rooms because of space limitations.  One partial solution that I've seen is to reflect the sound from organ speakers off a hard surface, which produces some diffusion, and takes some of the harshness of the tweeters out.  It's an idea worth investigating, especially when a lower than optimum number of speakers has to be used.

Every Blessing

Tony

[NeilCraig]

Hello all

I refrained from entering this topic on the Hauptwerk forum because there is a general animosity towards dry samples in that arena, considerably but not totally advanced by one sample producer in particular who has been heard to say in public that the only "valid" use for Hauptwerk was with touchscreens, wet samples and near-field monitors or headphones.  I've been told that this has turned several pipe and/or hybrid producers totally off Hauptwerk as they accordingly see it as of "no use" to them. I have for a long time refused to drink this wet-organ "Kool-aid" and maintain that a set recorded from half-way down the nave - however historic or accurate - is of very little use to a serious organist looking for a quality practise instrument for the home.

I digress.  I will try to not make what follows sound like an advert, because it is in no way intended as such.

Martin Dyde has mentioned - and indeed experimented to prove - Colin Pykett's theory of signal mixing, although David's original forum posts seemed to sidestep this issue.

Since Martin's original experiment, I have had the opportunity to hear and play a 16-channel Hauptwerk installation in a somewhat reverberant church, playing a 4-manual "dry" library I have been involved with personally over several years, and a "slightly wet" set which, to my knowledge, did NOT employ release truncation in the building.  Most of the channels were powered by Behringer "Truth" monitors but the Pedal went through a pair of Tannoy Westminster floorstanders and was augmented by two custom-made active subs which were extremely effective on the Double Open Wood.

The results were interesting.  On the "dry" set, the smaller registrations, diapason choruses and even the solo reeds, sounded very good indeed, as did the plethora of string tone available.  However, even employing 8 stereo pairs, as soon as the stops were piled on, the sound became increasingly "electronic" due to the comb-filtering caused by the "signal mixing effect."  Full organ was hindered further by lack of amplifier headroom.

The effect of the "slightly wet" organ was markedly different, bearing out Martin's assertion that fewer channels are needed when one has, effectively, a CD recording played back in real-time.  It was also interesting to note that the fact it was "an acoustic played within an acoustic"  was not obvious at all, probably because the original recording was considerably drier than the live room.

Since my domestic situation (terraced house) precludes the use of my home-built Wilmslow Audio Gemini monitors and Decware "Wicked One" W-horn sub,  I have to play mostly through headphones. 
My experience with dry samples over my 7-year affair with Hauptwerk has convinced me that whilst they are infinitely more suitable for serious practise purposes than the fully "wet" sets, which I view as merely toys, a multi-channel audio system separating, at the very least, the unison stops is not desirable, but obligatory.

In my experience, no amount/quality/sophistication of convolution or algorithmic reverb (on a single stereo output, whether that be for a division or whole organ) will compensate for the blending problems caused by the signal mixing phenomenon.  I contend that no speaker in existence will ameliorate these problems.  My live experience, and the subsequent production of a Hauptwerk organ with a microphone position of 8m from the pipe-fronts, convinced me that the "ideal" set for home use is neither "dry" nor a "wet" set such as Salisbury (which I find unplayable for more than a few minutes), but is in fact the kind of sound one would get standing "reasonably" close (i.e. less than 30ft) to an organ, in a church or concert hall with less than 2.5 seconds reverberation on full organ/loud reeds.

I then set out to produce this, by creating a building artificially and then making stereo impulse responses for every single rank, arrayed in space such as to mimic the windchest layout of a pipe organ.  Each pair of impulses was "recorded" with exactly the same microphone setup whose location with reference to the building layout remained static, as would be the case were I recording a "real" pipe organ. 

Every dry rank was then re-recorded in a VST host using its own impulses, effectively producing an entirely new sample library. Each rank was regulated to the "acoustic" before recording, and recorded with several sets of multiple releases.  Since a MIDI file was playing the notes rather than wetware (me), I know *exactly* when each key was released and all the "full" samples are exactly the same length, which makes processing them a very rapid process compared with producing a "wetware" set.

Whilst it has taken me upwards of 300 hours to produce this set, the results are certainly worth it and far more convincing than I ever could have hoped.  Adding to an 8' chorus, the sound does not just get louder as with fully dry ranks played through the same speakers/headphones, but rather it gets richer and any inadequacies/variances in the individual voices are magically compensated for by the others, as in reality.  The original producer of the samples was somewhat skeptical that my methods were valid, until he heard the results, which he described as, "frankly unbelievable."

