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Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

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Romanos

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Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostSat Dec 16, 2017 11:15 pm

Hi All--
I'm splurging for Christmas to get my first truly large sample set. I'd like to know the opinion of those of you with experience with these two sample sets.

Laurenskirk seems to almost be a HW must have. Large, versatile, chamades, great acoustic.... It has just about everything going for it. I love recordings I hear of it... but most of them are from far in the room. Do the front samples have that much clarity?

The Rosales excites me in theory although I found the demo a little frustrating since I couldn't test the dimensional POV of the positif and the swell sounded a tad distant. It is obviously a smaller instrument (although not small by any means). I do like the clarity of the direct samples. I enjoyed being able to play drier and then turn up the rear samples for fun.

A little about me: I love the Laurenskirk Transept organ (2 chan, wet) as the great principal is very direct and warm. The positiv is absolutely charming and the clarity is almost as if you're at the console. I just love that! I also love the Menesterol moist set. There isn't too much to take anyone's breath away, but I like it because of the feeling of almost being at the console in real life. With my 6 front speakers, you can hear the principal in the facade move back and forth... it is just thrilling and provides a lot of the subtle cues you hear in real life. That type of realism is what excites me. While many here love the luscious acoustics many sets provide, that's not really what I'm after (not that I don't enjoy them too! but my brain simply finds the disparity between what I'm hearing and the clarity I'm expecting to hear as if I was really playing at the console too great, and therefore frustrating for live playing). I primarily use HW to practice and for my own enjoyment. I would like to do some more recording, however, so a nice acoustic is a bonus, as long as I have clarity.

In light of my preferences above, do you all think the Laurenskirk would be too much? I love the sound of the organ in general and I think I would still like to acquire it as funds allow with time. The Rosales has a certain visceral thrill, but it also seems like it might wear quickly for practice... but the invitation with those 4 32's is pretty strong... (I'm blessed with an SVS PB-2000 which will have no trouble at all.) I did my masters recital on a Fisk that nearly knocked your socks off (David Briggs even commented about how powerful it was from the console when he came for a concert.) and I've learned to love that enveloping energy.

I'm also open to other suggestions. As far as rep is concerned, I play a bit of everything, although my tendency is baroque; but I love a rowdy french toccata as much as the next guy! Also, considering I make demos for liturgical works, suggestions must have a nice string with celest. :mrgreen:

Thank you, in advance, for any insight you can provide.
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mnailor

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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostSat Dec 16, 2017 11:45 pm

The Rotterdam main's front samples are very reverberant even without the rear, with 5 - 6 seconds of reverb, although I wouldn't call it muddy.

Rosales is more like 2 seconds on the diffuse and rear channels, with the direct channels almost dry. It has enough reverb to be interesting, but it's not in a cathedral. I don't even load the direct samples because I don't like being too close to the pipes.

It sounds like clarity is important enough to you that Rotterdam wet or surround might not be suitable, but it sounds like you want some acoustics so the Rotterdam dry set wouldn't be good either.

You could use Rotterdam front and experiment with loading with truncated releases.

Portland has more clarity and is also a more general-purpose eclectic instrument. Rotterdam doesn't sound right for romantic composers, being mostly a neobaroque organ with a romantic swell grafted on. No enclosed Hautbois really is a handicap for French and English music that can't be fixed by using a bass-heavy Trompette, in my opinion. There isn't even a reasonable equivalent for fonds or Diapasons.
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostSun Dec 17, 2017 12:55 am

Rosales is the superior practice instrument by far, in my opinion, if that is a significant factor for you.
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostMon Dec 18, 2017 11:16 am

Rosales for sure..
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostMon Dec 18, 2017 12:45 pm

Also, if Rosales isn't your taste, the Armley Schulze has more reverb, about 3 seconds, and a lot more clarity than Rotterdam. It supports a wide variety of music. If you had Armley and the SP Oakland Aeolian-Skinner, they would cover the 19th and 20th century reasonably well even though neither is a large instrument. Or Hereford and St. Omer for similar musical coverage and decent clarity.
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostMon Dec 18, 2017 12:57 pm

I'll check out the Arlmey... I hadn't even considered it. The demos I'm hearing are quite nice. Spacious without being too much. Thanks!
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostTue Dec 19, 2017 9:17 am

Well I did extensive listening to the Armley yesterday. I really liked what I heard. It is very exciting in its own way, and the license is incredibly generous (you can do whatever you want with your recordings without written permission). Both of those things appealed to me. The chancel perspective was nice and the reverb was nearly perfect in my book. Spacious enough to feel luscious without sacrificing any clarity. Very realistic sounding. I may revisit this organ later.

