Organ matters - Organs matter!

Hi!

Thanks so much for posting this. This goes to show just what _good_ electronic design and clearly proper speakers can do. Bearing in mind that this was just analogue electronics, the current hype that apparently Hauptwerk is so wonderful it can overcome the limitations of mis-chosen speakers and still achieve realism must be questionable. If good speakers can make an analogue organ sound like this, then proper treatment of the Hauptwerk output can only be advantageous.

The bad news is that it lasted so long :-) but the good news is that it was so superb that it has inspired the building of a new pipe organ.

It's for this reason that I see electronics _well_ installed as being good for pipe organs in the long run.

Well installed does not include commercial electronics touts putting speakers behind the facades of pipe organs and removing pipework to do so: that is vandalism, plain and simple.

One of the saddest and most frustrating things I've seen in a while is the gravestone in Alderney Methodist Church:


. . . put to death by the installation of an unused 3 manual analogue Johannus.

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: NeilCraig on October 10, 2010, 08:27:55 PM
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

Hi!

A little while ago I was called in to see what I could do for an instrument under immediate threat:
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=A00257

A last concert was played by a brilliant organist, Mark Cyphus, and I recorded and "YouTubed" the concert and thanks to an enthusiastic organist and builder Paul Derrett, it was taken to a church in South Wales,
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=K00892
where I hope to hear of its inaugural recital in due course.

A comment this morning on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpKoX9hzWs
demonstrates just why everyone's contributions to this forum are SO important:

Quotewhat??

why would anyone spend money nowadays for something like this?

I hope that people will demonstrate the answer to that with even more vigour.

Best wishes

David P

CONCERT BY JEREMY FILSELL 2010
at Hammerwood Park
East Grinstead Sussex

Jeremy Filsell is Artist in Residence and Organist at the National Cathedral in Washington DC http://www.nationalcathedral.org . On a brief visit to England, he is performing a small clutch of concerts http://www.organrecitals.com/1/recitals.php?organist=jerfil (but Hove date is 6th, not as shown) on interesting organs and although complaining that he needs arms like an octopus to play the instrument, he likes playing at Hammerwood because the audience can see him and what he is doing.

David BRIGGS (b. 1962) Homage à Marcel Dupré: Prelude & Fugue in D major
J.S. BACH (1685-1750) from Clavierübung III:

   
• Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr BWV 675
  Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr BWV 676

Pamela DECKER (b. 1958) La Pantera (2009)
David BRIGGS Homage à Marcel Dupré: Prelude & Fugue in F minor
Alfred HOLLINS (1865-1942) Concert Overture in C minor (1899)
J.S. BACH from Clavierübung III:

   
• Christus unser Herr, zum Jordan kam BWV 684
  Christus unser Herr, zum Jordan kam BWV 685

Sergei RACHMANINOV (1873-1942) Vocalise Op. 34 no.1 (transcribed Nigel Potts)
David BRIGGS Homage à Marcel Dupré: Prelude & Fugue in E major

Jeremy writes: You'll love David B's Preludes & Fugues (think early Dupre but with tongue-in-cheek ...). Pamela's Panther piece is really crazy/wild and Rach and Hollins are always fun bon-bons. And then Bach is Bach (complete soul-food).

This concert is likely to be packed so please ring 01342 850594 in early course to reserve places

Specification of organ on
http://www.organrecitals.com/s/hammerwood.html

Moscheles was a pupil and friend of Beethoven and a teacher of Mendelssohn. Henry Roche, recently retired as Director of Music of the Royal Ballet, is Moscheles' great great grandson . . . so music clearly runs in the genes. 

He is performing a luscious programme including two works by Moscheles on a piano tuned in the spirit of 18th and 19th century unequal temperament, a "well temperament" such as that which Bach would have been writing for.


Please phone 01342 850594 to reserve seats.

Quote from: NonPlayingAnorak on October 10, 2010, 08:09:24 AM

Quote from: revtonynewnham on October 08, 2010, 03:12:58 PM
Why on earth didn't they design the new building with space for the organ?  Or is there something about the design/tonal finishing that he's not saying?  I note that no organ builder is credited.

