Thu May 17, 2018 10:05 pm
I play a church installation in a pretty dry sanctuary. We have a Moller Artiste pipe organ that we considered enhancing with Hauptwerk. In the end, it was decided to leave the pipe organ alone and build a separate Hauptwerk installation. I go back and forth on whether that was a good idea or not, but we do play duets occasionally.
This is subjective and I know some disagree with me, but I really prefer bone dry, in your face samples. The sets that I've demo'd that sound really good to my ears are the dry versions of Menesterol, Velesovo, and the Georgian set from Silver Octopus all of which are exceedingly dry. I'm sure there are others I haven't tried like MDA Skinner. For me, the most apparent weakness of semi-dry is when listening to solo flutes. They sound a little distant with loss of detail. With larger registrations, it's not as noticeable.
That said, the sample set I play most often is the Portland Rosales because of it's versatility and how great the full principal chorus sounds. But when playing something with a small registration, I usually jump on the little pipe organ.
Just my 2 cents worth.