To get somewhat back onto the point, whilst David is right that very careful voicing/regulation must be employed, it is my experience that for dry stops played through either a single stereo pair per division, or indeed a single pair for the whole organ, NO amount of voicing or regulation will give a realistic result on a Tutti or anything approaching it, nor will any Franck chorale registration really sound like massed foundation tone.

Before anyone castigates me with something akin to the "put your money where your mouth is" comments David received on the original HW forum threads, I hope it suffices to say that as a result of my efforts, which I hope to complete by mid-November, I am preparing to build a 4-manual console employing dual 23-inch touchscreens, in the style of Randall Mullin's (the Ikea table method) solely to run my new sample set, therefore my own investment in the principles I have outlined above is quite considerable.

In summary, I would like to close with the comment that if one's "dry" Full Swell doesn't sound like St Paul's or St Bees, it may not be the voicing, the regulation or even the choice of speakers, but rather that too few speakers are employed.  What I've done is effectively give each rank its own pair of speakers, placed the whole shebang into a "live" acoustic and produced something with all the blending characteristics of a "wet" set (or CD recording of a real organ) without any of the playability drawbacks.

If anyone is interested in hearing an A-B comparison of 4 8' foundations played through one pair of "speakers" and then four pairs, I'd be very happy to provide it and serious demonstration pieces will follow in due course.

Warm regards
Neil

[David Pinnegar]

recorded from half-way down the nave - however historic or accurate - is of very little use to a serious organist looking for a quality practise instrument for the home.

To get somewhat back onto the point, whilst David is right that very careful voicing/regulation must be employed, it is my experience that for dry stops played through either a single stereo pair per division, or indeed a single pair for the whole organ, NO amount of voicing or regulation will give a realistic result on a Tutti or anything approaching it, nor will any Franck chorale registration really sound like massed foundation tone.

In summary, I would like to close with the comment that if one's "dry" Full Swell doesn't sound like St Paul's or St Bees, it may not be the voicing, the regulation or even the choice of speakers, but rather that too few speakers are employed.  What I've done is effectively give each rank its own pair of speakers, placed the whole shebang into a "live" acoustic and produced something with all the blending characteristics of a "wet" set (or CD recording of a real organ) without any of the playability drawbacks.

If anyone is interested in hearing an A-B comparison of 4 8' foundations played through one pair of "speakers" and then four pairs, I'd be very happy to provide it and serious demonstration pieces will follow in due course.

Dear Neil

I hope that various people will pick up on various aspects of your post as there is a lot in it and you've clearly experimented brilliantly. An A-B comparison would be really most wonderful, but in doing recent videos exploring this sort of subject
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCgZq6Lmm0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPvHq8HvTKg
I'm not at all sure that recordings always give the same results as our ears directly. That of course is also the perplexity that we suffer in recording organ samples and playing them back as electronic organs are all about nowadays, and by the same token this is also an impediment to conveying experimental results via recordings to a remote listener. And even then, I discovered I was wrong in an assumption I had made, that beat frequencies were only heard on loud sounds. Testing the piano with a friend, my friend went to the back of the room, where the sound level was much lower, and could hear the beating of two notes if he listened, at the back of the room rather than at the keyboard or near the strings.

To take your paragraphs I have chosen to respond to, although all the rest is interesting too, firstly I  have the impression that the market for Hauptwerk is home organists who are using the instrument for their own instruction, enjoyment and entertainment who would like to play at wherever, but aren't going to have that opportunity. So wet sample appreciation predominates (for uninitiated, wet and dry samples are not exemplified by an after dinner story about an Italian organist who did not want to perform at a venue accessible by boat in case the boat was eaten by sharks and his portable pipe organ got wet, told on another thread about speakers - we're referring to wet and dry acoustics).

My concert instrument uses combinations of massed ranks through stereo pairs as well as single speakers per stop. It may be speaker dependant in terms of the delicacy of reproduction of which the speaker is capable, and I use particularly good speakers in this regard. But using such speakers my experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntPblldKpBw suggests that multiple speakers just give space.

