PAB + interpolation ?

[cedric]

Hi,

First of all, for anyone reading this thread, i want to say that i began spending some time with the PAB and it is really fantastic in every aspects.
Very comfortable to use, and most important, all sounds are rich, beautifull, being used alone or in combination with others. Everything is just nice. Real pleasure.

I experienced two little problems, and one of them took me some time to work around, so maybe this post can help. And i would like to know if i am the only one having them.

For the info, fedex still didn't deliver the package (i called them, they have it but can't deliver because of xmas and their internal organization...) so i am using the downloadable package (thanks Csaba for making this one available to download !).

I don't know if those questions are for Martin or Csaba.

1) The violin 16 on the pedal (stop 5) does not appear in the "pipe and rank voicing" list.

2) When the interpolation feature of HW is turned on (whatever temperament used, equal, native, or others), the organ is completely out of tune. When turned off, it sounds perfectly right. So i had to turn interpolation off permanently for this organ.

Nothing serious, as the organ sounds perfect as it is.
I discorered 1 when trying to fix 2.
I don't have this pb with other instruments, so maybe it's me misusing something ? I still don't have the user manual for the organ, so maybe there is some option i missed.
In case it helps, i loaded the instrument with one loop, all releases, and all tails truncated to 250ms.

Regards
Cedric

[mdyde]

Hello Cedric,

I think you'll really need to direct these questions to Csaba, since these would mainly depend on:

- how the ranks are listed within the organ definition and

- how the pitch information has been detected and stored in the samples (or organ definition).

... respectively.

Perhaps also check that your settings for the audio engine modulation depths (e.g. random pipe detuning, randomisations) on the 'General/Organ settings | General options' screens aren't turned up beyond their defaults.

[cedric]

Hello Martin,

Thanks for your answer.
I am currently at work, so i cannot check, but i never modified those options you are talking about.
From what i recall, everything is set to the default 100. I'll recheck tonight.
I just tried to turn on/off the wind model, but with no result.

Maybe this will tell something to Csaba...
Or to other owners of the PAB ? I may be the only one having that problem, in which case it would be on my side only.

Thanks
Cedric

[telemanr]

No Cedric, you are not alone.

I have retuned the organ rather than have to lose the possibility of using various temperments.
Csaba has indicated to me that the organ is actually tuned that way where the various divisions are slightly out of tune with one another and the reeds are also not what one would call in tune. I really can't imagine why and to my ear any coupling of manuals turned the whole organ into a giant celeste. If this is to prevent it from sounding synthetic, well, I don't really buy that. There is enough variation in pitch with HW's various internal workings that that is avoided.

It is fairly easy to retune the divisions so that they are closer to each other using the Pipe & Rank Voicing window.
You can open this and set the Adjustment choice to "Overall tuning" and it will stay there during your efforts. Then use the Master (Mstr) slider on the left for each rank of each division to roughly get the ranks in tune. The following will get it at least in the ball park. One can then fine tune.
I used a stop on the GO and then coupled the division I was working on with a corresponding stop pitch to it and listened for beats.
The GO and Pedal and Chamades seem to be in normal tune so with that in mind.
The POS (number 2) all ranks need come down to about -10cents
The REC (number 3) all up about +6
The SOLO (4) up about 10 (some stops +11 and even +15) You should probably do this one for sure listening stop by stop. The Tuba Mirab I just did +4.7 for instance.

At any rate this doesn't take all that long and you can fine tune later. You can at least do the REC and POS rank by rank without even listening and it will be at least be reasonable.

I would also do the reeds (against the GO reeds) individually and for some, note by note. At least whichever ones bother you. I did quite a bit of finagling with those.

Hope this makes you feel better.

Rob

[micdev]

Rob,

I'm surprise that no one post a review of this sample set so far. I know that not that many copies were sold and it was christmas time, but I sure would like to have your impression so far with some details about ram consumption, quality, fun to play etc.

Thanks
François

[telemanr]

Well, in general I like it and it is certainly versatile. I'm using it in 8GB of RAM and I have implemented 2 versions. One with tails chopped to 250ms and I add reverb (but currently I'm not using this version).
The other one is a bit of a mishmash in order to fit. And since it takes such a long time to cache I've not really done anything else to it since I got it to fit.
With this version I've got 16bit and one loop compressed on all ranks. Then I selectively eliminated the multiple releases on *almost* all ranks above 8' and did the pedal at 14bit. This resulted in RAM usage of 654GB once loaded.
I use this version with just a bit of reverb and I think it sounds quite good. I find the orginal dryness just too choppy to enjoy. Especially with headphones which I use a great deal. And I'm in a rather small room with only stereo near field speakers so it isn't a great sound without at least a smidgen of reverb. (Lexicon MX300).

Right at this moment I was trying to set up pistons to couple the pedal to various divisions and I'm having a bit of a brain cramp since I'm using the "other" version of HW and hadn't really set the General MIDI switches up as I had with the regular version I normally use. Now I wish I had put this version of the PAB on the regular completely setup HW but it's too late and I'm darned if I'm going to switch and retune and and and....

It does have some peculiarities. While there is lots of general combos available with 10 switches and simple bank selection, it has no divisional pistons which I find mildly astonishing. If you are used to setting up say 5 Swell pistons with some generally useful combos and you want to quickly just invoke a useful combo on the Swell without messing up what you have on the other manuals, well, as far as I can see you can't.
It's as if the builders felt that everyone would use squencer all the time. I find this strange.

I can say more later but now I'm going to get those pistons working and then I'm off to Classic Organ for their open house this afternoon.

Rob

[micdev]

Thanks Rob and looking forward to your next report.

