Wet or dry in a church, number of channels

Hello Matt, perhaps you can find find some relevant information in this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13522

Matt,

For me, wet but truncated samples sound much more convincing than proper dry. The difference being, I guess, that the sampleset has already done the blending/reflections that are not present in the dry sets, and don't happen easily in the church with the speakers all pointing straight at the congregation. I'm sure that with a different speaker setup to bounce sound off the walls etc, it would be easier to make the dry sets work better.

I'm sure that with a different speaker setup to bounce sound off the walls etc, it would be easier to make the dry sets work better.

If you look at the picture I posted, the 8 upper speakers are custom made 3 way's. The mid range speaker/horns face out toward the congregation, while the 15" bass speakers and the high tweeters face in to the alcove area where the sound mixes quite nicely. The mid range define the individual channels.

The first speakers I made had paper cone (mid range) which probably would be considered more proper. The problem was that they didn't project at least not to rear most parts of the auditorium. These "horns" do the job quite nicely and mix in the air with much of the sound bouncing off the wooden ceiling before making in down to the "listener's" ear level. Since the console is off to the (right side as you face forward), the organist doesn't get the full effect of the blend heard in the congregation. This is not uncommon to some churches with real pipe organs.

We use sample sets both wet and dry (with a small amount of reverb added). The reverb can be switched on and off. Reverb with the wet sample sets sound really weird.

i should add, there is also a sub (modified Housewrecker) with 18" speakers in the left corner.

Rgds,
Ed

Just a note about the HW cycling algorithm comment you made above. If you draw 50 ranks in a group of say 12 stereo pairs and play one note, the 50 pipes will be distributed over all 12 speaker pairs, not all come out of one. This works very well. Even a small registration uses all of my speakers for each note. Different ranks play middle C through different speakers, up to the number of stereo pairs in the audio group. It's not going to be perfectly distributed, but it's a whole lot fuller sound than choosing smaller groups of speakers dedicated to each division. (I do have a heavier set of speakers just for basses, but the group is really to keep identical speakers in their own group.)
Edit: Just tried a quick experiment with audio group of 4 stereo pairs and St. Max sample set. With several stops drawn (plein jeu), playing one note only uses half of the speakers in this configuration. Playing 2 notes at an octave uses all of them, as does playing 2 notes at some intervals but not all. Sorry for my mistatement.
More: Caen 2.5 also pretty much uses half the speakers on each note with full organ. But Mt. Carmel Skinner Great or Swell alone uses all speakers while Choir uses half. Disturbing...

Oh that's disappointing. If you use half, or most of the speakers to spread the Cs around, then it's impossible to avoid intermodulation distortion. Are you sure that your settings of the cycle algorhythm is the same as I mentioned, via Leo Chris' website?

FrPip-- I'd imagine you might need to rethink IMD just a touch. In a real pipe organ, you have C's coming from all over the organ. They mix naturally. So, spreading the load as evenly across the instrument as possible can actually be a very good and realistic thing. IMD has a lot to do with too much load on a speaker too. Lessening the load of each speaker is going to make it perform better and more clearly as well. While C's are coming from all over, they are also different tones and different C's, not the exact same tone so IMD wont be quite the issue you may be thinking.

As for my other 2 cents, I would encourage you to consider still having a fair number of speakers. Some people have intimated that you can have successful installations with fewer speakers (which is indeed true- my Rodgers in my church sounds good with 6 speakers and two subs) but it doesnt hurt to have more resources than that. This has the added benefit of not only lessening the load, but creating more sound sources like a real organ; these are obviously good things. You can feed subs from stereo mixdowns. That means you can have as many (or few) as you want. I would encourage you to have AT LEAST two subs for a church (perhaps one in each back corner). I have two, each with two drivers and I would shudder to think how a church would be filled with just one. Part of having subs is for visceral (not necessarily "loud") impact. One sub in a church is far from loud or visceral. You also don't want to have to turn the sole sub up too loud and fry it.

Speakers don't have to be super powerful, especially if you have many of them spreading the load. Individual pipes aren't necessarily loud, but together thousands make a massive sound. Finally, if you have 12 speakers, perhaps you could stack them two high six wide. If you run them as stereo pairs, you could point the bottom speaker slightly to the left and the top speaker slightly to the right. This would take a source point (if you arrange them as 6 stereo pairs) and spread the sound horizontally making the pipe sound spread more like a real pipe. Also, if you mount the speakers higher up, a lot of directionality will be mitigated by space between the speaker and the listener (it will again, be more lifelike since organs are typically higher than the congregation.)