If your hi-fi system can represent a good reproduction of sound that sounds real, then such a system on departments of an organ should be the same. But perhaps with the generation of loudspeakers requiring amplifiers sufficient to power electric fires, such speakers may not be capable of the appropriate nuances and complexities of thousands of pipes. I know a pipe organ builder who has played with even one speaker per note, not merely a pair for a rank, and still not achieved reproduction to his standards. Of course in principle my gut reaction is to agree with you that obviously 1 pair of speakers per rank should give the best results . . .

I appreciate that the following links are in the first post of this thread but for convenience here are some links to full tutti recordings - whether you can assess full organ through recorded sound, goodness knows but
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W2QdAOwhjY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLJZraDZCNc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_eJ60PmtM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nrvPmirH7c all last year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usBggyS5Nk two years ago before further work
are all recordings, in contrast to others, made with a proper sound recording rather than the standard camera sound. The French trumpets identifiably have their own channel and speakers. The rest is a combination of two to twelve stops per speaker or pairs of speakers . . .

What is very perplexing is your discovery of the difference of behaviour in dry and wetted sample sounds and it's an area really worthy of more exploration.

Best wishes

David P

[dragonser]

Hi,
I think that recordings don't normally give the same results as our ears do !
and there is also the data compression that youtube uses ......
I think that maybe there should be a section here about recording techniques and Pipe organs as I think there is a LOT more than meets the eye ( or ear ! ).
I think that how beat frequencies are perceived may depend on the waveform of the sounds involved, the level of the sound and also may be different in different parts of the room.
I think the room position can have an effect as it may alter how the two sounds are mixed together ( and also how any natural reflections affect things ).
there are, I think different techniques used for where the sounds are going to be played back over headphones ( binaural ) or speakers.
I wonder if different techniques would be appropriate in the same way for recording samples used [ for example ] with Hauptwerk ? or even for youtube recordings .....
I hope that someone with more experience than me can comment.....

regards Peter B

I'm not at all sure that recordings always give the same results as our ears directly. That of course is also the perplexity that we suffer in recording organ samples and playing them back as electronic organs are all about nowadays, and by the same token this is also an impediment to conveying experimental results via recordings to a remote listener. And even then, I discovered I was wrong in an assumption I had made, that beat frequencies were only heard on loud sounds. Testing the piano with a friend, my friend went to the back of the room, where the sound level was much lower, and could hear the beating of two notes if he listened, at the back of the room rather than at the keyboard or near the strings.


Best wishes

David P

[dragonser]

Hi,
a demonstration would be very interesting.
I think you make some very interesting and valid points in your post.

regards Peter B

Hello all



If anyone is interested in hearing an A-B comparison of 4 8' foundations played through one pair of "speakers" and then four pairs, I'd be very happy to provide it and serious demonstration pieces will follow in due course.

Warm regards
Neil

[NeilCraig]

One partial solution that I've seen is to reflect the sound from organ speakers off a hard surface, which produces some diffusion, and takes some of the harshness of the tweeters out.  It's an idea worth investigating, especially when a lower than optimum number of speakers has to be used.

This comes back to David's very valid point elsewhere, that loudspeakers do not radiate sound in a manner anything like the radiation from a pipe.  Distance does of course lend its charm (with a real organ), but what I've found is that the tweeter HF fall-off with distance is nowhere near as steep as the fall-off of diapason edge-tone, for instance, which is very perishable.  This is no surprise, since loudspeakers are designed to carry their frequency range over a large distance.  Stand 30 feet back from a speaker replaying the sound of a diapason recorded 3" from the languid and it will sound...much like a diapason recorded 3" from the languid.

It was the realization of this fact, and also that with a fairly-dry set, replaying it in a more reverberant space does not cause Dr Pykett's "ambience conflict" which does occur with a "wet" set in a drier space, which convinced me to work on my current project. 

The method I use (which, yes, I shall be cagey about) uses ONLY diffuse sound.  I do not mix diffuse and dry sound because I have found this does not solve the phase/mixing problems.  Although it is fully diffuse, I have "recorded" from no more than 8m from the source which, for the "room" used, means the mics were actually within the reverb radius of the case-front pipes.  The furthest-away pipes were actually the Great and Swell reeds as they were at the back of their respective soundboards.

The crux of the "mixing" problem arises because where pipes mix acoustically, the phase interactions are of a much lower magnitude (peak to trough) than with purely electrical mixing, which is what we have when playing dry stops through the same speakers.  It is for this reason I say that NO loudspeaker can overcome this, because it is a problem of physics.  The Lowther-style "full-range" devices I assume from his ebay pages that David is using will help with the treble beaming problem due to the natural roll-off of the "whizzer" cone, thus improving the tonal balance of the tutti, but not fix the phasing problems.

