Congratulations on finally releasing this series. I enjoy your blog and know from reading it how much work has gone into it.
I eagerly downloaded and installed the demo set this morning. Having looked-up how to manually learn keyboard and pedal MIDI settings (one becomes used to images to right-click on) all went well. I was, however, slightly disappointed to find that this was just two octaves - your studio set from a few years ago was one of the pioneers of time-limited cut-out demos which are so much more helpful and I had hoped and expected that you might do this again. (And although a full compass full function 10-stop demo was also promised in your blog and is mentioned on each of the smaller organ details pages, this does not seem to be avaiable?)
So far, only the 65 stop and larger specifications are "published". Actually, the only way of finding out what the specifications are seems to be to squint hard at the stop jamb images. (And I had to resort to trial and error for URLs to find the images for the 4 manual 65 since a typo has made them unavailable.) A downloadable spreadsheet or table would be helpful.
The very understandable lack of details of anything smaller than 65 stops makes me wonder why you would want to make your life so difficult and offer as standard no less than TEN variants? I know your approach makes it possible to make lots of subsets, but surely spending your limited time on two or three well-considered specifications, ("City Concert Hall", "Cathedral", "Parish Church" say) carefully voiced into convincing instruments would be better than the huge number apparently to be offered. And if these are actually each going to be voiced differently according to their specification, which will certainly be necessary, how can just inviting users to choose the available stops from a 125-stop demo monster allow a fair audition?
By way of illustration, with no introductory pricing the price would probably limit me to the 65 stop configurations. Unfortunately what I can see of the specifications of both the 65 stop models look a bit random and odd. Although mine is a 3 manual console, so I might prefer the 3 manual, the lack of a solo division on that version means there is no Tuba anywhere. Sadly, I can't live without a Tuba! And on the 4 manual version (where I could use the Solo as a floating division) the Tuba is present and correct but other reeds seem very sparse. On the Great there is just a rather thin 8' Posaune and absolutely nothing else. (Might the fuller Tromba have been a better choice if that is all there is? Or will you revoice the Posaune to be fuller sounding on this version?) And it seems odd to provide two separate "Gt Reeds on ..." couplers for just this one reed stop! Even worse, there is apparently no room for a 4' reed on any manual despite the version offering no less than 3 different Great mixtures.
Perhaps I will have to save up for the 75. Will these organs allow CODM tinkering to allow us to roll-our-own cut-down specifications from larger instruments?
The tremulants, despite making a racket like a Victorian weaving mill, (that I would have to voice out!), seem to all be computed rather than sampled? I suppose I understand the motivation - it is obviously hard to match tremulant rates from different sources for a composite organ - but real sampled tremulant stops would be one of the big winners from a dry organ since sampled release tails are always a compromise.
Finally, the dry thing. You say that many users have sophisticated reverb options so will only offer dry sets for the time being, but I am not there yet and frankly I am not convinced that is where the HW market is. I know all the arguments for dry sets, but I have found few of the post processing reverb options really work well for me. (And I think I have tried them all short of building a large stone cathedral to play in). Real-time convolution reverb comes closest but is very compute intensive, sometimes in my setup to the extent of starving HW of processor cycles, a bit laggy and generally a lot of hassle. Also, cost is an issue - the best software is not cheap and there do not seem to be a lot of free or affordable options available for spaces - York minster is lovely but not always the right choice! Algorithmic reverb is a lot easier to implement but ultimately never sounds quite right. I found I spent way too much of my time tinkering with reverb paramenters rather than making music. (Probably just a lack of self-discipline, I know). I now use a small hardware reverb box which is miraculous for its price, and allows instant adjustments via proper knobs. It is great for wet sets with just-slightly-too-dry acoustics such as the SP Burton, where it produces a very convincing effect, but struggles with completely dry sets.
All of this is a long way of asking, will there be a free upgrade when you do a convolution set? And will it be coming soon?
Sorry for the length of the post. And I hope it doesn't sound too negative about what is an exciting set - please read it as a reflection of the fact that I am very interested in this set and your approach!
- Adrian.