Cheers

Please keep in mind when placing some test cabinets around the building that if someone is sitting close to one cabinet, their experience would be quite directional, compared to someone sitting right in the middle of the nave it might sound lovely and surround-like or wide to them. Not everyone would hear the same result.

The Rodgers in my church as installed by a local music company prior to my hiring. They made a terrible, terrible, uninformed decision about speaker placement. It has very detrimental consequences to the effect of the organ and relates directly to some of the discussion in this thread. My church is a rectangle. My instrument has 6 speakers (three manuals, two per division divided C/C#) and two subs. This fact, in and of itself is great. They do an adequate job producing the organ tone for a 250 seat church. The problem, and I do mean major problem, is that the installers decided to make my organ "surround sound" (at least as far as I can guess.) In stead of mounting the six speakers on the back wall speaking down the nave, they mounted the speakers in the ceiling aimed outward towards the walls a few feet in. There are two speakers in the rear of the church (swell) two in the middle (great) and two at the front (choir)-- again, don't forget that these speakers are all a good 20' apart from each other both in terms of distance between divisions up the nave and each division (C/C#) being 30' or so apart on opposite sides of the nave. The result is disastrous because each speaker is producing a different chunk of the organ tone. So if you sit in the front on the right all you hear is the C chest side of the choir and if you sit in the back left all you hear is the C# side of the swell. There is no mixing. Walk up and down the nave during a hymn and you will hear completely different things. Solo the Choir 8' clarinet against 8'+4' flutes in the swell and they come from (literal) opposite ends of the room. There is no cohesion and no blend, and it's PHENOMENALLY UNLIKE how an actual organ is arranged and blends tone. Frankly, it infuriates me and I can't fathom why these "professionals" possibly thought it was a good idea. It means one of two things: 1.) they just dont know what they are doing and aren't truly qualified for organ installations, or 2.) they decided to use my church as a lab rat to try something novel and the experiment failed miserably.

For visual:

......Altar

Ch...........Ch


Gt............Gt


Sw..........Sw
...........Console
Sub........Sub



What can we learn from this: speakers for each division (save antiphonal speakers perhaps) and all the divisions as a sum total need to be mounted and located together like a real organ. They need to speak down the nave like a real organ. Don't make the mistake of pocketing various sections of the congregation under this-that-or-the-other division because that will be all they will hear; they won't hear the organ as a cohesive instrument. I want to have all 6 of our divisional speakers mounted up near the ceiling on the back wall of the nave. This is where a real pipe organ would be mounted. This would allow the sound to mix together from the same point source. I'm sure the effect would be much more realistic even if people sitting in the back two rows would be bothered. They would be with a piped instrument too. If you have the budget, perhaps put the speakers behind a fake facade. This would have the very real benefit of forcing more of the sound to mix around from hitting the pipe just like in real life, aiding in the natural mix and diffusing the directionality of the speakers.

I know it's tempting to spread speakers out. Don't. The only spreading to be done is at the point-source of the sound (ie- chamber/ back wall, etc.)

As for reverberation, my church is smallish and nearly completely dry. That said, I still have my reverb unit turned almost all the way down (3 out of 60). As much as you may be tempted to add reverb to make the organ sound fancy in the room, you have to consider how utterly bizarre it is to have every thing sound dry in a room except the organ. Think: do you want voices to die when a hymn stops and have the organ keep ringing? Talk about unrealistic... There needs to be some acceptance of the fact that if you're in a dry room, a real organ would sound dry too. You might add a little (and I can't emphasize that enough) reverb but it should only serve to make the note releases sound a little less abrupt. Any more and you're living in a weird fantasy land where you want the organ to sound "real" all while not liking how "real" the dry organ sounds in the room. Food for thought at least.

Hope this helps some of you.
Cheers

Matt,

For me, wet but truncated samples sound much more convincing than proper dry. The difference being, I guess, that the sampleset has already done the blending/reflections that are not present in the dry sets, and don't happen easily in the church with the speakers all pointing straight at the congregation. I'm sure that with a different speaker setup to bounce sound off the walls etc, it would be easier to make the dry sets work better.

This is interesting food for thought. I love to practice on bone-dry sample sets because I feel like I'm sitting at a practice organ. It provides great, scrupulous clarity. I've always assumed that such samples would be best in church spaces but I suppose having a bit of the direct "harshness" (that word to me seems a misnomer in this instance) mitigated by a wetter set could help in dry spaces. Very interesting thought indeed.