Another reason I started my project is that, with the exception of the Lavender Audio Haverhill OIC, I have yet to hear or play a "wet" Hauptwerk sample library which was remotely suitable for home practise. I feel that the current crop of "archival" sets is just not suitable for a serious organist.  Either the purchasers raving about how wonderful they are suffer from a serious case of cognitive dissonance (I've paid hundreds of bucks for this, so of course it's fantastic) or are scared to voice an opinion that grates with the party line.  Shades of The Emperor's New Clothes? I've played several cathedral organs with detached consoles and it is not a pleasant or involving experience.  Why anyone would want this for a home instrument is very puzzling.  What Hauptwerk currently offers seems not to be,

"Play historic instruments one could never travel the world to gain access to" but rather,

"Listen to historic instruments playing repertoire not available on CD"

...but that is another topic.

I will link to an A-B demo later today

Warm regards
Neil

[KB7DQH]

In Re the "A-B" demo... Although "viewing" the demo may not allow for proper reproduction of the "local" results,  it would, however, demonstrate the "process" so one could repeat the "experiment"
under the same conditions and experience the result directly...

So it would indeed be useful...

Eric
KB7DQH

[NeilCraig]

Gents,

Below please find links to two files I've placed on Dropbox.  Please note that they were both recorded through a VST host in real-time i.e. convolution reverb was applied to the original DRY samples.  This is not a demo of the "finished" new Hauptwerk set as it was a proof-of-concept before I started the lengthy job of actually producing the set. The same midi file was used to play both files and the registration was the same: From the Great, Open 1, Open 2, Open 3 and Claribel Flute.  I had not at this stage done anything to the regulation so please discount this from your observations.

The file "separate" has
each rank routed to its own track, with its own impulse response which mimics where that rank would be on the windchest, with the exact same microphone position, as if one was recording a "real" organ.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13017751/Separate.wma

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13017751/shared.wma

LISTEN TO THE "SEPARATE" FILE FIRST.

The second file, "Shared" is the same material except all ranks are
routed to the Master Output then the impulse response used in the other file for Open 1 is
applied to this mixed output.  In other words, this is what most
people using a dry set and convolution reverb would do.


Notice that in the "shared" file, the ranks DO NOT BLEND. Particularly, the
phase effects are much more pronounced in the held chord at the end of
the file, than in the "separate" file.  In the "separate" file, the
slight phasing you hear is exactly what you would hear if these were
real pipes in a real building and were recorded from the same mic
position.   Consider that all you're hearing here is 4 open 8' ranks.  The effect is worsened the more ranks and pitches are combined on the same output.

NOTHING, not tuning, regulation, voodoo or anything else can
correct the phasing in the "shared" file, other than separating the
ranks.  In the "separate" file, the act of convolving them separately
fulfils the same role as the "air" between a real pipe and a real
microphone, so the output CAN be combined in the same speaker or
output pair.

This is obviously not a real musical test of full organ or even a full division.  I have made a demo of the actual Hauptwerk set using Great to Mixture and then Great to Mixture with reeds 16, 8, 4 to fully prove the concept.  I have linked to that file below. ***PLEASE NOTE*** Since I made this file and produced the Swell, Pedal and Choir, I decided that the reverb was long enough to cure the phasing problem but a longer reverb in the bass would improve the overall effect.  I have not yet produced a demo of the reworked project.  Suffice to say that the increased bass-end reverb (and slightly reduced treble reverb) does not cause the set to be any less playable.

Also note that there is some quite severe beating between ranks; this was intentional as it was intended to prove that the result is an "out of tune organ" it is not the horrible phased sound which occurs on dry ranks when detuning is applied.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13017751/WHTPG.wma

I look forward to everyone's constructive comments!

Warm regards
Neil

[David Pinnegar]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13017751/Separate.wma

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13017751/shared.wma

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13017751/WHTPG.wma

:-) Dear Neil

I'm sorry to have to tell you that through my computer speakers I'm really not sure if I could tell the difference. They both sound good!

And as for the last one, it sounds really superb!

Sorry - load of use I am on this one . . . !

However, putting all three through "performance" speakers might be another matter. . .

