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Small English Church Installation

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IanPounder

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSat Jun 19, 2010 9:49 am

Is the tower at the W end and the console towards the E? If so, I'd be careful about having speakers at that distance from the player, and all the more so if you have the Ch speaker much nearer. There will be a delay, and it can be quite disconcerting. A pipe organ I play occasionally in a medium sized, modern church has the pipes in a W gallery and the console in the Choir. It has a very disconnected feel - and it's not the action. I have a feeling that your earlier idea of several speakers on the high beam (all on separate channels, of course) would be better. You'd have to try the speakers-at-a-distance setup to see if it works.
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSat Jun 19, 2010 12:32 pm

No, tower at East End, on side of chancel, top of south aisle. Organ console just at exit of tower. Approximately 16' maximum distance from console to far wall of tower.
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David Pinnegar

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSat Jun 19, 2010 7:57 pm

mdyde wrote:I don't think you'll find that intermodulation is a significant/noticeable issue with most modern (e.g. studio monitor) speakers - if it was, listening to any recorded music through the speakers would sound equally objectionable.


Hi Martin!

Actually the fact that a speaker is a "modern" design doesn't necessarily make it better. And "studio monitor" speakers can be even worse . . . , from personal experience.

If one wants a setup to sound like an organ reproduced by hi-fi, then use hi-fi speakers. If one wants it to sound like an organ in a recording studio, then use studio monitor speakers.

If one wants it to sound real, different considerations apply.

Many speakers are marketed upon the cosmetics - gold plated connectors, inductance free resistors, ceramic drivers, "diamond tweeters" - the main thing of interest being the price - they're expensive so they must be good . . .
http://www.kharma.com/general_info/general_info.php - and the horrid sound produced as well as the marketing bandwagon of all the "reviewers" down the marketing chain, like women's magazines exposed today in The TImes (Women's magazines are bad for your health), is well exposed as Emperor's New Clothes:
http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=3184#3184 What that thread is saying is that, if one is being polite, such offerings have all irregularities engineered out of them, and that includes the music.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the results on one US organ on which I have advised on speakers, although considerations of space caused some of the finer principles which can be adopted to good result not to have been followed. It makes the difference to an organ which is impressive on first hearing and an organ that's exciting to organists in the long term. It's the difference between a console that drives a good substitute organ and one which is an organ.

I have a hunch that a good organ can be reproduced through a number of speakers of which the total cost of the significant majority of speakers including case materials and drivers are no more than £50 to £100 each including labour on construction. To this one might budget a number of "specials" involving rather more sophistication depending on the organ spec. But even then one can most probably get better results at less cost than the sort of sums I often see being talked about for electronic organ installations. The sort of speakers that one chooses can also have implications for amplifier requirements and there further economies or extravagancies can derive.

Best wishes

David P
http://www.organmatters.co.uk
David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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mdyde

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSun Jun 20, 2010 6:05 am

Hello David,

Sorry - I simply don't agree with the case that you seem to be making in this and other threads that innacuracies may be desirable in speakers and add musicality and character.

The job of a speaker is just to turn an electrical (recorded audio) signal into an acoustic signal (air pressure wave). It's simply a problem of engineering. A speaker should *not* in general be a musical instrument in its own right. If it behaves like an instrument, i.e. if it colours the sound, then it doesn't fully meet its design specification.

How well a speaker achieves its design goal can be measured accurately using well-defined analyses and statistics. (E.g. recording its output with microphones and comparing the recorded signal to its input using Fourier analysis, etc., making suitable allowances for the microphones' responses.)

Any changes a speaker imparts to the input audio signal are, by definition, shortcomings in the speaker. They can be measured and should be sought to be eliminated or minimised. (I do of course appreciate that it's impossible in practice to eliminate them all completely.)

There's no need for witchcraft or flowery descriptions of a speaker's 'sound' or characteristics! Its responses, behaviour and distortions can be measured and quantified accurately and scientifically. Its assessment and design should be absolutely objective, not subjective.

