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St. John the Divine base pitch?

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1961TC4ME

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St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostTue May 09, 2017 11:59 am

Hi all,

I've been digging around on the internet and can't find the base pitch for the Opus 150 Skinner at St. John the Divine in NY. Can anyone tell me what the base pitch for this organ is? Reason I ask is I've been fiddling around a bit lately and I matched the pitch of the SP Dingelsteadt to that of the St. John instrument as closely as I could using the small panel fine tuning adjustment in HW, and I really like the results. The Dingelstead now seems to have a more rich sound to it with this new tuning. Comparing the pitch of the St. John instrument via a CD I was listening to and using the HW fine tuning adjustment I ended up at -125 which is about spot on with the St. John Skinner.

Which leads to the next question: Can changing the base pitch of a given organ make it sound 'better' for lack of a better word? Maybe it's just me?

Marc
Last edited by 1961TC4ME on Wed May 10, 2017 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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josq

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostTue May 09, 2017 1:55 pm

Yes, in speaker setups, there is at least one way in which changing the pitch of a Hauptwerk organ can improve the sound.

In every room, there are a number of resonance frequencies. Notes very close to a resonance frequency will give a "booming" sound.

Changing the base pitch may move some notes away from resonance frequencies, and other towards it. So there will be a few optimum base pitches in which the notes have least overlap with the resonance frequencies. If you change the temperament (equal, meantone, etc) the same applies.

Generally, for any speaker set up I would recommend to have some form of room treatment (thick carpets that absorb sounds etc) and/or to make use of room correction software. This way you will reduce the impact of resonance frequencies, the overall sound will improve, and sound quality will be less dependent on base pitch and temperament.
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jharmon

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 9:34 am

Marc just made me aware of the "base pitch" on organs with his post. What determines the base pitch of an organ installation, and do sample set producers simply use the native base pitch of the original organ or is the base pitch altered by the set producer?
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1961TC4ME

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 10:41 am

jharmon wrote:Marc just made me aware of the "base pitch" on organs with his post. What determines the base pitch of an organ installation, and do sample set producers simply use the native base pitch of the original organ or is the base pitch altered by the set producer?


Hi John,

I would imagine that most set producers will use the pitch at which the organ was built for the sample set. I notice in some organ info I read the pitch (what Hz) it was tuned to is stated, and in some cases it is not. I've scoured the internet and can't find the pitch used for the St. John Skinner as an example, so if anyone can find it let me know.

Maybe a question someone like Martin can answer since he knows all the ins and outs of how HW works: I'm wondering if playing around with the pitch or deviating from the original pitch if it would have any detrimental or adverse effects on the overall sound and realism of a given set? The tuning I came up with for the Dingelsteadt doesn't seem to have any adverse effects that I can hear, but I'd be interested to hear more on it.

Marc
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Eric Sagmuller

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 11:17 am

Jiri of Sonus Paradisi found that shifting an organ's pitch introduces distortion, the more it's shifted, the worse it gets. For this reason I never shift the pitch of any organ anymore. I use to shift the pitch of the Zwolle set as it is about two notes high. When lowering it close to 440, I always thought it sounded grungy. My guess is I was hearing that distortion he discusses in his posting.

Eric
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mdyde

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 11:30 am

jharmon wrote:Marc just made me aware of the "base pitch" on organs with his post. What determines the base pitch of an organ installation, and do sample set producers simply use the native base pitch of the original organ or is the base pitch altered by the set producer?


Hello John,

The default base pitch for any given organ is determined by the organ's samples, or by the sample set producer (who can specify the exact default base pitch directly if so desired in the organ's definition). However, thereafter you can change the base pitch to whatever you like (e.g. via the Pitch large control panel -- 'View | Large control panels').

I believe most sample set producers use the base pitch of the real organ as the default (or don't specify it at all, in which case it will be calculated from the pitches of the samples themselves, usually giving approximately the base pitch of the real organ anyway).

1961TC4ME wrote:Maybe a question someone like Martin can answer since he knows all the ins and outs of how HW works: I'm wondering if playing around with the pitch or deviating from the original pitch if it would have any detrimental or adverse effects on the overall sound and realism of a given set? The tuning I came up with for the Dingelsteadt doesn't seem to have any adverse effects that I can hear, but I'd be interested to hear more on it.


