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Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

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engrssc

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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostSat Mar 03, 2018 11:03 am

Good plan. Then there's CAT 7 at 850MHz

I'm waiting for CAT 20. :roll:

Rgds,
Ed
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anco111

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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostTue Mar 06, 2018 7:32 am

Rauschpfeife wrote:(.....)
One last thing. I can't believe I haven't tried it yet, but it's just occurred to me in light of all this discussion that the Zwolle Ruckpositiv might, with the four-channel set up I've been using up until now, benefit from going through the opposite channels it's used up 'til now. It is supposed to be behind the player after all...


I don't know your setup, but I don't think it's going to benefit from moving the rugwerk (ruckpositiv) behind the player.
The recordings have been made with the microphones in front of the organ. You can't just try to tear apart the microphone recording.
It has been recorded in one single stationary position including the church acoustics on that particular spot.
So, no benefit is going to come from taking this position apart by placing speakers on different locations. One can't come closer to reality than to the positions of the microphone...
Unless you are using the dry recordings that is. In that case you can create your own organ with speakers on different locations. :)
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostTue Mar 06, 2018 5:26 pm

Here's how I approach these multiple channel / mic position sample sets. There's lots of talk here about recreating the room the instrument is in and the theory to accomplish this seems to be that by sending the closest recordings to one set of speakers and the further away recordings to a different set of speakers and so on works best to recreate the room. First, the only recording where I think this applies is for the rear 'surround' recording which should be sent to a rear located pair of speakers, it's still a simulation at best, but it does help add considerable space to the sound and opens it up. Although it's a very novel idea to send divisions to speakers here and there or up closer here and further away there in order to attempt to re-create the room, and it perhaps has interesting effects, if anything by doing so it's even more removed from the real thing because you are breaking things up into parts and pieces. Doubt me? Turn off all your speakers except for he rear ones and go back there and listen to them. Do things sound as they should? I'd say the answer is no. Remember, you're now 'supposedly' standing at the back of the church. Does it sound like you're standing at the back of the church? Again I'd say no. The main idea of these multiple channel sets, at least to me anyways, is to set things up through proper speaker placement and routing in order to allow you to 'move' around the room and hear the organ from different perspectives without the need to move from the organ bench, such as if you want to hear the organ while sitting in the front pew and then deciding to move half way to the back of the church. This is exactly why you combine the closest and diffused front recordings and blend them to your liking vs. sending them to separate speakers. The idea of sending the further away signals to a separate set of speakers completely takes away the ability to move around the room and hear the various perspectives of the organ. Trust me when I say this, I have tried so many different speaker placement and routing combinations I've lost count. The recipe I've come up with by far sounds best and I know there will be those that will say "but, yeah, that's on your system." I'll just say that none of us who uses Hauptwerk at home has a sound system that is capable of going completely outside the norm and defies what would normally be expected as an outcome. Some because of component quality will sound better than others, but the general outcome for best realism will not change.

Just my 2-1/2 cents worth.

Marc
Last edited by 1961TC4ME on Tue Mar 06, 2018 10:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostTue Mar 06, 2018 7:55 pm

Interesting point(s) of view, Marc. And certainly a realistic starting point for new to Hauptwerk folks. The difficulty, to some degree, when starting out is the amount of variables. Like how would Spkr A sound in my space versus Spkr B. One piece of advice I received a long time ago when I started this biz, if at all possible,
it is better (when you arrive at a certain brand/model speaker system), is to stick with that choice vs trying to mix and match from all the choices available. This, at least for the main speakers. Obviously subs vs main speakers would be different.

I got an email a bit ago from the newbie who said he had a collection of 14 speakers (all different) brands and models, as to how to hook them up to his system. He had tried many hookups and just got more and more frustrated. His original reasoning for collecting this mish mash of speakers was that in a real pipe organ, each rank is different which of course they are. The error was that he couldn't match Brand A with a certain rank and Brand B with another (rank). Each speaker had it's own characteristics and they didn't blend well when played together. Quoting from Organ In Use Today (the Armley Schulze of course),

Although individual registers can and do sound very impressive, Schulze's strength as a voicer was his ability to allow different stops to blend with one another, producing a great variety of new sounds.

