David,
Much of what you say rings true. Many digital organs, or should I say digital organ installs do not have a "WOW" factor. Generally this is due to too few audio channels, poor amplification, mediocre speakers, poor placement of speakers, and poor setup and voicing. To add to the misery of a lot of digital organs, they are put in rooms with unfortunate acoustics. Even so, if everything lines up right for the digital organ, I find they still fall short of a fine pipe organ. I believe part of it has to do with the way speakers propagate sound. It is fundamentally different from air moving through a pipe.
You mention the flue chorus as being quite realistic, but the big manual reeds being uninspired. This is generally the case with digitals, as speakers tend to compress the sound somewhat, and when you put a fistful of notes through one speaker such as harmonically rich reeds, there is significant phase summing and cancellations, thus giving a nondescript result with a sonic glare which tells you it is electronic.
I don't know what the state of the electronic organ marketplace is like in the UK, but I do know that in North America, people are more concerned about low price, number of keyboards, number of stops, etc. than in the use of good audio and good tonal results.
And generally results are mediocre.
Getting back to your post, you don't mention enough facts to know whether what you heard was the organ's fault, the installation, etc. Was this a recent model? Was it a permanent installation? Was the setup designed to sell product?
AV
Much of what you say rings true. Many digital organs, or should I say digital organ installs do not have a "WOW" factor. Generally this is due to too few audio channels, poor amplification, mediocre speakers, poor placement of speakers, and poor setup and voicing. To add to the misery of a lot of digital organs, they are put in rooms with unfortunate acoustics. Even so, if everything lines up right for the digital organ, I find they still fall short of a fine pipe organ. I believe part of it has to do with the way speakers propagate sound. It is fundamentally different from air moving through a pipe.
You mention the flue chorus as being quite realistic, but the big manual reeds being uninspired. This is generally the case with digitals, as speakers tend to compress the sound somewhat, and when you put a fistful of notes through one speaker such as harmonically rich reeds, there is significant phase summing and cancellations, thus giving a nondescript result with a sonic glare which tells you it is electronic.
I don't know what the state of the electronic organ marketplace is like in the UK, but I do know that in North America, people are more concerned about low price, number of keyboards, number of stops, etc. than in the use of good audio and good tonal results.
And generally results are mediocre.
Getting back to your post, you don't mention enough facts to know whether what you heard was the organ's fault, the installation, etc. Was this a recent model? Was it a permanent installation? Was the setup designed to sell product?
AV