Wow Romanos, you have explained your situation with absolute clarity.

I completely concur with your experience of unrealistic speaker placement and use of reverb in a church environment.

Thanks so much for posting!!!

When you sit down and think about the appropriate way to install a virtual pipe organ it really is so simple…
Imitate a REAL ORGAN!!

We all love the sound of pipe organs, and Hauptwerk attempts to recreate that awesome sound with incredible realism. Therefore the sensible conclusion would be to take the imitation as far as one can with speaker placement - imitating as much as possible how real pipes would be placed.

After all, we are trying to imitate the real thing, so why would we install in a church in such a way that is contrary to the real thing?

As Romanos's experience shows us, not doing it right can be unrealistic or even disastrous.

When you sit down and think about the appropriate way to install a virtual pipe organ it really is so simple…
Imitate a REAL ORGAN!!
...

After all, we are trying to imitate the real thing, so why would we install in a church in such a way that is contrary to the real thing?

As Romanos's experience shows us, not doing it right can be unrealistic or even disastrous.

Exactly. Glad that helped!

I hope we here from FrPip to see what ended up happening. I started commenting on all of this not noticing the dates.

I hope we here from FrPip to see what ended up happening. I started commenting on all of this not noticing the dates.

Apologies for the long absence!

We had a bit of delay in our proceedings due to being out of our church for eight months with a nasty case of dry rot - the roof had to come off and the plaster stripped off the walls - it was not very much fun!

We are now close to getting our organ, and have taken a good deal of advice from many helpful sources, including a chap who has had many long years of experience with speakers and the electronic side of installations, which has been really helpful.

We have not received the organ console yet (made by Magnus) but it will be top spec. in terms of keyboards, drawstops etc. And the speakers are currently being installed. 24 channels of sound, namely these fellows:

http://www.andertons.co.uk/active-pa-sp ... peaker.asp

Plus the speaker expert is building two sub-woofers, with speakers which resemble dustbin lids in size...

The most impressive part of the speaker set up for me is the frame in which they are housed - it is high up behind the old organ facade, with the speakers in two rows of twelve, and a lot of design and money has gone into it's setting up.

Hopefully the arrangement of the speakers (ie high up, and in a long row) will help the sound travel up the speakers in the same way that you hear in pipes when going up the scale.

I don't really know why these particular speakers aren't spoken of in HW circles, as the research I've done suggests they are very good quality. Perhaps there is a hesitation on active speakers?

The principle of having so many is partly because it will enable a better fidelity of reproduction, and partly so that it will reduce the load on the speakers, and thus prolong their life. We've been using one speaker on our electronic piano (a necessity while we are "in-between organs" and that one speaker can produce a deafening sound whilst on a very low setting, so hopefully these will be more than enough for many years to come...

As for the original question - ie wet or dry, we're still undecided on that. I think it will probably be a matter for experimentation. My personal feelings are the same as some on this thread - ie that wet truncated samples (as long as they are not in a hugely lively acoustic) will probably sound better than dry - but this also depends on the size of the original building in which they are housed. A very large organ designed for a big acoustic would sound harsh in our small acoustic - it woudl sound as though you are in the organ itself, not the church. I think the key will be not too ambitious in the size of organ we try out.

Good luck with install, how do you plan to configure the 24 channel; 2 x 12 stereo pairs, all mono, or... ?

I don't really know why these particular speakers aren't spoken of in HW circles, as the research I've done suggests they are very good quality. Perhaps there is a hesitation on active speakers?

Hi FrPip,

After looking a the link you provided for these speakers, I may have an answer to your question as to why they are not discussed much in HW circles.
I would suggest that might be because they appear to be high powered PA type speakers. I have no experience with the brand or model you have mentioned, however 2 years ago I tried a pair of powered JBL Eon 15" with a Viscount digital organ. The results were very unimpressive. They had a HUGE amount of power available therefore having enough volume was not the problem. The issue was that they sounded like PA speakers. They were very mid-range heavy and seemed to lack subtlety or finesse.

In the and my friend went with 2 pairs of hi-fi speakers. They sounded WAY better than the JBLs.

From what I have read, and from my own experience, it seems that quality near field monitor type speakers are more effective at pipe organ tone reproduction. Many people seem to be happy with powered speakers of this type - like the Behringer 2031A for example.

If your building is very large, the speakers you have chosen might work well, otherwise you might end up with a lot of power that lacks clarity.