If you want to know how much intermodulation distortion a speaker has, then just measure it. Or look at the manufacturer's statistics, since they've probably already done the work already, using highly accurate equipment.

Likewise if you want to know whether breaking in headphones or speakers affects the sound, then just measure the responses/distortions etc. accurately before and afterwards and compare them numerically.

I'm not saying that speakers need to be expensive, or making any statement at all about how their design goals can or should be achieved (not my field), just that how well they perform can and should be quantified scientifically, not subjectively, and decisions or recommendations on speaker performance should be based on the measured statistics, not on subjective (woolly or otherwise) descriptions or perceptions of the speakers' 'sound'.

A speaker should aim not to have any sound of its own!

Especially with wet sample sets, sample set producers put lots of work into getting a sample set to be as accurate a representation as possible of the original organ, and amplifiers and speakers that colour the sound to the least possible degree are thus, in my opinion, desirable.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSun Jun 20, 2010 6:51 am

Well, said, Martin. You uphold my beliefs very well.

A "concern" of mine has always been the "coloration" and change the space (room, environment) makes on a given "sound", either produced live, or by means of a speaker system. That is a science of great depth and many factors which appears, to some, to be subjective.

Rgds,
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mdyde

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSun Jun 20, 2010 7:24 am

P.S. Here's a page that covers standard common speaker specifications and how they're measured:

http://www.rane.com/note145.html

Looking at the spec. sheet for the Mackie HR824MK2, which I believe is a fairly well-regarded studio monitor amongst Hauptwerk users:

http://www.mackie.com/products/hrmk2series/downloads/HR824MK2_Specs.pdf

... SMPTE IMD (intermodulation distortion) is quoted as being less than 0.035%:

Rated Power (at 1 kHz with 1% THD): 150 watts
Rated Load Impedance: 4 ohms
Burst Power Output: 350 watts
Rated THD (1W to –1 dB of rated power): 0.1 %
Slew Rate: 35V/μS
Distortion (THD, SMPTE IMD, DIM 100): < 0.035%
Signal-to-Noise (20Hz-20kHz, unweighted, referenced to 150W into 4!): > 102 dB


So, at least under the conditions of the test used to produce that statistic (which they don't explicitly state), the amount of (SMPTE-measured) IMD distortion present (i.e. incorrect frequencies introduced by the speaker) should be no more than:

20 x log10( 0.035 / 100 ) =approx= -69 decibels.

The human ear has a dynamic range of about 120 dB:

http://www.dspguide.com/ch22/1.htm

You probably won't generally be listening to your organ at the loudest level that the human ear can distinguish (which would carry a risk of significant hearing damage!), but at listening levels that are comfortably adjusted for maximum organ amplitude you would probably just about be able to hear that intermodulation distortion.

So I think it would (just) be audible, but still at an *extremely* low level, and not noticeable, especially since it would only be present at that level when loud sounds were also being reproduced, which would largely mask it.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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David Pinnegar

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostSun Jun 20, 2010 6:47 pm

mdyde wrote:Sorry - I simply don't agree with the case that you seem to be making in this and other threads that innacuracies may be desirable in speakers and add musicality and character.

The job of a speaker is just to turn an electrical (recorded audio) signal into an acoustic signal (air pressure wave). It's simply a problem of engineering. A speaker should *not* in general be a musical instrument in its own right. If it behaves like an instrument, i.e. if it colours the sound, then it doesn't fully meet its design specification.


Hi!

Today I heard a pair of Mackie PA 3 way speakers doing some sound reinforcement of a brass band and singers outside. Impressive. Fine. Yes - I was impressed. They did their job and did it well. I'm sure you would have been delighted with them. The 2 way speakers did it less than well, but they worked too.

But I guarantee that, compared to what I know (and have heard) to be possible, an organ played through these speakers will sound like a good organ, well recorded, played through good speakers. In promoting Hauptwerk, are we producing hi-fi copies of instruments or are we producing instruments?