Large tuning changes (implying large real-time pitch shifts) will inevitably introduce a certain amount distortion, but for small changes (e.g. a semitone or less) the levels probably won't be relevant.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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1961TC4ME

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 12:00 pm

mdyde wrote:
Large tuning changes (implying large real-time pitch shifts) will inevitably introduce a certain amount distortion, but for small changes (e.g. a semitone or less) the levels probably won't be relevant.


Thanks, Martin,

Using the 'small view' tuning feature in the drop down to change the pitch I ended up at -125 to match the Dingelsteadt to the St. John Skinner. I can certainly say I'm no expert in terms of semitones, etc., and just did things by ear, so I don't know how much of a dramatic change -125 is, but it sounds decent. Perhaps I haven't pushed the limits yet?

Marc
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Eric Sagmuller

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 2:26 pm

I believe 100 cents = 1 semitone, or one note.

Eric
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1961TC4ME

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 3:12 pm

OK, so 100 cents is one semitone. That means I went down just over a semitone to match the Dingelsteadt to the St. John Skinner.

I tried de-tuning the St. Max some time back to match that of the Cliquot at Versailles (another instrument I have a few CD's of and wish there was a sample set of :cry:), and in this case the St. Max required -64 cents to match. I can't recall if I heard distortion but I remember I didn't like the outcome and it just didn't sound natural.

Marc
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Eric Sagmuller

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostWed May 10, 2017 6:40 pm

Here's Jiri's posting.

http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/blog/ali ... epitching/

Even at 50 cents it's very noticeable. He has some audio examples. Varying it from 0 - 64 (his last example) one can really hear it happen.

Eric
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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostThu May 11, 2017 3:18 am

Yes, repitching should worsen the sound in a perfect setup. If repitching actually improves the sound, then your setup is not perfect (and no setup is perfect). That's why I hypothetize that in Marc's case, the repitching repositions the sample frequencies on more favorable positions on a non-linear frequency response curve (see my resonance frequency story above).
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Eric Sagmuller

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostThu May 11, 2017 9:43 am

Hi Josq,

Yes I agree with you. Certain room resonances can cause the sound to muddy, and shifting the frequencies a bit could improve things in this case.

Eric
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1961TC4ME

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Re: St. John the Divine base pitch?

PostThu May 11, 2017 11:53 am

We're kind of veering off track from my original post, but it has started an interesting conversation none the less and I always enjoy discussions about what can be done to improve the sound and realism.

First I will just say what I mostly mean by 'it sounds better' is I just like the pitch better, not so much that it made some big change in the sound quality, I'd say it really didn't do much of anything there. So, sorry for any confusion that may have caused.

I took some time this morning to play the Dingelsteadt at both its 'as is out of the box' tuning and at -125 cents, I played the same exact songs just to make some comparisons. First off I will say regardless of the set I own, there is some of what Jiri describes as harmonic distortion, aliasing, or as others have referenced to as intermodulation distortion, or whatever, etc. The Dingelsteadt displays some of this as well in certain areas, in particular in the highs which I've also noticed on other sets as well. I wouldn't necessarily call it an 'audio' distortion like the audio is getting fuzzy, to my ears it's more of a clashing of harmonics, like beating notes or somewhat of a grating sound the opposing notes produce, and again it's more prominent in certain higher pitched notes when played against or along side of each other. I took note in the passages of the song I played where this more so jumps out, then re-tuned, played the same passage and sure enough the same thing happened in the same spot. I wouldn't say it was any worse or had been exaggerated, just that it was still there and overall the instrument sounds as good at -125 tuning as it does at stock tuning.

Interesting theory: Maybe this holds water, maybe it doesn't, but perhaps I have discovered a way to minimize the harmonic distortion problem. I have posted here numerous times regarding both speaker placement / positioning and audio routing schemes, in particular various rank routing schemes to speaker pairs and have reported the results. I have found that sending ranks to speaker pairs based on their 'like sounding or in the same family of sounding' has produced the best results, at least for me. Something I also noted in my experiments was the dramatic change in clarity and the lessening of harmonic distortion depending on which routing scheme I used. Highs in particular, especially mixtures can be tricky and it takes some experimenting to figure out where best they fit in the speaker pairs, but I can say I've eliminated the harmonic distortion effect by a good 90%, not 100% but with an additional few pairs of speakers on separate channels to further divvy things up, who knows? Unfortunately I only have 10 channels total to work with. Perhaps in all of this I've discovered a way of getting away with more than expected? :mrgreen:

Marc

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