I try to scale speakers to the building similar to how organs are scaled.
Remember that a 9 rank theatre organ can sound as loud or louder than a 20 rank classical organ - due to the theatre organ's very high wind pressure and large scale, loudly voiced pipes. The trade off has been well documented elsewhere that, for example, a diapason rank on very high wind pressure, seems to lack much upper harmonics. However, a classical diapason on 2.5 or 3 inches of wind is much quieter, but a more interesting tone with much more upper partials.

So, I have come to the conclusion that, for classical organ tone, a higher number of smaller, less powerful speakers might give better results than a few high powered ones.

The power and presence of an organ comes as much from the effect of the ensemble as it does from the sheer volume of each rank. They both are important and are interlinked.

Anyway, I wish you every success with what seems to be a very substantial project.
Looking forward to your reporting to us all about the first sounds of your new instrument.

regards,
Matt

Matt

Thanks for your comments. I don't know a huge amount about speakers, but I think I understand the basics of the production of sound. The thing is I get very perplexed when things which are essentially measurable elements become described in very descriptive terms.

Can you put your finger on what you mean by "lacking subtlety and finesse"? Do you mean that there is a lack of clarity in terms of fidelity to the sound recorded?

I should imagine (depending on the age of the viscount) that powered speakers would not make life better for a digital organ, in that there is really very little voicing that can be done within the speaker - ie with no mixer to balance the voices, what it put out in the speakers is pretty much what comes out of teh lead and there's nothing to be done about it. In that case, the speakers which are most like the previous speakers the organ had are going to sound best.

I suspect (I'm guessing) that you were using the speakers in a church, rather than a domestic setting? If so, I'd be surprised if hi fi would (a) be powerful enough to accompany congregational singing, and (b) last very long - with only two pairs you would be putting a lot of pressure on them. We did test these speakers in an installation - only six of them, but they sounded far better than any of the other options we have explored.

The idea of having so many of them is that this will improve clarity - not that we need all that power to fill the building. Having a lot of speakers not having to work terribly hard will extend their life far better than having a few pushing a lot of sound out. But there is certainly a need for a certain amount of power - smaller speakers may sound very clear and precise when you are in an empty church trying to voice them, but in a congregational context, just don't carry down the nave!

Thanks for your comments - I'll let you know how we get on and report back.

I don't really know why these particular speakers aren't spoken of in HW circles, as the research I've done suggests they are very good quality. Perhaps there is a hesitation on active speakers?

Hi FrPip,

After looking a the link you provided for these speakers, I may have an answer to your question as to why they are not discussed much in HW circles.
I would suggest that might be because they appear to be high powered PA type speakers. I have no experience with the brand or model you have mentioned, however 2 years ago I tried a pair of powered JBL Eon 15" with a Viscount digital organ. The results were very unimpressive. They had a HUGE amount of power available therefore having enough volume was not the problem. The issue was that they sounded like PA speakers. They were very mid-range heavy and seemed to lack subtlety or finesse.

In the and my friend went with 2 pairs of hi-fi speakers. They sounded WAY better than the JBLs.

We have very similar JBL speakers in our church for the PA, and yes, would make terrible organ speakers. We did a little tinkering just to see how they would sound, let's just say it wasn't good. As Matt mentions, they would have way too much mid-range, the highs would be terribly mushy and the lows would be boomy at best down to a certain frequency, but certainly not anything sufficient to accurately produce a realistic organ sound. Why? It's mainly because they are tuned to work with the human voice and operate most efficiently in that range. Yes, look into good hi-fi speakers and subs.

Marc

FrPip-- I think there might be a touch of confusion about what it means to have one type or the other of speakers. PA speakers are not meant for finesse in the slightest. HIFI speakers are. That's why they serve so much better than PA speakers. That being said, if you have an array of powered studio monitors, I can assure you, they will still make plenty of sound. Frankly, there are many many powerful studio monitors that would do a more musical job in the price range you are considering. Also, don't forget, if you are getting (was it 24?) speakers, there will be a lot of speakers taking the load which means a lot of sound point sources, which means a lot of sound. (IE- even a boatload of softer speakers would still make a very noticeable sound.) Consider this- there is only so much volume for a single pipe. It's the ensemble that creates the large sound. The same principle (over simplifying I know) will work for your speakers. That being said, if you need to push a lot of sound to fill a large space, you might want to make sure that the speakers you get can handle a noticeable SPL (sound pressure level) but many do. I know some deftech speakers can take a lot of power and can be biamplified, for instance. You would get a lot more finesse out of the deftechs than the PA style.