At the EOCS London meeting at Easter, I demonstrated to members how organ stops could be made to sound not as organ stops through speakers, but as organ pipes sounding themselves in their own right.

I should add that the Conn "pipes" of years ago, are probably not the route to follow.

I wish and hope more Hauptwerkians would take up membership of the EOCS as there's a great deal of intellectual organ resources there in the membership in the heads of increasingly elderly men, who have in the past worked on inventing wheels that the new computer generation are having to re-invent simply as a result of not taking advantage of the older generation. So please do join, and come to the regional meetings!

I'm hoping that on 3rd July, a Hauptwerk member will be coming down to our Sussex Southern Region meeting to demonstrate putting Hauptwerk through its paces as a chamber organ and occasional use as a bigger instrument, and we will be trying it through different types of speakers. Any Hauptwerkians who are not members would be welcome (please ring 01342 850594 to let me know that you're coming), but of course EOCS would like to see more membership and in particular in younger ranks.

Of course, if Hauptwerk users are happy with their software and hardware to result in playable recordings of organs, then viewing speakers as merely problems of hi-fi engineering is fine. But if Hauptwerk users intend their equipment to result in something that aurally _is_ an organ, then attention to acoustic detail beyond the bounds of conventional hi-fi is required.

However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic. The ear is much more sensitive to that which can be measured.

An example of this is apparent to me on a daily basis when comparing Radio 3 to Classic FM. Through good speakers, both are fine. But through speakers good enough to project realism beyond hi-fi, there is an objectionable distortion on Classic FM at the top end - possibly digitisation noise, which makes it very difficult to tolerate. That critical realism can make the difference between something sounding plastic and something sounding "there".

In putting on concerts of the King of Instruments, and doing so using an electronic mimic of a pipe organ, nothing less than achieving total realism is good enough. Having both electronics and pipes in the same space, side by side, next to each other, has been a rare opportunity to hone the sound of the electro-acoustic mimicry to which I have attended critically. Nothing but the best is good enough.

Diapasons are a very complex sound and a difficult sound to reproduce, and if one has sat at the console of St Maximin with the Cromorne just an inch or so behind one's back and the Trompettes en Chamade not far above one's head, one knows that the sound one hears through the headphones, even the best of headphones, just simply does not compare. It sounds like the hi-fi recording which it is. When put through good three way speakers wonderful for reproducing music, like the headphones, the sound will continue to be a really good recording. Perhaps that can work if the recording is played back in an equivalent position, here in this church perhaps, by speakers on the west wall.

But if we want to work as organ builders, and work with the sound, and manipulate that sound to work as a real sound source as an instrument in a different position, in a different format and place, such as a chancel/nave tower, then we have to do something different.

Hauptwerk users have the privilege of reproducing very special sounds in appropriate places, but if those sounds are going to sound real, then they have to not make the mistakes of many toaster manufacturers and can benefit from some of the tricks that better toaster manufacturers used in the past to make their lesser technology sound remarkably good. I'm sure that the speakers designed by the toaster makers for Carlo Curley's performance at Chiddingly a few years back were state of the art, brilliantly engineered perfect boxes capable of the full range of music. But that concert sounded like a hi-fi system and, no disrespect to Hauptwerk, it was not on account of the lesser electronic technology. Hauptwerk through those excellent speakers would not have sounded better. The single manual pipe organ was there, sounded there, and sounded more real than the electronic wizardry.

If we are to enthuse people about organs, as the King of Instruments, it's our duty to ensure that the instruments we present publicly actually are Kings, not mere recordings. Consoles, computers, sample sets and software are not the last word in the reproduction chain that results in sound.

The Chinese can make violins to a specification. It seems as though few have specified sufficiently to reverse engineer and define the Stradivarius yet.

If anyone would like to hear, Hauptwerkians are welcome to visit and 3rd July as mentioned above, will be a good opportunity.