http://www.lavenderaudio.co.uk/organs/armley/organ.html

The key word is Blend together. The above mentioned fella with his odd lot of speakers could not get them to blend due to the great differences in each speaker's characteristics. Finally he took my advice and got a fewer number but all the same brand/model of speaker. As if by magic, this made all the difference. Mainly because these (new) speakers blended well together. 8)

Rgds,
Ed
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostTue Mar 06, 2018 9:47 pm

Hi Ed,
You kinda bolster my points, I also agree 100% with anco111, you can't just start tearing apart the mic recordings / positions. First off, yes speaker A may overall sound better than speaker B and speaker A may also sound better than speaker B in both a given location and assigned duty. This is exactly why I am a fan of sticking with one brand if at all possible, but not to one size as each will perform better in certain ranges, if they didn't we'd have no reason for tweeters, subs and so on.

Case in point: I now use 2 pairs of towers up front (of separate brands BTW) and a same brand of bookshelf as one tower pair (Polk). Lo and behold if the off brand towers don't trounce the other towers in the 16' and lower department, but the other towers absolutely kills it in the 8' department! The bookshelves serve 4' and up duty where they shine.

Now, going back to the idea of blending both Chancel and Nave signals to all up front, backed up by the rear surround signal. Blending is the key word, but to me the fact that pipes of an organ blend together because of the way it is voiced is a very different subject in comparison to the method in which we then blend the signals. Through the provided sliders of the set and proper routing I can move just about anywhere virtually I want in the church by blending the signals and I don't have to get off the bench. Kinda neat I'd say!

Also guessing Martin is probably getting ready to move this one over to the amplification dept. :wink:

Marc
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostWed Mar 07, 2018 3:36 am

1961TC4ME wrote:Also guessing Martin is probably getting ready to move this one over to the amplification dept.


Indeed. Done!
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostWed Mar 07, 2018 4:52 am

mdyde wrote:
1961TC4ME wrote:Also guessing Martin is probably getting ready to move this one over to the amplification dept.


Indeed. Done!


Refer to him as Intuitive Marc. 8)

Rgds,
Ed
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostWed Mar 07, 2018 4:40 pm

1961TC4ME wrote:Hi Ed,
Now, going back to the idea of blending both Chancel and Nave signals to all up front, backed up by the rear surround signal. Blending is the key word, but to me the fact that pipes of an organ blend together because of the way it is voiced is a very different subject in comparison to the method in which we then blend the signals. Through the provided sliders of the set and proper routing I can move just about anywhere virtually I want in the church by blending the signals and I don't have to get off the bench.
Marc


This sample set and a few others I have allow the Chancel & Nave samples to routed separately. I take this as a design cue and indeed send them to a separate set of speakers. My Nave speaker set is only about 17" from Chancel speakers on my back wall but are turned at 45 degrees and sit in the corner. Sometimes its hard to tell where the sound is originating since they blend so well together. Using the faders on the "Settings" page I feel I have them tweaked pretty well.

One of the benefits of a multi-channel set up that we all agree on is divvying up the notes/ranks so speakers don't have to work so hard and help reduce THD. In the past we spoke of splitting up a celeste and its respective unison ranks into different channels so the undulation happens in the air not the speaker. I feel the same about Chancel and Nave sharing the same channels. From my experience, the clarity increases when the Chancel pipe sample is sent to channels ! & 2 and simultaneously the Nave sample to channels 3 & 4.

I did try running both Chancel & Nave to the same audio group and when adjusting the faders between these two it was more akin to an EQ or tone control; do I want more body or clarity or 50/50, more of blend or separation, etc. However I do agree with Marc that loading and using the Chancel and Nave as a pair gives a more pleasant result verse using the Chancel ranks by themselves in a home or medium sized space. In a large venue, say a church choir loft, you could get by with loading just the Chancel ranks. BTW, I actually have a recent experience where I did just that. :-)

Danny B.
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostWed Mar 07, 2018 5:23 pm

magnaton wrote:I did try running both Chancel & Nave to the same audio group and when adjusting the faders between these two it was more akin to an EQ or tone control; do I want more body or clarity or 50/50, more of blend or separation, etc. However I do agree with Marc that loading and using the Chancel and Nave as a pair gives a more pleasant result verse using the Chancel ranks by themselves in a home or medium sized space. In a large venue, say a church choir loft, you could get by with loading just the Chancel ranks. BTW, I actually have a recent experience where I did just that. :-)

Danny B.


