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Splitting Chambers

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OPUS1883

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Splitting Chambers

PostMon Jun 15, 2009 11:11 am

Hi. I am running a multi speaker set up on my 3/31 wurlitzer sample set. I was just wondering what peoples preference is on splitting the two chambers... ie: all main pipes balanced to the left speakers, and all solo pipes balanced to the right speakers. Up until now, i have had the balance set in the middle with speakers stacked up each side of the console, but tried earlier today balancing the chambers left, and right and it sounded pretty good ! i don't know if this is the normal thing people are doing, or whether people are just letting the sounds come from the left and the right speakers at the same time...? I have also tried pointing my speakers upwards instead of outwards to the listener, and this also seems to sound a bit more spacious.

Yours curiously,

Chris
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wurlitzerwilly

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Re: Splitting Chambers

PostMon Jun 15, 2009 12:57 pm

Rodgers Theatre wrote:Hi. I am running a multi speaker set up on my 3/31 wurlitzer sample set. I was just wondering what peoples preference is on splitting the two chambers... ie: all main pipes balanced to the left speakers, and all solo pipes balanced to the right speakers. Up until now, i have had the balance set in the middle with speakers stacked up each side of the console, but tried earlier today balancing the chambers left, and right and it sounded pretty good ! i don't know if this is the normal thing people are doing, or whether people are just letting the sounds come from the left and the right speakers at the same time...? I have also tried pointing my speakers upwards instead of outwards to the listener, and this also seems to sound a bit more spacious.

Yours curiously,

Chris

Hi Chris.

My personal attitude to this (as well as some of my customers) is that we're trying to emulate a real pipe organ, so if possible, it should have the best traits of a real organ, just leaving out the really undesireable things.

In that case, if the sample set and your setup allows for it, I would always have at least one Main and one Solo 'chamber', then ponder on whether to enclose percussions or not, and if enclosed - put them in their own 'chamber'.
As your samples are WurliTzer and it's traditional for WurliTzer (and others) to have their chambers as Main=Left and Solo=Right, I would go that route.

There's nothing wrong with stereo samples, possibly in a diatonic config, but I think each 'chamber' should have its own 'spread' and if you have the space, let the mixing take place in air, preferably in the auditorium.

Obviously all of this depends on size of room, facilities available, sample set/s etc., but is a good basis to work from.
Regards,

Alan.
(Paramount Organ Works)
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Re: Splitting Chambers

PostMon Jun 15, 2009 1:22 pm

Thanks for the info Alan. I can see exactly what you are saying, and i think it does sound better spliting the main and solo left to right, rather than stereo out of all speakers. I did notice that the organ needed re-voicing from the voicing i did on the stereo samples. Some of the sounds became more prominent when seporating left to right.

Chris
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Re: Splitting Chambers

PostMon Jun 15, 2009 1:32 pm

Also Alan, would you recommend the following... If i have 4 main speakers, and 2 reverb speakers. would it be best to have one speaker in each chamber for main, and one for upperwork, or split the two speakers in each chamber for all notes...? would you also recommend putting one reverb speaker in each chamber or elswhere in the room. The room i have is a square room with the organ at the front in the middle.

Many thanks,

Chris
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Re: Splitting Chambers

PostMon Jun 15, 2009 8:29 pm

Rodgers Theatre wrote:Also Alan, would you recommend the following... If i have 4 main speakers, and 2 reverb speakers. would it be best to have one speaker in each chamber for main, and one for upperwork, or split the two speakers in each chamber for all notes...? would you also recommend putting one reverb speaker in each chamber or elswhere in the room. The room i have is a square room with the organ at the front in the middle.

Many thanks,

Chris

Hi Chris.

My inclination is to do exactly what is done with real pipe ranks. Route all of the ranks that you would normally have in the Main chamber to 2 speakers, configured as a stereo pair and place them on the left side, with an imaginary box round them, which is the virtual Main chamber. Do exactly the same for the Solo ranks, but place the speakers on the right. Use Hauptwerk's routing facilities to set up a C/C# (diatonic) split.

If your wallet and your sound card will allow it, I'd prefer to see more speakers on extra audio channels and at least one sub-woofer, possibly using Hauptwerk's bass routing facility. The reason for more speakers is to separate certain ranks as some don't seem to mix well electronically. The other possibility, which I've used locally, is to output all ranks in Mono. Obviously that could mean 32 separate speakers and amplifiers (1 extra for percussions and traps) but a sensible solution would be to share a speaker and amplifier with several ranks. Then group the speakers on the left or right as chambers. Provided that your main speakers go down to a sensible low frequency, then you really only need one bass bin as bass is non-directional.

I deliberately haven't mentioned reverb as that's a can of worms and IMO best left to experimentation, as no two rooms are the same.
Regards,

Alan.
(Paramount Organ Works)

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