It looks like a suspiciously huge spec for a 2m/p. I reckon it's probably been rebuilt from a 3m by Bodgit & Scarper...

Hi!

No - it might simply be an extension "unit" organ with Principal used on the Great and Flute used on the Swell, and Trumpets accessible from both. Were it to have been cut down, there would be a Clarinet.

Solid state switching is a clue too . . .

Great clarion 4, trumpet 8, oboe 8, double trumpet 16, laringot 16 (sic) , mixture 3 rks, fifteenth 2, principal 4, dulciana 8, open diapason No. 2 8, open diapason No. 1 8, double open 16

Swell tremulant, clarion 4, oboe 8, trumpet 8, double trumpet 16, mixture 3 rks, larigot 1 1/2, flautina 2, twelth 2 1/2, lieblich flute 4, voix celeste 8, salcional 8, lieblich gedact 8, quintation 8, open diapason 8, contra salcional 16, bourdon 16

So it is explicable with the following ranks:
Trumpet
Oboe
Principal
Giegen Diapason
Stopped Diapason - Gedekt - whatever
Dulciana
Salicional and Celeste
Mixture

Quintaton might be one of the 8fts together with a 12th from the Dulciana

It might be a more traditional 2 manual recast in an extension form to give it greater versatility. As with a lot of things, a bad workman blames his tools, and a good player understanding this instrument will use this to his advantage and avoid things on it that don't work so well, whilst an inexperienced player will simply draw all the stops and expect it to do what it says on the tin . . .

It's clearly got a real 16ft Open Diapason, explains the height, and the pedal Viola is probably the Salicional carried down to 16ft. No mean little organ, it should make a versatile noise out of modest but realistic resources.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

The final part of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45OeT8E37FM
is the Hammond in question and really although it's useful for academic illustration of harmonic construction of sounds, it's not being appropriately appreciated here.

So if anyone is interested please ring 01342 850594

Another thought - in view of its second set of tonewheel generators for the chorus effect, which is much more subtle than the later famous effect, would anyone like to sample it for Hauptwerk or Grande Orgue?

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: NeilCraig on October 09, 2010, 05:39:05 AMrecorded 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

Hi!

What you have done is really brilliant. Do you do something like this professionally? It's great to see people's talent and this is a forum where talent is encouraged and not suppressed - so please go on posting . . . even if not asked. You never know what it might lead to . . . but certainly what it will lead to is interest in organs.

Perhaps you might do a series of posts, one for each organ, or venue, and then when the search engines pick up your posts relating to individual organs, other people might then contribute information about those organs.

It would be great to see other people showcasing their work elsewhere on the site too . . .

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: pwhodges on October 08, 2010, 07:45:24 PM

QuoteThe most natural sounding speakers will be ones where designers have made special efforts to minimise transducer movement

This leads on to the matter of multi-driver systems and crossovers. 

There have been single-cone loudspeakers that professed to cover the full range of hearing, but usually this was actually a rather truncated range; there are speakers with multiple cones attached to one voice-coil - which in effect use a mechanical crossover, which can only be less well defined than an electrical one.  In general, multiple drivers are used to cover the full range satisfactorily.  There are various problems that arise as a result; good design can minimise these for hi-fi and monitoring use both of which require good on-axis performance more than anything else.  However, when considering the off-axis performance, problems appear.  For any driver on a baffle of a certain size, the output will become more directional as the frequency gets higher; there may also be a substantial change in directivity at the point of crossing over.  Also, below a certain frequency the output drops because of an effect known as the baffle step (this can be corrected in the crossover, of course).  All this is already making our aim of an omnidirectional speaker a bit of a nonsense - but there's more!  If the drivers are not perfectly coincidental (as in Tannoy dual-concentric drivers, for instance), there will be comb filtering effects as we move off the axis of the speaker.  Actually, we're quite lucky that our hearing is tolerant enough to let us get away with all this at all.