I decided to pull the plug on the Rosales last night. What tipped me to the Rosales were two things:
1.- I appreciated the number of mutations as I really like baroque music and I love gap registrations in my own compositions. The comparable lack of upperwork on the Armley was a bit of a put off (although I suppose I could have always used HW's built-in super couplers.)
2.- I revisited many of the demos of the Rosales (in addition to Armley) on my organ sound system at home with SVS sub. There is something absolutely visceral about the Rosales, even at softer registrations. It is thrilling in a special way. But what ultimately tipped me were some of the softer demos. The clarity is really something and a few of the solo voices are superb. There is one demo featuring the harmonic flute and it simply soars. While some of the voices on the Armley are indeed very nice, none of them really sucked me in like the Rosales. [To reiterate, I will likely revisit the Arlmey later as I really did like the organ much, much more than most sets...] Admittedly, I wish the Rosales had a little more reverb like the Armley (take the Rosales and put it in the Armley sanctuary and then I think you'd really have something neat!) I think the Armley may become my future hymn organ.

I haven't had a chance to actually set it up yet (having issues with hard drive space... old caches are choking up my SSD!) which I will do tonight. I may have to uninstall HW and start from scratch. It's hard to figure out what I can delete safely and what I cant.

I'm excited to have this organ to play with over my Christmas break. My poor wife won't know what hit her. I listened to Carson's recording of the Willscher Rubezahls Tanz (for the 50th time) and it is simply thrilling with my SVS turned on. I emailed Andreas Willscher some months ago and he kindly sent me the score. I knew I had to recreate Carson's recording myself with those bombastic 32's! It's a delightfully fun piece to play and I'm really looking forward to sinking in.
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostTue Dec 19, 2017 10:51 am

A suggestion on cleaning up cached organs to get back some disk space. Use the Organ / Load Organ, adjusting rank audio... drop down menu. Select an organ you want out of cache but to leave installed. Hit OK to begin recaching. Cancel after a few seconds. This clears the cache for that organ without losing settings or uninstalling it.
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Romanos

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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostTue Dec 19, 2017 12:06 pm

mnailor wrote:A suggestion on cleaning up cached organs to get back some disk space. Use the Organ / Load Organ, adjusting rank audio... drop down menu. Select an organ you want out of cache but to leave installed. Hit OK to begin recaching. Cancel after a few seconds. This clears the cache for that organ without losing settings or uninstalling it.


Thank you for this! What an excellent tip.
I suppose I will have to do this twice, as I have two 'instances' of HW: one for my multi-channel setup and another for my headphones (via a second HW icon).
(Which is probably why my cache is totally out of control lol.)
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostTue Dec 19, 2017 12:47 pm

Hello Romanos,

Romanos wrote:I suppose I will have to do this twice, as I have two 'instances' of HW: one for my multi-channel setup and another for my headphones (via a second HW icon).


That's correct.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostTue Dec 19, 2017 2:44 pm

I don't know your audio interface, but mine (RME UFX) does the headphone mixdown and can switch between headphones and speakers with one click. Maybe yours could?
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Re: Laurenskirk Main or Rosales?

PostWed Dec 20, 2017 9:21 pm

No, I have a saffire pro40 currently configured for 8 channels. On a few samples I have a mix down channel that can be mirrored to the headphone jack, but it doesn't do an auto-sum of all the channels. Would be nice if it did!

[EDIT]: I decided to reproach my routing and was set up three groups per Marc's suggestion: Fonds, Flues, and Reeds/Mutations/Celests. I had each group aux-send to channels 1&2 so now I have full organ on those channels which I can then map the saffire headphone outs to mirror 1&2, meaning I have auto-headphone capability without having to go to a different routing scheme. Previously I was trying to rout my diffuse channels to my surround setup. With direct and diffuse on the same front speakers the effect of changing position between the two is better and the volume more consistent. This routing scheme does mean, however, that I have to re-think all my other sample sets now. Fortunately for me, this is my only big set and the one that I will be using as my primary driver from now on. I still like the idea of experimenting with diffuse in the place of rear as I do have surround channels as well, but they are leveled properly for my other sets and I don't want to futz with them. I think I may need to finally try the reaper trick and add a touch of reverb though...

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