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josq wrote:If you want to upgrade from standard pc audio, yes, then you'll need an audio interface anyway.
But why going for 16 or 20 channels, or even more? Personally, I would opt for (and currently use) 2 high-end near-field monitors only (or 4 for surround), and pay a lot of attention to speaker placement and use room correction software.
Quality vs quantity... See here for my opinion and some discussion about it: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16393&p=123247
sonar11 wrote:
Josq, the reason we go for multiple channels is to get clarity; "quality vs quantity" is a well known saying, but it doesn't work here for multiple channels.
A speaker that is trying to reproduce 300 pipes, is going to sound much worse than 10 speakers reproducing 30 pipes. There is far less distortion,
- I consider this a disadvantage (in the case you want to have an authentic reproduction of how the microphones recorded the organ in its original acoustics). What was recorded at a single position, will be smeared among many speaker positions. You'll destroy the original stereo image.the sound stage is far bigger
. Not sure how to interpret this one. A single pair of good speakers can generate sufficient volume for a home situation, and therefore does not have to involve any compression, right? The volume increase can therefore be perfectly proportional to the real situation. So, for now, I disagreeand the volume increases much more realistically as you add ranks
josq wrote:sonar11 wrote:
Josq, the reason we go for multiple channels is to get clarity; "quality vs quantity" is a well known saying, but it doesn't work here for multiple channels.
A speaker that is trying to reproduce 300 pipes, is going to sound much worse than 10 speakers reproducing 30 pipes. There is far less distortion,
True... in principle! It is a nuanced issue, and less (harmonic) distortion definitely can be an advantage of many speaker channels. But... does it outweigh the disadvantages?
josq wrote:- I consider this a disadvantage (in the case you want to have an authentic reproduction of how the microphones recorded the organ in its original acoustics). What was recorded ad a single position, will be smeared among many speaker positions. You'll destroy the original stereo image.the sound stage is far bigger
josq wrote:. Not sure how to interpret this one. A single pair of good speakers can generate sufficient volume for a home situation, and therefore does not have to involve any compression, right? The volume increase can therefore be perfectly proportional to the real situation. So, for now, I disagreeand the volume increases much more realistically as you add ranks
josq wrote:Now, some more disadvantages. Most speakers have an optimal position: at ear height, at about 1m distance, a stereo pair forming an equal-sided triangle with your listening position, tweeters pointed at your ears. The more speakers you have, the more you'll have to place some at increasingly suboptimal positions.
josq wrote:A speaker interacts with your room, you'll get all kinds of reflections and resonances. There is nice room correction software to correct for these issues, which is perfectly doable for a single speaker pair. For a surround set-up it becomes a bit more involved, but still doable. But as the number of speakers increases, it gets harder, more complex, and more time-consuming to implement room correction.
josq wrote:Now, if authentic reproduction is not your main concern, it could be perfectly valid to go for many speakers (for example, in the case of church installations). But most Hauptwerk users will be mainly interested in reproducing the exact sound of famous organs in their homes. For them, I would recommend to start with a single high-quality speaker pair, extend with a subwoofer and an extra pair for surround, and when they have optimized all that and have money to spare, they can experiment with a lot of extra channels. But that's just a recommendation.
And the distortion issue? It is still there, but buying extra speakers is not the only way to diminish it... buying higher quality audio is another way, I would say.
sonar11 wrote:We first have to agree on what the disadvantages are
josq wrote:- I consider this a disadvantage (in the case you want to have an authentic reproduction of how the microphones recorded the organ in its original acoustics). What was recorded ad a single position, will be smeared among many speaker positions. You'll destroy the original stereo image.the sound stage is far bigger
The stereo image is not destroyed at all; you're still producing a single pitch recorded in left/right through 2 left and right speakers, you're just changing which speakers that stereo image is projected through. It doesn't destroy the stereo image anymore than moving your speakers a few inches around does.
In addition, you are assuming that the mikes don't move during a recording, whereas I'm almost certain (especially for front and direct recordings) that they do. So already while recording the exact position of every pipe in relation to other pipes is lost.
Finally, keep in mind that you can physically aim the speakers at you location, such that they all project sound at your head; your ears will still interpret the sound as coming from the same location; that is how speakers work anyway, if they have a separate tweeter and separate mid driver and separate bass; internally they are separating the physical location of pipes: a 2' will come from the tweeter, an 8' from the bass or mid. By the time the sounds reach your ears, it all sounds like it comes from the same location.
I would suggest you try it sometime There is a huge difference in how the volume builds in 2 channel vs 8 channel. The sound is much fuller and livelier.
I tested some m-audios and they had very poor dispersion, moving your head around would instantly sound different
Indeed, room correction is terribly important. I prefer to tame the room itself, rather than use software; since software only corrects bits and pieces and only in certain physical locations. Correcting the room (bass traps etc) makes the sound sound good in the entire room, and then you also don't have the complex multi-channel configuration issues either that a software setup has.
You're certainly welcome to your opinion, and as long as we're both happy with our setups then all is well I would encourage you to experience the difference a multi-channel setup can make though. There are compromises in every setup, but having tried both setups I will never move back to a 2/4 channel setup.
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JohnNicholson wrote:The computer I now use for the full version of Hauptwerk is quad core, 64 bit RAM, and it has optical and the wide sort of USB sockets. I assume the optical will be best to send the multi-channel signal to a box that splits it up to separate analogue channels, each of which can go to it's own amp.
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