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Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies.

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ErnestM

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Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies.

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 9:09 am

Issue resolved.
Last edited by ErnestM on Sun Mar 27, 2022 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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telemanr

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 10:19 am

I would think you need a subwoofer. Those speakers only go down to 50Hz whereas a 16' stop goes down to 32Hz. The lower octave will always suffer without a sub.
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mnailor

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 10:30 am

You definitely need a subwoofer.

The echo bass really is supposed to be barely heard, but the other basses are heavy compare to the manuals.

The Great Open is going to dominate the pedal stops even with a subwoofer, but coupling Great to Pedal deals with that.
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1961TC4ME

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 10:30 am

Bottom line (no pun intended), you need at minimum the addition of a larger 3-way pair of speakers or a sub. Your old Bose and your new 2031's are going to do fine down to the 8' level, but after that things will get iffy in a hurry as you are asking them to perform outside of their design limits and hence the results you are getting. Not familiar with your audio interface for multi channel and you do need the advanced version of Hauptwerk for true multi channel, but as they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

You could simply purchase a 2-channel amp / receiver, a pair of larger speakers, then provide a signal to the 2031's off the new amp's record out. If the new amp has a sub out as well then all the better as you can then employ new larger speakers and a sub, then you'd really have something! :D

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NickNelson

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 10:33 am

Have you tried using headphones direct from the EMU0404? If this sounds reasonably OK (bearing in mind that some stops on St Annes, like the the Echo- and Sub-Bass 16, are quite quiet anyway) then it's likely that the issue is with the speaker setup.

Also bear in mind that if the overall levels are set such that full organ is at a comfortable listening level, then individual quiet stops are going to sound pretty faint anyway.

If the results with headphones seem to be OK then make sure you have followed the B2031A placement suggestions (section 3.3) and experimented with the bass and room equalisation switches (section 3.4). To start with I'd put all three switches to '0'.

You won't get really deep convincing bass without a sub-woofer of some sort, but my experience is that the B2031A's on their own should not sound as bad as you report.

How are the speakers connected to the EMU interface? One outside possibility is that one speaker is out of phase with the other (due to a wiring error). This would have a bad effect due to phase cancellation which would be most noticable at low frequencies.

Nick
Last edited by NickNelson on Sat Jul 04, 2015 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 10:39 am

telemanr wrote:I would think you need a subwoofer. Those speakers only go down to 50Hz whereas a 16' stop goes down to 32Hz. The lower octave will always suffer without a sub.


I agree, though according to the calibration curve on my B2031A speakers the 32Hz response is only about 5dB down. I don't think the reported problems can all be due to this.

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1961TC4ME

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostThu Jul 02, 2015 10:24 pm

I'm sorry to say, but your Behringers by themselves aren't going to cut it if you're looking to bring out the deep bass of the 16' (or lower) pedal stops no matter if you place them on the moon. They have 8" drivers and that's just not enough. After checking to be sure, I was able to confirm directly from the Behringer site that the monitors in question are good down to 50hz and that's not only nowhere close to where you want to get for the pedal notes, but is probably stretching things a bit as it is. What you've got is a very fine pair of mid-range to top end speakers, you now just need the ones to dip down in the 32hz range or less if you have a deep wallet (and if you get lucky) but geez, let's not start yet another "what's the best sub" debate, search here on the forum and you'll find endless info on the subject. :shock:

Marc
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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostFri Jul 03, 2015 6:10 am

Hello Ernest,

As a test, to verify I loaded the St. Anne's sample set and listened to the bottom C notes on the ranks you mentioned using my RME Fireface UFX audio interface and AKG K702 headphones (which are designed as 'reference' headphones, with an amplitude response that's very accurate for all frequencies between about 10 Hz and 40 kHz).

Subjectively, although the Great Open Diapason Large 8 is indeed a loud rank, the Pedal Open Diapason 16 is strongly audible beneath it, adding a firm 16' fundamental tone. The Pedal Sub Bass 16 is significantly quieter, and has relatively soft upper harmonics, but it's 16' fundamental tone is still clearly audible below the Great ranks, even the Large Open Diapason.