Best wishes

David P
http://www.organmatters.co.uk
David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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mdyde

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 7:11 am

Hello David,

Briefly,

Today I heard a pair of Mackie PA 3 way speakers doing some sound reinforcement of a brass band and singers outside. Impressive. Fine. Yes - I was impressed. They did their job and did it well. I'm sure you would have been delighted with them. The 2 way speakers did it less than well, but they worked too.

But I guarantee that, compared to what I know (and have heard) to be possible, an organ played through these speakers will sound like a good organ, well recorded, played through good speakers.


I agree. But I would say that's mainly because you would be listening to the organ through a single stereo pair of speakers in a real acoustic (non-nearfield). If you had 32 pairs of top-quality PA speakers scattered judiciously around the room (to randomise early reflections), then I think it would begin to sound a lot more like a real organ, rather than a recording of an organ played through a stereo.

The solution, in my opinion, is to have *more* speakers, rather than to have speakers that aim to colour the sound.

In promoting Hauptwerk, are we producing hi-fi copies of instruments or are we producing instruments


They are of course different and equally valid goals.

If I personally occupied a reverberant building, I'd be delighted to have an accurate (dry) playable reproduction of one the great organs of the world (e.g. Salisbury Cathedral), with suitable voicing adjustments for the different acoustic, etc. (but I fully appreciate that there are other situations where creating custom organs is preferable for other people and other uses). I just don't see that speakers that aim to modify the sound would help to achieve that.

At the EOCS London meeting at Easter, I demonstrated to members how organ stops could be made to sound not as organ stops through speakers, but as organ pipes sounding themselves in their own right.


With respect, that's your own opinion.

Of course, if Hauptwerk users are happy with their software and hardware to result in playable recordings of organs, then viewing speakers as merely problems of hi-fi engineering is fine. But if Hauptwerk users intend their equipment to result in something that aurally _is_ an organ, then attention to acoustic detail beyond the bounds of conventional hi-fi is required.


Absolutely. With an organ you're aiming to reproduce an entire sound-field in a reverberant space, as opposed to play-back in a stereo home near-field (dry) listening environment. Number of speakers, position, power and directionality then become highly important, in addition to their performance in terms of accuracy of reproduction (quality).

My disagreement is just with the notion that you want the speakers to colour the sound.

When I was a child I bought myself an old Hammond RT3 organ to practise on (had a useful full pedalboard). Prior to that I had an old electronic (divider) organ for a while. Both of them had extremely crude sound generators by today's standards (nine imperfectly-tuned sine waves mixed together in the case of the Hammond), and had speakers and amplifiers that very obviously and massively coloured the sound. Listening through headphones to a direct output from the organ sounded pretty sterile and awful (because their sound generators were so basic). Likewise, playing back a tape recording through the organ's amplifier/speakers sounded pretty dreadful (because they coloured the sound so much).

The end result from either of them was nothing much like a pipe organ, but the large amount of colouration of the amplifiers (valve in the case of the Hammond) and speakers turned the crude and fairly unmusical outputs from the organs' voice generators into something that sounded rather good (although still bearing very little resemblance to a pipe organ!). I.e. the colouration from the amps/speakers had made poor musical instruments into rather good ones in their own rights.

But these were instruments made 40-60 years ago. With modern sample-based systems like Hauptwerk (at least one long high-resolution sample per pipe), I believe that you no longer need or want amplifiers and speakers to change the sound. You're starting with voice generators that already produce highly realistic output that doesn't need modifying.

If you want to adjust the voicing, or apply effects, then I don't personally think that the speakers are the best place to do it.

However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic.


I think that if you take a good number (say 16) of high-quality speakers (the Mackie HR824MK2 would probably do fine, although I've never heard those first-hand) and scattered them judiciously around in a reverberant room to randomise the early reflections, and played a high-quality dry-recorded Hauptwerk reed rank through them, properly voiced for the listening acoustic, then I think it would sound very convincing indeed (although never quite as real as the real thing of course).