Best wishes

David P

[NeilCraig]

Dear David

The phasing/lack of richness and blending are best heard, I have to admit, through headphones in this case.  Compared with results on a full division, which no computer at present is capable of rendering with real-time convolution separately on each rank, it is somewhat subtle.  Your reaction, however, is similar to that of the original sample-set producer's in that he commented the rendition of "Offertorium" was "as superb as anything that I have ever heard when it comes to a counterfeit Willis."

I wish I was in a position to hear the "results" through a capable sound-system at realistic levels; I can't approach that through studio monitors in a terraced house, unfortunately.

Presuming that the finished article is as worthy as this early demo from late August, I expect to be "finished" by the middle of next month.

Warm regards
Neil

[David Pinnegar]

The phasing/lack of richness and blending are best heard,  . . .

Hi!

I have an interesting example of lack of blending for a whole host of different reasons. The original 1993 Makin Encore which served Londonderry has a Diapason which, before improvement by way of better speakers, was one of those where it's difficult to distinguish between a Diapason, Horn and Posaune, at least through BAD speakers! Apparently there is a real pipe diapason like at at Norwich Cathedral, but next to my Hunter pipe organ, it was not the stop I wanted. I happened to buy an Ahlborn Romantic unit and the B division has just the right Diapason, and, through good speakers, sounds very very close to the pipe organ. I'm told that it's more of the sound of a slotted diapason.

The interesting thing is that in the Great Chorus, choosing one stop from the Makin and another stop from the Ahlborn sounds remarkably real. But in its way, the Slotted Diapason has too much character and the Makin Diapason "blends" better.

Sorry - this example is off topic - but stops blending is a black art!

Actually, for all its faults through its original mediocre speakers, the Makin at Londonderry was said to be remarkably good - and it was for that reason that I bought it as a start with concerts in mind. I suspect that a lot of the current controversy with Hauptwerk and speakers and blending is on account of close listening at home. If one puts _good_ speakers 20-30ft high up on a wall in a large building, then one will probably find that the ambience is very forgiving of all the faults that people are finding. But really 2 way speakers simply cannot be designed to do well for organ music and should not be used.

Best wishes

David P

[revtonynewnham]

Hi

Neil's demo is interesting - but inconclusive.  I'm listening on a pair of now rather old AKG mini "monitors" (AKG's take on the once ubiquitous Auratones - but they sound slightly better) - hooking this computer up to decent speakers is too convoluted at present.  I found little difference in the sound of the "piece" - although neither rendition seemed to have the "presence" of the real thing.  The held chord produced slightly different results, noticeable in the beats between notes, between the 2 versions, but without repeated listening it's difficult to say which is "better".

However, this listening test is compromised by the speakers here, and the fact that we're listening to recordings, not the actual sound in the room of the various ranks reproduced by separate speakers.  Sadly, no practical internet demo can adequately demonstrate those effects, nor the full effect of room acoustics (although a 3-D Ambiosonic recording/reproduction would come pretty close).

From the various electronic organs that I've heard and played over the years, multiple speakers pretty much always sound better in the room than singles or a pair.

Crossover effects within speakers are another issue that needs addressing - I suspect that a line-level crossover and separate amps for each frequency range will perform better than a speaker-level crossover.  (I'm planning to take that route when I eventually get my "My Organ"/Miditzer amplification system up and running (at present, it's hooked through an external soundcard to the speakers in a digital piano - far from ideal!)

Every Blessing

Tony

[NeilCraig]

Hi Tony and thanks for listening

To clarify, there are not actually any "speakers" here; the whole thing is "virtual" and the entire signal path was as follows:

"Separate" file: 

Dry samples (Hauptwerk VST) > Reaper (VST Host) > Each rank into a different track > different convolution reverb on each track > Mixdown > HDD recording.

When I say "different" convolution on each track, I don't mean random impulses, I mean the virtual equivalent of placing a starting pistol (or whatever) at the position of C1 and C#1 (C/C# divided chest) for each rank and recording the impulse.    This is the same principle (without speaker frequency aberrations) as giving each rank a separate stereo pair.

In the "Shared" file, the signal path is the same but all the stops were combined electrically BEFORE being passed through just the Open 1's impulses.  This is the same (again, without speaker response aberrations) of putting all 4 ranks through the same speakers.

For me, listening on high-quality headphones, there is no comparison between the two files.  As far as "presence" goes, when I made these files I was only aiming to cure the phase problems, *not* make it sound as if it was a fairly distant recording.  I have moved the goalposts since this proof-of-concept and the end result does, to me, sound thrilling.  Through transducers capable of reproducing it correctly.