(The Pedal Echo Bass 16 is intended to be a very quiet rank, which just adds a subtle 16' fundamental tone for use below softer manual stops.)

I also measured the approximate levels of the relevant harmonics using a spectrum analyser on the direct output from Hauptwerk, with the following results (all for the bottom C notes on the listed ranks):

- Pedal Open Diapason 16: Fundamental (16' tone): approx -46 dB.
- Pedal Open Diapason 16: Second harmonic (8' tone): approx -29 dB.
- Pedal Sub Bass 16: Fundamental (16' tone): approx -54 dB.
- Great Open Diapason Small 8: Fundamental (8' tone): approx -59 dB.
- Great Open Diapason Large 8: Fundamental (8' tone): approx -47 dB.

(Only the differences between the values are relevant, since the actual values also depend on the overall output level settings.)

In particular, note that the Pedal Open Diapason 16's fundamental (16') tone is approximately as strong as the Great Open Diapason Large 8's fundamental (8') tone, so there is indeed plenty of true 16' bass tone available from the Pedal division.

The relative levels of the ranks are as they were recorded from the real St. Anne's organ, so they should form a good representation of the real instrument (although of course other choices of microphone positions when recording would have influenced the strengths of different frequencies to a certain extent, because of the nodes/anti-nodes of the church's acoustic). Subjectively I would say that they represent the real instrument well overall.

Hence I have to agree with others in thinking that you must have some audio hardware downstream of Hauptwerk that either isn't reproducing the 16' tones (approx. 32-65 Hz) sufficiently, or conceivably is specifically attenuating them for some reason (e.g. perhaps some kind of high-pass filter in the hardware, if the speakers have one).

To test, I too would recommend trying some high quality headphones (that have good frequency responses that go down at least to 30 Hz) directly on the output from your audio interface, if you have some to hand.

One final note: in the Advanced Edition of Hauptwerk you could optionally use its voicing facilities to adjust the relative levels and equalisation of ranks, if you wished.

Hope that helps.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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NickNelson

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostFri Jul 03, 2015 6:41 am

1961TC4ME wrote:After checking to be sure, I was able to confirm directly from the Behringer site that the monitors in question are good down to 50hz


I'm not sure what is meant by 'good', but according to the calibration certificates that came with mine, their response is flat to 50Hz and then rolls off at about 6dB per octave (though it's not obvious what this is 6dB of; SPL, power, amplitude, ...). In any case, this needs to be converted to perceived loudness.

Even being pessimistic, this seems to translate to half the volume at 32Hz, which isn't good, but niether is it catastrophic.

I still think that there is likely to be some problem other than simply the inherent frequency response of the speakers themselves.

Nick
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RichardW

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostFri Jul 03, 2015 5:18 pm

I have to say that I never thought of St Anne's as having the strongest bass.

If I select the Great Open Large and the Pedal Open then hold down a 7-note chord on the Great the middle pedal notes become inaudible using both K701's and speakers with a sub. However, the bottom four or five notes start to cut through.

The first B flat on mine was down on strength too but I have subsequently tweaked that using the voicing settings.

I am not sure that it constitutes a problem, though, I suspect the organ is like that. If you have the Advanced version of Hauptwerk you can do some re-voicing to make it match your expectations.
Richard
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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostMon Jul 06, 2015 12:56 pm

Could be a room issue. Perhaps try recording (in Hauptwerk) some playing and then play it back and listen at different places in the room, see if the sound changes in different positions.
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1961TC4ME

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Re: Discouraging "Weak" St. Anne's Moseley pedal frequencies

PostSat Jul 11, 2015 9:52 pm

I'd try the headphone idea as suggested first (and use good headphones), then you'll know if your speakers are up to the task. One thing I've learned over the years is the specs for a given speaker on paper are usually hyped by the marketing department in order to sell product which keeps the bean counters happy. Read that as the certificate or claimed performance may not be worth the paper it's printed on. :wink:

Marc

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