85-stop Rieger-Kloss - Matyas organ (NDB for HW)

[Csaba Huszty]

Hello All,

I would like to share some information with you on the upcoming Matyas Organ. Planned for Winter 2009, this 85-stop 5+P cathedral organ is located in the UNESCO World Heritage Matthias Church in the Castle District of Budapest. The organ was built by Rieger in 1909 with 77 stops, and extended (by Rieger) to 85 stops in 1931, and then restored (again by Rieger-Kloss) in 1984. The acoustics of the church is said to be excellent for music by those who perform there.

Every autumn there was a large international festival there mainly for French organ music and improvisation with performing organists from around the world so the organ was heard quite often, but as being among the top cathedrals in Hungary, it is very difficult if not impossible to have a chance there to play.



The church is undergoing a major restoration in these years and this process involves the organ too. A very exciting part was that we had the opportunity to record the organ just before it was disassembled; when we finished the recordings only a few days have passed and the organ was removed. The sample set will have all stops and controls operational as we knew it before the disassembling.

The stop-list is a bit long so forgive that I will just link it; please click here to see all: http://www.inspiredacoustics.com/wiki/index.php/Matyas_Pipe_Organ_Samples.

The sample set will have multiple loops, multiple releases, will come in both stereo and surround and will have the real-time adjustable microphone setup control similar to the upcoming Kispest organ. (Surround will be supported up to 7.1 or 8.0 but you will be able to feed like 1000 speakers with different signals using the provided Surround Customizer Tool).

You can see a console models and an image gallery at http://www.inspiredacoustics.com/wiki/index.php/Matyas_Pipe_Organ_Samples.

Hope you will like it!
Csaba

[jcfelice88keys]

Hello Csaba,

The Matthias and Kispest organs you are sampling for Hauptwerk format are tremendous instruments in sumptuous acoustic surroundings. About three years ago, before the Hauptwerk format worked on Macintosh platforms, Mac users had to use either Gigasampler or Kontakt format, which loaded only the beginnings of sounds into RAM and then streamed the balance of each sample from hard disk. As a result, one could only stream a few hundred simultaneous samples before the hard drives failed to maintain acceptable transfer speed, even with 10,000 RPM WD Raptors and Velociraptors.

As an owner of the NDB set in Kompakt format, despite the limitations of having to accept grouped stops (to work with streaming from hard disk), the sounds and playability of these two Hungarian organs were among the best I had ever experienced. Prior to purchasing the Hauptwerk license for Mac, thirteen months ago, the NDB Kontakt and the Marcussen Kontakt libraries were all that I had at my disposal.

I am so glad to see you are working to make both organs available for all to hear and use in Hauptwerk format, wherein we are able to select each of the stops individually as the real organs had intended. This is great news!

Cheers,

Joe

[PeterB]

Great news indeed!

[PeterD]

Csaba,

Surround as well ! I knew 32Gb RAM would be insufficient ! If it sounds anything like the NDB version did we are indeed in for treat. Diane Bish playing here... a wonderful instrument in a superb acoustic,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLnvFDqo-Ik

You can buy the DVD of the entire recital

Here http://www.ohscatalog.org/vistomatchur.html

Programme
Gounod March, Fauré Sicilienne, Mushel Toccata, Boëly Fantaisie & Fugue in B-flat, Martini Gavotte, Brahms sonata movement with violinist

Just had an e-mail to say no longer available

Best wishes for the project

Peter

[Csaba Huszty]

Thank you Joe, Peter and Peter! Your words really help a lot in these heavily occupied days!

The aim is to have everything fit into 16 GB of RAM. New motherboards for the i7 processor family support 24 GB within reasonable costs, but we would like to avoid prescribing 'server hardware' requirements (of 32 GB of RAM) for any of these organs.

As soon as I know the figures I will share it.

Thank you,
Csaba

PS. The knowledge base page is updating rapidly, wow

[ldeutsch]

Csaba,

I had the pleasure of playing this instrument a bit when I was in Budapest for a meeting of the Information Theory Society of the IEEE (day job stuff). I was lucky enough to walk into the church while an organist was practicing and after some introductions I was invited to play. After getting over the anachronistic control system (all the stops are on one side of the very compact and modern console) I was very impressed with the sound. This certainly will make an excellent addition to the line of Hauptwerk samples.