I did mention earlier that the difference between the Chancel and Nave signals is not all that different, the Nave having just a slightly further away sound vs. the Chancel, and yes, a bit less clarity as well. Danny, you pretty much hit the nail on the head in saying that by combining both Chancel and Nave to the same speakers results in a fuller, more pleasant sound, I found exactly the same, whereas separating them for me resulted in a thinner, harsher sound. No matter how I adjusted things with the signals separated just doesn't sound as good. Since there is not a lot of difference between the two signals, sure, maybe you don't get to move around the church and hear the different perspectives as fully as you might with other sets such as those I have. And speaking of hitting the nail on the head, David did exactly that in the recording of this instrument as it sounds as good or better, and in a very convincing way I might add, than most I have encountered here.

Anyone still on the fence about this set should seriously consider just placing your order and go ahead and get it. I could not be happier with the decision! :D

Marc
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostThu Mar 08, 2018 2:39 am

The danger in using multiple front speakers and dividing chancel/nave (or front direct/front diffuse) etc. between them, is that the different sets of front speakers are never at exactly the same distance to your ears. So what i mean is that there is always a difference between front left 1 and front left 2 (and fl3 and fl4 etc. etc.)

So you might give your speakers an easier load, but it also creates another problem:
Certain frequencies are going to cancel each other out, because there is gonna be some sort of phase shifting.
Thus resulting in having less clarity, body and sounding thinner.

Also, multiple speakers (or speaker cones) closely placed to each other will affect each other.
For example, speaker 1 and 2 are front left speakers and placed close to each other.
Speaker 1 starts playing, speaker 2 doesn't do a thing. This is perfectly fine, since speaker 1 can do what he's designed for. Now speaker 2 also starts playing, starts moving air, changing air pressure around it.. That will have its effects on speaker 1, so speaker 1 can't do its work as effectively as it did without speaker 2.

Let's make the above visible.
Throw 1 stone in a pool. Now you can see the water waves being perfectly able to spread in all directions without distortion.
Throw 2 stones in a pool and you will see that the waves collide with each other.
Throw a handfull of stones in the water and you won't even be able to see one clear wave..

This problem is also slightly there with a normal 3-way speaker between woofer, mid and tweeter.. But they are designed to work together as good as possible.
This also shows us clearly why drivers such as the KEF Uni Q sound so great.

So, using multiple speakers will give the speakers an easier load but it also creates other complex problems.
And no, a real pipe organ doesn't have all these problems because they don't use speaker cones, wich are behaving very differntly compared to organ pipes.

My choice would be to spend all the money on just 1 high-end stereo set instead of multiple 'lesser-end' speakers.
However, placing different speakers on different locations might create some interesting effects (placing ruckpositiv behind you), and if you like it that way, just go for it.

By the way, I'm really considering the Armley-Schulze set for myself..
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostThu Mar 08, 2018 4:28 am

Interesting perspective, Anco! So basically you are saying that every driver will act as a microphone to a small extend, with a negative impact on how the driver reproduces sound, and that this problem will worsen when more speakers are used or when the speakers are closely spaced. I never considered this perspective. It might well be worth a separate topic!
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostThu Mar 08, 2018 5:03 am

To a small extend, yes I think so..
And indeed it worsens when more speakers are being used (and placed close to each other).
It also gets worse when the volume goes up.

I can feel the air moving when I place my hand in front of my stereo set.
Of course, nothing significant, its not like a trumpet suddenly sounds like a dulciana, but I do think it has its effects.

Think of it this way:
Place 9 speakers in a square. Now play music with all the speakers except for the one in the middle.
I am almost 100% sure that the cone of the middle speaker starts moving with the surrounding air pressure.
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostThu Mar 08, 2018 11:33 am

What anco111 says (maybe some day he will tell us his first name) :mrgreen: makes a lot of sense and I have a recent direct experience with this theory. As quite a few probably know here, I have been a big proponent of stacking the front speakers in pairs of 3 on top of each other to the left and right of the console, preferably if you have the room to get them out in front of you off the front corners of the console, the stacks end up being in the range of 6 or so feet apart to the left and right.