Dear Paul

Your post is a superb analysis of the whole issue, and the paragraph above greatly interesting. It's for all these reasons why there is no "one" solution nor any one company that can offer everything as hi-fi to all and that for some purposes some things might be better and for others others . . .

QuoteWe should not be using defects in the speaker to add their own character to the sound; this character should be in the original sample (or simulation if the sound is being modelled).

:-) I think that this is probably the only area where we might differ, and to do so of course is as you say nit-picking, and is probably the difference between the doctrinal backgrounds of physicists and engineers :-)

My rather pragmatic approach is that, bearing in mind no speaker can do everything, the cororally is that each speaker can do something! Indeed because some speakers can do some things better than other speakers, I like working with the advantages of stuff (as my sons would say) rather than bashing my head against brick walls in fighting against it or trying to achieve a perfection that's impossible to achieve.

When one is trying to achieve perfection however, one has to look at the closest and minutest detail. Therefore, to take Tony's distinction between producing and REproducing, when one is reproducing one is taking a recording from a microphone a little distance away from a pipe or pipes or instrument. When one is producing, one should be taking a recording from the physical interface of the pipe it its mouth and its end, as the sound source, for the final loudspeaker in the chain to reproduce _as_that_sound_ and produce that sound that emanated from the pipe itself at the point at which the air from the pipe became a sound.

Our problem is that taking the recording from the interface between the pipe and the volume of surrounding air is not possible.

So one might try to synthesise it as if the microphone was in the right place. At the interface, certain characteristics will be enhanced which will be diluted as the pipe air mixes with the static volume of the air outside and in the course of distance is lost. So there are possible defects in speaker drivers and enclosures which one can exploit to simulate the unrecordable as if it was and to pretend to be the pipe itself rather than being a reflection of the pipe in the mirror that is the microphone at a distance. So one might to try to drive the air in an analogous way.

In the old days of analogue simulation of organs, two methods were used - one to add harmonics together, demonstrated by the 1790 Grinda pipe organ video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qqWNNlwV2U at 0:55 and the Cornet video on Hammerwood organ and Hammond http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45OeT8E37FM and the other as on the Vickery organ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psnwJvDwBjE and the Ralph Jones Mini Metro Movable organ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOAQ0DlhXKM  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vph8tZ1uOZ4 by putting square waves together to step synthesise sine, square and sawtooth waves, putting them through filters to accord with the "formants" of the pipe sounds required to synthesise the pipe stops. If one puts a good pipe signal recorded by the distant microphone as its mirror, whilst salt or monosodium glutamate might make a mushroom soup taste more like mushrooms, addition of a few ceps will do it like the real thing . . .

So the theory (and I don't expect you to agree with me or want to agree with me :) ) is that using a speaker of which the formants of its defects accords with the formants of the original pipe makes the distance recorded pipe sound like the pipe itself, analogous to bringing the microphone right up to the moving air interface so that the reflection we experience in the mirror which is the microphone appears whisper close to the source. It's as if putting a magnifying glass on the characteristics of the sound.

Sorry - this is a very difficult concept to explain.

The idea is not new - Conn did it with their "pipes" speakers, and I'm aware of other EOCS members who have been doing similar experiments.

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: KB7DQH on October 08, 2010, 05:06:39 PMThat "balloon detonation" demo David put together (and I have also heard the 1812 overture which proceeded it 8) was certainly FUN here...

:) Glad you enjoyed it - for anyone new to this it's on
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/organ/hugh-potton-1/mp3-6-1st-encore-beware.mp3
and if any organist would like to have fun in such a way, audiences are asking me when we will be doing such a thing again - so performers with a glint in their eye are very welcome!

Seriously, your setup sounds very interesting - how many channels are you using and if you are using rear channels how do you arrange them for mere Stereo CDs?

One of the reasons for my interest in the speaker issue is that there are many people contemplating installing software based organ installations at home and I hear many comments about the cost being too high, not only with respect to the primary software and computer requirements but also to speakers.