Number of speakers, position, quality, power and directionality matter enormously in my view, but again I don't believe that using speakers that aim to colour the sound will help.

An example of this is apparent to me on a daily basis when comparing Radio 3 to Classic FM. Through good speakers, both are fine. But through speakers good enough to project realism beyond hi-fi, there is an objectionable distortion on Classic FM at the top end - possibly digitisation noise, which makes it very difficult to tolerate. That critical realism can make the difference between something sounding plastic and something sounding "there".


If that's meant as an illustration that speakers should be as accurate as possible, then I agree completely!

Diapasons are a very complex sound and a difficult sound to reproduce, and if one has sat at the console of St Maximin with the Cromorne just an inch or so behind one's back and the Trompettes en Chamade not far above one's head, one knows that the sound one hears through the headphones, even the best of headphones, just simply does not compare. It sounds like the hi-fi recording which it is. When put through good three way speakers wonderful for reproducing music, like the headphones, the sound will continue to be a really good recording. Perhaps that can work if the recording is played back in an equivalent position, here in this church perhaps, by speakers on the west wall.

But if we want to work as organ builders, and work with the sound, and manipulate that sound to work as a real sound source as an instrument in a different position, in a different format and place, such as a chancel/nave tower, then we have to do something different.


My point is simply that using loudspeakers that aim to modify/colour/distort the sound is not the way to achieve that with modern sound generation technology.

I'm afraid I think I'll have to leave this discussion here (since it's beginning to take a significant amount of time away from Hauptwerk v4 development, which is urgent at the moment), so we'll perhaps just have to agree to disagree.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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David Pinnegar

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 7:43 am

mdyde wrote:Number of speakers, position, quality, power and directionality matter enormously in my view, but again I don't believe that using speakers that aim to colour the sound will help . . .
My point is simply that using loudspeakers that aim to modify/colour/distort the sound is not the way to achieve that with modern sound generation technology.


Dear Martin

The point is twofold - first, that no speaker is neutral - all speakers have their "signature" - multiply the speakers and you multiply the signature so that the organ is transformed through the transfer function of the type of speaker.

Second, the composite sound of the organ is transformed by the transfer function of the sound emitting from the pipe and recorded through the transfer function of the pipe to the air and then the transfer function of the microphone and then added together through the transfer function of the speakers. If the instrument is to sound as an instrument, then the speaker needs to emit the sound of the pipe at the point of exit of the sound from the pipe. For many stops then a looser coupling can be tolerated but for certain stops a close coupling is important to achieve the reproduction sounding as the original. The acoustic modification provided by a speaker can synthesise this effect when the original recording has not done so.

Microphone placement is critical, and has to be done with specific purpose in mind. There is one CD of St Maximin that I cannot listen to on account of the microphones taking the output of the en chamade reeds at full pelt.

When other unknowns have been at work earlier in the reproduction chain, then attention to speakers is a tool in the toolbox. The issue should be no more controversial than this. People often argue about the theory when proof of the pudding is in the practice. The invitation to come and hear is open.

Best wishes

David P
http://www.organmatters.co.uk
David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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mdyde

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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 8:51 am

Hello David,

The point is twofold - first, that no speaker is neutral - all speakers have their "signature" - multiply the speakers and you multiply the signature so that the organ is transformed through the transfer function of the type of speaker.


You are only playing a subset of the pipes through any one speaker.

Any linear modifications made by the speaker (e.g. frequency response) would yield exactly the same overall result either way (because everything else is (almost perfectly) linear in behaviour - the room acoustic, digital mixing, etc.).

Non-linear speaker effects should usually be *lessened* by dividing the organs output amongst many speakers (e.g. intermodulation distortion), given that a less complex sound will be fed to each speaker, and each speaker will be required to produce a lower-level output.

So the net result is that you should normally get less distortion by using more channels, rather than more.

If the instrument is to sound as an instrument, then the speaker needs to emit the sound of the pipe at the point of exit of the sound from the pipe.