I strongly suggest having a control screen that fits in 1024 x 768 pixels - at least as an option. If the "real" instrument can be made compact, so can the virtual one.

Les

[Csaba Huszty]

Dear Les,

wow, this is amazing to hear! Was this the IT conference with the 'official' concert also held there?

The GUI of the Matyas organ will support both single and multiple pages. Currently we plan to support 1280x1024 screens with some additional space to window frames since this is what most users reported to have, so the screen resolution will be similar to as the PSZ, PAB or Kispest Organs.

You are right that it is possible to resize these images to fit an 1024x768 resolution but I am afraid that the buttons will become too small to touch if they are resized.

I tried however how the one screen page looks on a 1024x768 screen as it is now, and it seems that all stop buttons and the combination frame increment/decrement buttons already fit on that. If you have 2 screens you will be probably able to use the organ without any compromise in 1024x768 even though the native resolution is currently larger. But as always we are open to implement it as native 1024x768 if there is interest (please show if there is or if there is any other feature you cannot miss).

Thank you,
Csaba

[giwro]

Csaba,

It would be nice if this organ could also have the option to extend to the full 61/32 note compass. Since the disposition is
very complete, it would be nice to be able to play literature on it that demands the full compass.

Best wishes,

- Jonathan

[Csaba Huszty]

Hi Jonathan,

you are absolutely right, indeed the Extended Edition is planned with 61/32 compass and all possible couplers, including reverse couplers too. We just still have to get there - but we are on it, 16 hours / day.

Thank you,
Csaba

[Csaba Huszty]

Dear All,

the Matyas virtual organ is progressing, please find some images from the Hauptwerk interface. Both single and multiple touch-screens are supported.









For more reading and larger graphics please proceed to:

http://www.inspiredacoustics.com/wiki/index.php/Matyas_Pipe_Organ

Yours truly,
Csaba

[jcfelice88keys]

Hello Csaba,

The photo-realistic rendering of the console and its various pages looks very impressive, indeed. Keep up the great work.

Cheers,

Joe

[PeterD]

Hi Csaba

I see on the same link for Kispet orders that Matyas will be released before the end of January

http://store.kagi.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi ... CKV_LIVE&&

Probably a record download of 114GB for HW. Are you planning to release any demo's/ details soon.. should be interested to know the RAM requirements for this very large instrument in quad

Best

Pete

[Csaba Huszty]

Hi,

indeed it is quite large, but luckily these 3 organ versions together weigh this much so if you only need one type there is no need to download them all. I think in the future downloading will be even more popular not just because it is more green but also because it may be faster than physical delivery as connection speeds grow. These large organs would be very annoying to ship on DVDs I guess. So we are planning to continuously support the download option whatever size we develop (and next year we will have something even larger).

As soon as possible all details on the Matyas set will be posted. We already have almost everything finished but detailed critical testing is still to be conducted. Recording and making this virtual organ was a tremendous challenge but we now have an extremely playable and very 'strong' material. My English is not very good to explain this, but hopefully when you play it you will also feel this.

Thank you,
Csaba

[PeterD]

Hello Csaba

In IA wiki I see that

The Matthias church is widely known for its pristine acoustics: ideal for sacred, organ, choral and orchestral music repertoire. Unlike usual churches or cathedrals, the reverberation times of the church are well-balanced over a wide range of frequency bands, resulting in unusually smooth frequency/decay characteristics in the reverberated sound. The pipe organ was recorded in a way to capture the sonic experience near the organ console. During the recordings the church acoustic was partially damped due to the major inner reconstruction works in the cathedral. The original, intact pristine acoustics however, was successfully and carefully captured before the renovation has started, and is available as impulse responses for convolution reverberation in the INSP:IR Impulse Library.

Does that mean that the sample set will not have the original acoustics but you will need for VST plugins etc to achieve this ?

Best Regards

Peter

[Csaba Huszty]

Hello Peter,

the Matyas set does have the original acoustics built-in, but this original acoustics corresponds to the state we have had during the recordings. This is slightly more damped than the acoustics before the reconstruction has begun. If you wish to add the acoustics that was there before the church reconstruction started, the measurements for them will be available too in the IR library so it is possible to add it.

Thank you,
Csaba