Not only there are circumstances where people think that multiple speakers are _necessary_ - there being a distinction between necessity and desire, but often people think that speakers have to cost a lot of money.

In spending a lot of money, sometimes people get things which are arguably less compatible with the pipes they are reproducing than they might be, and spending that money unnecessarily, the cost becomes an unnecessary barrier to the home organ installation project. Of course it's horses for courses and Tony sums it up well:

QuoteWe do need, however, to make a distinction between producing music (i.e. generating an appropriate sound filed in a given room for an electronic organ) and REproducing music, where the aim is to reflect (or sometimes improve) on a live performance. 

An acquaintance who demoed a high profile software organ for the EOCS in the summer using wet samples, for which hi-fi reproduction is required, but tailored more specifically to organs, has modified a pair of  Celestion Ditton 200 speakers bought on eBay and for less than £150 has a system that sounds very clear and interesting.

It's not surprising that the Hauptwerk software developers and those in awe of their software did not like my contributions to discussion in suggesting that speakers of the nature that they liked to recommend at 6 times the cost http://www.studiospares.com/studio-monitors/mackie-hr824-mkii-pair-2pt/invt/260930/ were the Emperor's New Clothes as far as organs were concerned - I'm not unique in making such observations:
http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.php?threadid=570199

QuoteIf you make hip hop or DnB and like to also check out your mixes on a P/A system or a ghetto blaster, it's something you might want because they have that sound, but I'm an audiophile ****** and strongly prefer genuine accuracy when it comes to the low-end).

They also have crossover phasing issues. When I was demoing monitors I thought that the upper-mid-range was a bit iffy, and it was interesting to learn that their crossover was around 1900hz, and that the low-freqs out of the crossover are delayed more than the hi freqs - and the passive radiator just makes it worse.

Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't say they sound bad, but just that they don't sound like monitors at all to me.

I had experienced this with speakers of a similar nature when involved in a record production this year. A female singer's gutteral consonants were being reproduced by the "monitors" as sibilant clicks accompanied by a disembodied vocal tone.

That discussion board is interesting as it showed how people assumed that a current commercial offering to the market must of course be better than one from 4 years ago . . . It was in this vein that I deliberately chose the first ever 1961 KEF design as an example of good speakers . . .

Taking care not to simply follow the fashion and believing the sales talk http://beatitdo1324.org/?p=105 but instead to _think_ about what one's system needs to do is so worthwhile, achieving top results at lower cost into the bargain, and you have clearly achieved that!

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

Well this instrument
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izbv7WVmufA
is . . . err. . . a "classical" instrument but its design was so controversial that the owner had to buy up the organ building firm in order to get the job done.

Shame it's now just an empty case and console.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

I hope that people looking at this discussion board will take notice. It looks a very competant instrument.

Thanks for the heads-up on this one!

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: Holditch on October 08, 2010, 04:01:21 AMI plan to try and add the remaining missng notes for the 2 2/3 and 2ft stops by adding an additional small windchest to the front of the organ (I think it would sound a bit daft only having half the keyboard operating with these stops)

Hi!

Perhaps not daft at all. the French classical Recit operate only from middle C upwards. With a 4ft principal having a strong enough 2nd harmonic, you might get away with moving the 2ft up to Tierce to make a Jeu de Tierce or Cornet and the divided keyboard enables you to do much more on the same manual. Couperin lives!

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: Holditch on October 08, 2010, 03:53:21 AM
The major problem in my opinion with a conventional loudspeaker is that it is pistonic and not like an instrument (for example violin or piano string). This in my mind is the first major downfall with regards to trying to reproduce an acoustic instrument like a pipe organ through electronic means and conventional loudspeakers.

The company that I work for has recently built up a relationship with Amina, who make flat panel sound transducers, which are nothing like the conventional piston speaker we all know about (whose design has not fundamentally changed in 80 or 90 years).  In case you have not heard of the sound panel (pioneered by NXT), it uses a honeycomb structure and an exciter or exciters. It reproduces sound like a violin and is omni directional.