Yes. More speakers allow you to get closer to that goal (e.g. in terms of differences in early reflections).

If the instrument is to sound as an instrument, then the speaker needs to emit the sound of the pipe at the point of exit of the sound from the pipe. For many stops then a looser coupling can be tolerated but for certain stops a close coupling is important to achieve the reproduction sounding as the original. The acoustic modification provided by a speaker can synthesise this effect when the original recording has not done so.


Since the organ's real room acoustic would have affected the sound of each pipe differently (different impulse response/frequency response for each possible combination of pipe and listener position), just to simulate the differences in frequency response you would need the frequency response to be adjustable separately for every pipe individually.

That's exactly what per-pipe voicing controls are for.

Unless you had one speaker for every pipe, and were somehow able to vary the design of each of those speakers individually to give a different customised frequency response, then I don't believe that in general you would be able to achieve that desired result as effectively as you would by using accurate (minimal colouration) speakers and per-pipe voicing controls.

Apart from frequency response (and perhaps directionality), I don't see how you could synthesize the other characteristics of the original pipe's position with speaker colouration alone. For example, you certainly can't vary the pattern of early reflections that would be heard by the listener on a per-pipe basis.

People often argue about the theory when proof of the pudding is in the practice. The invitation to come and hear is open.


Thanks for the invitation, but unfortunately free time is the one thing I really don't have!

However, we can hear the results of your philosophies in action in your Youtube posts of your (non-Hauptwerk) Hammerwood installation, e.g.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=kEvtJASzDdw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=BruJxDc-ZZ0
http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4055&start=18
http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4138
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 9:06 am

David Pinnegar wrote:However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic.

You are merely describing poor "hi-fi" - which is admittedly prevalent.

The ear is much more sensitive to that which can be measured.

Probably not; but there are still aspects where making the necessary measurements is difficult, or it is uncertain (or simply unknown) what measurements should be made. This is just a matter for more research, not the introduction of magic.

Of course, the commonest reason for lack of reality in sound reproduction is confusion between the recording and playback acoustics. Most recordings and listening situations are a poor compromise in this respect. To approach an ideal, we need to aim to reproduce the sound with only one acoustic - either to play sounds recorded without significant acoustic so that only the acoustic of the listening space is added, as you aim to do; or to play back sounds recorded with a complete acoustic (in three dimensions) in as dry a reproduction area as possible, as I aim to do (some of my recordings were used as demonstrations at a recent symposium on ambisonic surround sound held at IRCAM).

In the first case the way that the sounds are coupled with the space is crucial (e.g. the use of multiple speakers, and the polar patterns of those speakers), but as Martin has said, simply adding distortion or otherwise "changing the sound" cannot be a credible aim. I suspect that your speaker designs or modifications are indeed effective (why should I suggest otherwise, not having heard them?), but that the reason is not what you say (this has been true, for a time, of many developments in sound reproduction).

Paul
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 9:50 am

I know almost nothing on this subject, but it would seem to me that there are a few factors that need to considered:

1. David talks about "hi-fi reproductions" ; presumably that can never really be the case, because any speaker setup would have to cater for 1-300 people sat in very different locations in a building that is a "funny shape" from a sound reproduction point of view.

2. Electronic organs have always sounded best when there's been a good acoustic to help blend the sound in such a way that it's not obvious that the source is a pile of speakers.

3. Pipe organs generate their volume and presence by moving a lot of air from a lot of sources. Speakers generate their volume by moving a lot of air from a point source.

4. To get electronic organs to sound more like the real thing (or, more specifically, *feel* like the real thing), an array of point sources all moving air at the same time is surely preferable to a small number of point sources moving more air. i.e. lots of speakers producing lower dB each, rather than few speakers producing lots of dB, to give the same total.