As I've mentioned many times, I've tried countless speaker arrangements, and the stacked speaker arrangement sounds best by far, others here have tried it and from what I've heard have reported the same results. Why do I think it results in sounding the best? Because of exactly what anco111 describes and I've had basically the same idea, just not the good description offered by anco111. :) In a stacked arrangement the speakers stay 'in line' with each other vertically and you don't end up with drivers being side by side where the imaginary ripples in the air run into each other and affect each other, perhaps negatively. However, I've had an interesting new revelation concerning a very recent new speaker purchase I made. My previous front L / R speaker arrangement has been one large tower on each side with 2 bookshelf speakers stacked on top. I recently went out and purchased another pair of towers with the plan of eliminating one pair of bookshelf speakers on each side, the new towers would bolster the weakness I felt I had in certain ranges that the bookshelf were not capable of handling properly. Now the dilemma was with the new towers, how to arrange the front speakers? Since I could no longer stack everything on top of each other as things would have ended up ridiculously high, and I don't have the ceiling height anyways, my stacking theory is now somewhat trashed and I was skeptical of the outcome. I first tried placing both towers directly next to each other with the one leftover pair of bookshelf speakers on top. This didn't sound so good as some stops would stand out, some got totally buried in the sound, in any case it didn't sound near as convincing as the previous arrangement. I then tried increasing and decreasing the distance between the front L / R arrangements but kept the towers right next to each other. This didn't help either and I was starting to think I had made a mistake in this new hair brained speaker purchase. Then I figured perhaps the issue is the towers are too close to each other? Sure enough, that was the problem! I ended up spacing the towers about a foot apart from each other (I may try further spacing yet), the bookshelf pair on top of the inner pair of towers, and WOW what a difference! Now it really sounds like I'm sitting right there in the church, the second pair of larger towers has added the mid to the 8' stops I had been missing and the set now has a very pleasing and full sound like it should. Just to be sure I wasn't imagining things I even went to the extent the other night of tearing things apart and went back to the speaker arrangement I have been using for the past couple of years so I could just take a listen and make a comparison. Outcome? Not even a contest. The new arrangement by far sounds better, but the key again is speaker placement.

I can see at some point I will incorporate a single cabinet per side that is of the tower type with speakers arranged vertically in the cabinet from bottom to top, but each cabinet would be divided up into at least 3 channels of separate audio. This would likely sound best.

Go get that Schulze!

Marc
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostThu Mar 08, 2018 3:49 pm

Lots of interesting ideas here. I'm reading this with a keen interest as my own room setup is almost identical - the organ is positioned exactly as you have, the only difference being that originally there were two equal sized rooms that have been "knocked together" with nothing where the dividing wall used to be.

I'll confess that I have never tried to connect my living room hifi speakers (your 5 and 6) to my organ, though in the case of Armley I suppose there's a case for arguing that they are in the same position as "surround" speakers would be if reproducing the sound as it appears at the west end, and 3 and 4 are where the east end of the nave sound would have been recorded. The organ itself is of course in the north transecpt just like your console.

The biggest problem I have is that of room nodes - the resonance that peaks at frequencies of about 50Hz (corresponding to A flat) is around 10 decibels louder than adjacent notes. No surprise that the sound wavelength at that point is exactly twice the width of the room. I have tried various arrangements of speakers and am thinking that the next move in the pursuit of acoustic perfection will have to be digital frequency correction software. The difficulty of course is that only optimises the sound in one listening position whereas in reality I might be moving around the room listening to recordings or when a student plays to me and sound correction might make the problem just go elsewhere!.
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Re: Audio Set-Up for Armley Schulze?

PostFri Mar 09, 2018 10:21 am

Organorak,

Indeed room-correction software improves the sound at the microphone position, but it makes problems worse elsewhere. If acoustical room treatment isn't an option, personally I would choose for software correction. So you have at least one perfect spot.

Marc,

Just leave out the 111 and you have my first name ;)
Actually soundwaves are more 3d than water waves. Water ripples dont go as high as they go wide, but sound does travel to the ceiling.. But still it can indeed make a difference in sound if you place speakers horizontally instead of vertically.
In a lot of speakers the horizontal dispersion is different compared to vertical dispersion.
Especially in some tweeters this is very significant. But lower frequencies are more omnidirectional compared to higher frequencies.

Anyway, different sound sources in the same frequency range will always either reinforce or cancel each other out. That is why it can sound less clear, or too dark, or whatever..

So you are into stacking speakers? Might wanna take a look at this.
I have no idea how it will sound though...
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