Dear Marc

Really interesting. However, some musical instruments do have a pistonic analogue, in particular wind instruments. Percussion is another thing . . . and it's obvious that one cannot get the full sound of a 15 inch cymbal out of a 1 inch tweeter. So a flat panel wave transducer will be a much better model for that as well as all instruments with an acoustic soundboard.

When I was at school a great friend who I have not heard of since turned up with some sort of "speaker" to be used on boats. It was very heavy, presumably on account of the magnet, about 6-8 inches in diameter from which a great stubby woodcrew emerged. It screwed into a wooden panel or plasterboad wall and . . . was rather good. Has anyone heard of such a device in modern times? Does anyone know what it might have been?

I'd love to hear your panels and try them against other means of achieving large accoustic areas.

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: pwhodges on October 08, 2010, 12:46:25 AM
I believe that David's criticism of the use of many types of speaker in organ installations is justified, but that he gives the wrong reasons for it, and this both colours people's reactions to his criticism and fails to direct him towards a clear explanation of his solutions.

Dear Paul

Thanks. I may not necessarily be able to answer this evening and might take your post in a number of parts in a series of replies, as there is a lot.

Firstly, as I understand life and possibly life reflected in forums as they should be, I admire most the people who are senior in their field and who say that they learn something new every day. This can only be achieved by way of openness of interaction and willingness to discuss. No-one holds the right answers to everything and, where one has a group of experienced and learned people, if there is a point to discussion, it is progress and that will only be achieved in the spirit of a university tutorial in which people are happy to bounce ideas around the group.

For this reason I am most grateful to you for point out flaws in my processes.

QuoteThey played differently miked test recordings of the same performance to various people. The interesting result was that people who knew little about sound reproduction said that they thought one performance was better than the other - because they could hear a difference, and couldn't think of another way to express it.

There are times when we take great care over something and so we _think_ that the result must be better. I found this the other day where on my organ, I took great care to get the sound I wanted on an en chamade trumpet and on a cromorne by using a combination of two interesting speakers, one of which an exotic vintage unit I had to import from America, for one channel serving the bass end and another combination of what I thought to be milder units, one to my design, for the upper keyboard octaves. On account of a loose connection the other day, I tested one channel against the other and, they sounding virtually the same, I wondered why I had gone to the trouble I had . . . So I understand entirely where you are coming from.

QuoteI work (in my audio hobby, that is) generally in the areas of recording and reproduction - in 3D as it happens, using ambisonics. My aim in reproducing a recording is to play it back in such a way as to reconstruct the original sound field that the microphone has captured in such a way as to encompass the listener's head.

WOW!

QuoteIn particular, it leads to a requirement for minimal additional contribution from the listening room, and so, as well as making this rather dead, we design speakers so that the direct radiation in the direction of the listener has a flat response; other directions can go hang, so long as they do not have such prominent peaks or troughs

That is a rather interesting observation and it has been confirmed for decades since pre-quadraphonic attempts at simulating the rear wave for which experiments it was known that the back speakers needed not to be of critical quality. This has particular relevance for people engaged in seriously multi-channel surround sound . . . in which possibly the fashion may be to have all the speakers, including the rear, exactly the same and thereby unnecessarily expensive? However, I have not taken an interest in such systems so please update me if I'm wrong.

QuoteThis leads to the typical design of a hi-fi speaker or near-field monitor (they are not fundamentally different) - and is not anything to do with being designed for pop music or anything like that, which is what David has been saying that irritated me so much!

We may discuss this privately in due course - there is a flaw in conventional monitors, especially two way monitors, which may make them more acceptable for certain types of music.

QuotePA systems have to deal with trying to get clarity across in places which inevitably have more reverberation than a typical domestic setting. They do this by going for directionality as far as possible, to minimise the excitation of the reverberation, and to gain the greatest signal to reverberation ratio at the listener's head that they can manage. The requirements are in fact similar to those above, but the space available allows the use of more extreme techniques, such as line sources, to increase directionality beyond what can be managed from a single box.