I demoed Hauptwerk to a number of people at church over the weekend. All commented that the organ sounded magnificent and like a real organ, but a few said that it didn't have the presence of a real organ. So I turned the volume up, tweaked the speaker positions, etc, and now they said it had the presence, almost of a real organ, but that now the sound was definitely coming from a point source, which was hard on the ears, rather than seeming to come out of the fabric of the building itself which is what a well voiced organ in a nice acoustic feels like. As I don't have multiple audio interfaces and was running on the free version (although I've ordered Basic), I couldn't add more channels, but I could add more speakers around the place off the same stereo output. I stuck on 3 pairs of speakers in the end, some pointing almost straight up into the roof, some angled more towards the listeners, and some reflecting off walls, and the result was significantly better, more enveloping, less intrusive on the ears.

As most would expect, the bass frequencies were the easiest to sort out, being harder for the ear to work out where they were coming from, but the mid-range stuff was the most "aggressive" on the ears.

It's been a valuable experience for me; I don't profess to know what I'm doing, but I think I know where I'm trying to get to!

One local chap who's an organ fan and plays a bit (and is very good friends with Jennifer Bate the concert organist) walked in and said "what have you done to that Copeman Hart, it sounds like a real organ for once". Apparently he's now going to try to convince Jennifer to try it with her Wyvern...
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 11:00 am



Hi!

Actually these are examples of worst recordings done off the cuff on an automatic volume control camera, - one of the videos even comments about the sound quality of the camera which cannot cope - and they were some time ago: the instrument undergoes periodic improvement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_eJ60PmtM and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nrvPmirH7c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W2QdAOwhjY are fair examples in standard style whilst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi2pdYou-Rs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1YcEjz8Xro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7onQgsLU9c
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cL8QDLv8vM puts the speakers through their paces in another idiom. (* On those three left hand notes at 1:36, one can hear a deliberately introduced inharmonic component in the spirit of Moucherel bombardes and the success of the result is speaker-dependent)

No doubt Hauptwerk sound sources would sound better, of course. But of course, one cannot tell what my systems of speakers are doing simply conveyed through YouTube compression and normal computer speakers.

If anyone has speakers through which the difference in broadcast quality between Radio 3 and Classic FM is audible, then they might be able to make a judgment without travelling to hear the results in real life. If the speakers that you are using do not show up the difference, then what is being discussed here is certainly indiscernable through the medium of YouTube videos or even CDs.

However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic

You are merely describing poor "hi-fi" - which is admittedly prevalent.


Actually not poor hi-fi. There are aspects of recording some stops which don't always result in realism through "hi-fi".

I do not understand why what I have said is in any way controversial: the final electroacoustic transducers are both an important component, as well as a tool in shaping the sound which ultimately presents itself.

There are certain forms of speaker that make certain stops sound much more real, and much more "there", than others. There are some stops which need to be reproduced by speakers reproducing the sound recorded at the very point the sound emerges from the pipe. If that didn't happen in the recording process, one can use the electroacoustic transducer at the other end to acoustically focus, like a lens, at that sound to reproduce what we would have heard if we had been at the pipe in the first place. The acoustic requirements of organ building might at times require it. . .

It's good to know that experiments at the church have shown good promise. If and when certain areas cease to satisfy, then I'm happy to share knowledge and experience.

Best wishes

David P
http://www.organmatters.co.uk
David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostMon Jun 21, 2010 12:25 pm

Why don't we move on and give this subject a rest. :mrgreen: and give Martin a chance to finish V 4.0 for us. :roll:

Rgds,
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Re: Small English Church Installation

PostTue Jun 22, 2010 2:27 am

>I'm afraid I think I'll have to leave this discussion here (since it's beginning to take
>a significant amount of time away from Hauptwerk v4 development, which is urgent
>at the moment), so we'll perhaps just have to agree to disagree.[/quote]

Personally I find these off-topic discussions fascinating, if only because the only hifi sound I'm used to is that found at Comet or Currys so this is a whole new world to me.

But hey Martin, priorities priorities - sounds like you have something cooking. Can't wait for dinner to be served :D !
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