Whether or not real speakers are used in a real room or not, isn't relevant; the point of the exercise is to show that electronic mixing of dry stops is detrimental to tutti and nearly all other registrations.

Warm regards//Neil

[revtonynewnham]

Hi Neil

I realise your methodology.  It's probably a good compromise given that the resulting demo is transmitted electronically, and the differences - even on speakers - is interesting (I'm also well aware that headphones will be even more revealing of detail differences - I just didn't have time to try the demo on phones this morning)

The fact remains though that real acoustics have different effects even to very well simulated ones - especially in the small fluctuations and randomness that computers tend to ignore as "too small to be relevant", but which often aren't!  I'd like to hear the demo "live" and with 4 independent sound sources as well as just one.

Keep up the good work!

every Blessing

Tony

[NeilCraig]

Hi Tony

You're right; multiple channels in a real acoustic would be the best option but I'm not in a position to do that.  What is interesting, though, is that I *have* heard the same 4 ranks as in my demo, put through a single pair of speakers in a real acoustic and the mixing problems were exactly the same as in my demo.

Best//Neil

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

Actually I don't think that electronics will _ever_ be as sophisticated as pipework:
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2009/09/surprising-physics-of-pipe-organs.html
This article looks at the way in which organ pipes lock in frequency and how sometimes they even cancel each other out.

It's a long time since I looked properly at resonance in pipes - perhaps someone can answer - is the sound pressure at the end of an open pipe in the same phase as that at the mouth? L= wavelength/2 It looks to me as though the two ends of the pipe are going to be out of phase sound sources. We know from stereo speakers out of phase that this produces an indeterminate image of where the sound is coming from.

Perhaps the only true recordings of pipes are going to be stereo recordings with a vertically mounted pair directed at both ends of the pipe?

Best wishes

David P

[NeilCraig]

That's how Marshall & Ogletree recorded the samples for Trinity  Wall Street, or so I've read.  However,  I don't think even this is the answer, as summing these two outputs electrically will give much greater phase interactions than the acoustic summing a listener would hear.  And since one can't place one ear at the languid and the other 8 feet (or 16, or whatever) away, surely this is irrelevant?  A lot of peope like spaced-omni recordings of organs which certainly captures the "space" but isn't strictly accurate as a listening perspective; one can't be in two (or more) places at once. 

What about a binaural (Neumann Sphere?) set up near the foot of the pipe but at just enough distance to provide integration between the two sound sources?

Then, didn't I once read on Dr Pykett's pages that very little sound is actually radiated from the open end of a flue pipe?

Best//Neil

[David Pinnegar]

Hi Neil!

Isn't this the point at which we need Paul to come in? He's either busy or, I hope not taken offence on account of anything I've said . . . ?

Doing the double recording at both ends of the pipe, one would have to play them back as pairs, with speakers facing forwards and upwards . . . In effect, in one post I reported getting a good result for a diapason with a speaker in a near open baffle arrangement at 45 degrees and being directed to reflect off the ceiling. In a way, such an arrangement separates the 180 degree phased sounds to propagate seperately in their own ways.

Paul and I disagreed as to whether one should take apparent defects in speakers to be advantages in reproducing pipework of similar characteristics. Perhaps there is a difference of philosophy here in a difference of purpose: many Hauptwerk users are intending to reproduce as accurately as possible a specific organ of somewhere else and replicate it as a replication of that organ. In contrast in building a concert organ for performance, I have been concentrating on what I want my organ to do and to be able to do without imitating any other. This gives me the freedom to start with a trumpet and decide to spice it up - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cL8QDLv8vM
and as an instrument to INSPIRE the new generation, I want it to be able to show to them that the King of Instruments is worthy of life beyond the nightclub. So, far from authenticity of any organ anywhere else, my requirement is an organ on steroids . . .

The result of this is that one can produce an instrument to wake people up - the forthcoming film London Boulevard starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley features one of the actors pulling out an aptly named organ stop . . . but I'm not going to spoil the story . . .

Jesting apart, all exciting organs have always aspired to being organs on steriods: often good registration requires one to pull other stops with the Clarinet on the choir - in particular, 8ft Flute or Bourdon, Nazard, Tierce and even Larigot and Septieme if you've got it . . . not just salt but monosodium glutamate to the sound. Isn't it boring organs that have dulled people's perception of the EXCITEMENT of the instrument?

Best wishes

David P