This is exceedingly interesting and something that probably few of us have appreciated.

QuoteNow, if we consider the case of playing the sound of a pipe, recorded dry, in an auditorium, the requirements are quite different - we want to excite the acoustic, and we want to do it similarly to how a pipe would do it, that is, by radiating sound somewhat uniformly in all directions in order to get a similar build-up of reverberation.

Agreed. In my instrument I have used some speakers enclosed at the back but others open. One designer of a major Hauptwerk installation on which I gave some advice has taken a similar approach but in a slightly different way. With a difficult Giegen Diapason on the Swell of the ex-Londonderry Cathedral instrument, I found the best sound came from a near open baffle design enclosure mounted at 45 degrees and the front wave bouncing off a ceiling surface around a metre in front.

Of course that has implications at the bass end . . . but it works to my advantage as from memory the wisdom of EOCS members of around 20 years ago was that one could tell an electronic organ a mile off from a certain heaviness in the 100 Hz region. Therefore making one's speaker response light in this region, achieved well with an open design, works to advantage.

QuoteThe response of a pseudo-omnidirectional speaker may also not be flat in any specific direction (as I suspect David has also observed)

Again I think this works to advantage of realism.

Quotewhat we would like to be flat is actually the power response integrated over all directions

Clearly to achieve an overall balance generally. No response in any point of a room is flat anyway on account of interference patterns.

Quotebut there are techniques which enable one to get a bit closer to the ideal, and I have no doubt that David is using some of them.

:-)

Essentially where one is achieving a reproductive realism of organ plus acoustic of somewhere else, one must use speakers that are as flat and pure as possible, to recreate that environment as hi-fi. One of my favourite speakers is the 1961 design Kef K1, although currently these are in the barn. One only has to look at these
http://www.kef.com/Resources/KEFUnits/A%20History%20of%20Kef%20Drive%20Units%20-%20Issue%202.pdf
to see why, with that massive bass unit, they'd be rather good for organ reproduction.

In contrast when one looks at a speaker of today
http://www.musik-service.de/mackie-hr-824-mk-2-prx395760652en.aspx one sees a small woofer, actively driven and the details comment how this produces extra bass within a rather small cabinet. This means that the woofer excursion distance is going to have to be significantly greater and that therefore the unit will be having to travel faster. (Paul - I'm putting this in terms for non specialists!) In doing so, imagine an ambulance siren going backwards and forwards in front of your ears, the Doppler effect changing the pitch of whatever else emerges. So when one has any note up to about 150Hz at a high level, any other notes being forced through that woofer rather than the static tweeter are going to be shaken around, backwards and forwards, so changing frequency on every cycle of the low note. For this reason the unit will be unaccountably muddy and not sound natural.

The most natural sounding speakers will be ones where designers have made special efforts to minimise transducer movement and I do this in one way, as clearly Marc's panel speakers do in another (Marc - THANK YOU for contributing to this discussion - your post is very fascinating) and as Quad Electrostatics did with significantly large surface area.

However, another circumstance of organ reproduction is that of "dry" samples where the speakers represent the pipes. Here it depends how one allocates speakers to pipes and when I took on the Londonderry instrument it was apparent that one of the engineers had thought carefully about which sort of standard stock speaker for which sorts of stops and made a start at allocating them. This was a clue from which I subsequently worked and realised that one did not need a powered speaker with woofer to which more boost was given represent a 2ft rank starting at about 250Hz and nor did I need that stop broken as it went up the keyboard between different units. When one applies a speaker suitable to the nature of stop it is reproducing it will sound so much more real than a speaker designed to be all things to all men.

It's for that reason that I took significant time on the other forum to get people to _think_ of, if they want their organ to perform rather than simply be a keyboard controlled hi-fi system, how their organ would want to speak, how their "pipes" would be speaking, and thereby to consider their instrument in terms of an electroacoustic analogue of the pneumoacoustic pipe.

In doing so the results can be so much more successful than mere software, however clever, can achieve alone. For those, however, for whom software is the paragon of life, daring to suggest that the acoustic interface can have an influence upon the output of their product appears to be a taboo and a terrible affront.