Lucky you, going to the Classic Organ open house; I thought for a while to drive there, but more than 500 miles (one way) in the middle of winter kind of make me change my mind.

Please say hello to Darryl for me. You can add that I truly enjoy my new pedalboard and keyboards.

Regards
François

[telemanr]

I will certainly do that François.

[cedric]

@ Rob,

Thanks for your detailed answer.
Actually, i already did what you decribe and came up with approximately the same correction values, except i didn't take the time to tune the reeds and do some fine tuning.
And when i discovered i just had to turn off the interpolation to get a tuned organ, i did it and started to play.

Being forbidden to use various temperaments is not a huge sacrifice for me, but indeed, this should be let as a choice to the user.

@ François,

I am an amateur with little experience, so i am afraid my impressions are of little values.
Plus, this is a huge instrument, trying all the stops, and combinations takes times, i am not surprised no one posted a detailed review yet.
For what they are worth, here are my firsts impressions:
All stops have a nice sound, and they blend well one with each other.
Technically, the sampling/denoising is perfect to my ear. The sounds are pure, regular, and well balanced.
I did some registration of baroque pieces (Bach passacaille, and complete Bach/Vivaldi d minor concerto) and recent (Vierne Berceuse and a little bit of Widor 6th first mvt, which i can't play entirely).
Making registrations on this one is a pleasure and takes time (happy time !): there are endless possibilities for each sound you have in mind, and they all sound good. I never chose to silent a stop because it didn't sound well.
The 16 and 32 stops are deep and have some "volume/depth" (i don't know how to describe it).
For your info, I play with two channels: one dry channel in front of me, and one artificially wet (lexicon) behind, so i get both a clear sound and a long reverb.
My ram consomption is similar to what has already been described: i load the entire instrument in my 8 Go with no problem (it takes a little more than 5 Go), using 16 bit, one loop, all releases, and truncated tails (250 ms).
The interface is beautiful and very functionnal.
Improvising is very nice too, given the crescendo, sequencer, and the 92 stops.
All in all, i like it very much.
The best and most important test: i am impatient to load it when i come home :-)

I don't really know what more to say, but if you have some specific question, let me know, if I can answer, i'll do my best.
If you want to hear some specific registration, you can ask me (i don't read PMs, so use email or this forum), i can make some quick dry mp3 with a scale + two or three chords. So you can hear what you want.

I would like to post a thing or two on contrebombarde, but recording is a huge work for me, as my technical skills are limited. It's a thing to play live for friends (wrong notes allowed !) and an other to record (everything has to be as perfect as possible), so it takes a lot of time.

All the best.
Cedric

[telemanr]

Upon consideration, I am wondering why Csaba said that the real organ was tuned supposedly the way it sounds out of the box which appears to be somewhat out of tune. Cedric said he turned off interpolation and it is IN tune. The help about interpolation says that this results in us hearing exactly what was recorded. This seems to contradict what Csaba said but perhaps I am not understanding this.

At any rate I wouldn't want to disable interpolation since it does affect tremulants and the general liveliness which HW attempts to reproduce.

Rob

[Csaba Huszty]

Dear All,

I am sorry for replying so late, I did not know about the existence of this thread. (I followed the dedicated tech support site for each user at the IA website and the knowledge base.)

OK, first of all, I got a message 20 minutes ago about a bug in the ODF file, and indeed, there was a bug in the ODF file related to tuning which may be an answer for many problems.

The problem is fixed and the HOTFIX for that is uploaded onto the IA website, and is marked as UPDATE_v1.11. Please log in to your Inspired Acoustics account and download the patch from the My Products menu. (If you did not register your product already, please use the Product Registration, enter your serial number that shipped with PAB and the My Products menu will display the product updates within a minute).

The UPDATE v1.11 probably fixes most of the tuning problems (that we were aware of), but please let me know about your experience. Luckily the demos were created with an older version before this bug appeared so they are still authentic. (Beta versions were also free of this problem).

Violon 16' is not listed in the pedal, but it is listed on the 3rd manual, since the real organ also shares Violon 16' with the 3rd manual. Same applies to stop number 18 and 19. 18 is loaded with 17 since it has an extended compass, 19 comes from the 2nd manual (stop number 75). Although we have recorded all of these stops individually as well and have the samples for them post processed we decided to include them exactly as they are on the real organ so that there is no difference and some RAM is also saved.

I am truly sorry for these problems and I hope they are fixed now.

Csaba

[telemanr]

I don't think they're fixed quite yet. I just upgraded to 1.11 and got an error message. Particularly upsetting is the fact that the message came up right at the end of a half hour recaching.

The message relates to a bmp in the InstallationPackages/000510/Images/P-3/P9_On.bmp is of width 62 rather than the specified width (60 pixels).

All those images are 62 pixels so the definition file must be wrong in specifying 60.

Not only that but when I clicked OK on the message HW froze to the point that a reboot was necessary.

What now?

Rob

[ReinerS]

Dear Rob,

the problem you are having now is most likely related to a previous patch, I think Csaba labelled it 1.1? The 1.11 patch only includes a new ODF fixing some voicing errors that I inadvertently introduced when producing the ODF, it also adds new switch outputs to be able to properly sync the LEDs on the GUI with LEDs on the physical console. The previous patch fixed some issues with a few sample files and a few images, one of them being the one you are now having trouble with. Please verify that you also have this patch installed (just check if the image in question is of size 60x60, if not, the patch is not installed), if not, please download it from the Inspired Acoustics site or ask Csaba how to get it. This should fix your problem.

Best regards
Reiner

[telemanr]

I had not installed the 1.1 patch. I hope that doing so and then installing the 1.11 doesn't mean 2 times the caching.

Rob

[ReinerS]

jsut install both patches and then load ;-)

Reiner