Hello from Bavaria

Hello everybody,

After a long time of reading, I decided to register an account this week. My name is Thomas, I live in Bavaria and play organ for about 29 years. After playing church services for a long time, playing the organ is now only a hobby (although I studied organ for secondary schools), but I practice rather every day for an organ concert every two years. Here you find the organ, where I gave my last concert:

http://www.orgel-waldkirchen.de

For practicing I had an old Omegan 9000 since 2005, but the sound and mechanic decreased every year, so I looked out for a new instrument. I found it in a MIDI-Console, which I bought from a local dealer including a PC with Hauptwerk and the Samplesets from Arlesheim and Metz-Notre-Dame. On wednesday I also purchased the Hereford-Cathedral-Sampleset and now I am overwhelmed of it's great sound.

That is my console:



Although the room looks very small, it opens to a large gallery, so it feels like a small chapel

Best regards
Thomas

Hello Thomas,

Welcome to the Hauptwerk Forum! You have a very nice HW console at home. Hopefully you will post some recordings of your playing on the contrebombarde.com website.

Tschüss!

Michael

I have already posted a few pieces on contrebombarde. Just have a look, I have the same nickname.

Best regards
Thomas

Yes, welcome Thomas.

Your console looks very inviting - I want to climb into the picture and play it!

The single organ pipe is a nice touch too.

Nice to have you join. I look at the forum most days.

The single organ pipe was a marriage present. It is from the old organ in Waldkirchen

Hello Thomas,

I love this simple yet elegant setup!

Is it a subwoofer that we see on the right side of the console? Is it easy to configure it knowing your room looks to be bigger than the area delimited by the four speakers?

Hallo Pat,

yes, this chest on the right side is the subwoofer. Configuring is rather complicated. First I moved the sub across the floor and made several measures with a microphone and the free software "CARMA" to find the right position. Then I had to adjust the right crossover frequencies at the frontspeakers (they have a built-in bass management) and the phase at the subwoofer. At last I regulated the level of each speaker until the measurements showed a linear frequency response.
Still a few bass frequencies are rumbling because of the room modes (i. e. at Hereford), but the rest sounds quite nice.

Hello Thomas,

Thanks for the answer! It looks you have taken care of all details with a lot of care! It must be quite thrilling to play such a console!

On my homepage I have several recordings of real organs, if you are interested...

Link

I have made some improvements in my organ setup:



First of all I am using four identical speakers in a 2+2 stereo setup and have integrated a MiniDSP to correct room modes. The second improvement consists in buying absorbers to minimize reverberation. And the third one was a cabinet for my music sheet.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the miniDSP you're using? Is this software/hardware? How is it integrated?

Thanks!

Can you tell us a little bit more about the miniDSP you're using? Is this software/hardware? How is it integrated?

Thanks!

Sure!

After good experience with an OpenDRC AN in the living room, an OpenDRC DI was my first choice to correct room modes in my "organ chapel". It is linked via Toslink between my soundcard and my digital studio monitors (they have an analogue output for the subwoofer)

First of all you need a laptop with a measure microphone and a software called "Acourate DRC" to measure the frequency response of your room. Also you have to connect your loudspeakers to the laptop. Otherwise you can install Acourate on your organ computer and use the soundcard of it. The software generates a sinus sweep and then offers you several correction curves, but you also can configure your own curve if you need more bass.
Afterwards the software generates FIR-filters (with about 6 000 taps) which you have to load into the software plugin for the OpenDRC. For this you have to connect the OpenDRC with your laptop or organ PC, later this isn't necessary, only if you want to configure something.
The software plugin also offers the possibility to correct frequency delays (e.g. between the speakers and the subwoofer)

And that's it!

Please have a look there:

http://www.minidsp.com/products/opendrc-series/opendrc-di