It's for this sort of reason that is universal to all human groups from time to time that I wrote the posting about tuning herecies in times past
http://www.organmatters.co.uk/index.php?topic=189.0
leading one to be burned at the stake for suggesting that one might tune an instrument to play in more than the then permitted keys :) and no doubt uttering a few herecies in the process for good measure.  ;D Thank goodness for freedoms of thought and speech!

Best wishes

David P 

WOW!

It's a great privelege to see such talent! And imagination! There are one or two in that collection that I'm sure will be inspirations . . .

Best wishes

David P

Dear Paul

THANKS so much for coming along to continue this discussion as I think we're like minded in considering that the issues have great validity. As in many people's minds an organ is an organ, whether pipe or electronic, bad electronics give organs a bad impression among people who don't know otherwise. Therefore encouraging electronic organs to present the organ as the exciting instrument that it is worthy of the name is important for pipe organs.

Those who worry that good electronics will do bad things for pipe organ builders need not worry as pipe organs score on longevity. That is not the issue here, but for that reason, it's good to look academically at how the final interface in an electronic organ's speech can be improved. For many who simple want the answer to the question "what shall I buy - and it had better be expensive as it's my status symbol" :-) philosphy of speaker design is tedious. However, it's very worthy of consideration.

I'm very much looking forward to giving your posting and thoughts the attention they deserve, but a friend has come around to dinner this evening so I'm otherwise distracted.

For those who like after dinner stories (forums can sometimes be too serious, and organs should be fun) and who are wondering what "dry organ installations" mean, it does not refer to the famous eccentric Italian organist the late Giorgio Questa who built a portable pipe organ only to be engaged at San Fruttuoso di Camogi at Genova, accessible only by boat. He refused to take his pipe organ on the boat in case the boat was eaten by sharks and the concert had to be cancelled. Such an organ would not be a wet organ!

Here, it simply means recording organ pipes note by note and replaying them via computer memory either with the original reverberation of the building, a wet acoustic, or without the reverberation at the end of each note, so as if a "dry" acoustic.

In the other forum there appeared to be a consensus that possibly different design criteria might be necessary for
(a) reproducing an organ with its original acoustic as if a hi-fi recording of the organ in its original place at home - this is really great as with the numbers of "sample sets" of organs being recorded around the world becoming available, one can experience the spirit of instruments that otherwise one would never have the opportunity to play
(b) reproducing an organ "dry" so that the speakers become the organ whether at home or in a larger installation - and for home use, the immediacy of a "dry" instrument, as if a pipe organ in one's room, allows much more critical and serious practice.

On another thread here I have posted a suggestion that the area of speakers might usefully relate to the area of pipework in use (whether pipe diameters or mouth areas). ForumAdmin may combine these posts in due course if relevant.

Paul - please forgive me for additionally setting the scene for newcomers to the discussion, and I hope that whilst nourishing mental capacity you might forgive the non-immediacy of my reply. In the meantime, it will be great to see if others have ideas to throw into the melting pot.

Best wishes

David P

Quote from: David Pinnegar on October 07, 2010, 06:04:53 PMwhilst the classical organ is supreme,

Hi!

Oh dear - I'm being taken to task over this. Of course the Classical Organ is not supreme - it's just different - and actually I'm just as passionate about cinema organ destruction and preservation as with classical organs  . . .

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

I was very amused to find the following page on "Timbre Creating Compound Stops" in one of the authoritative texts of the 1920s or 30s . . . who's name will not be unfamiliar to lovers of the Cinema Organ . . .

"Of dual stops so composed we are able to give existing examples which have been skillfully devised and constructed by a noted expert. . . . That they have so long been neglected is far from being creditable to those who have claimed to have the tonal development of the Organ at heart. Expense may be urged as an excuse; but it is hardly a valid one in this day of monster Organs, comprising between two and three hundred speaking stops. "


One hopes that Hope Jones can be named now with impunity?

Best wishes

David P