Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:25 pm
Alrighty, folks.....
Routing by "timbre" and then breaking it down further by "footage" (ie. 16, 8, 4, etc) does seem to clean things up quite a bit.
Just to experiment, I created 12 groups - 4 speakers each - as follows:
1 - 32'/16' Flues (Great/Pedal)
2 - 8' Flues (Great/Pedal)
3 - 4' Flues (Great/Pedal)
4 - 16' Reeds
5 - 8' Reeds
6 - 4' Reeds
7 - 8' Strings
8 - 16' Flues (Swell/Choir)
9 - 8' Flues (Swell/Choir)
10 - 4' Flues (Swell/Choir)
11 - Mixtures/Mutations
12 - Celestes
I tried out St. Anne's, Reuter op.227, and Friesach.
The more I think about this, the more it kind of makes sense as to why it improves. Looking back at my previous comment about louder sounds taking priority in a given mix, this perhaps explains why this works as well as it does. In this scheme, an 8' Principal, for example, isn't fighting with an 8' Trumpet for dominance if they were to be routed to the same speaker (which, if set up the conventional way - 8 speakers per division, cyclic within octave) then they would end up in the same speaker. This would make it to where the Trumpet would likely dominate over the Principal, rather than them helping to reinforce one another.
Very interesting. My routing scheme isn't perfect and I can see where it would need to change depending on the instrument. St. Annes for example, the 16, 8, 4 Diapason is one rank, so it all went to the same group.
The Reuter, for instance, has a PLETHORA of 8' Flues, few reeds, and only 2 mixtures, so it would need to be broken down even further, I'd think.... Maybe one reed group, and separate groups for each flue family - Flutes, Strings, Diapasons, etc.
I am still wondering what the results would be if you routed, say, 16' and 4' flues to the same group. 8' and 2' flues to the same group, etc. I wonder if the two octave distance would help move the frequency ranges out of each other's way???
I'm not sure what to do about speaker placement..... that's an entirely different obstacle to overcome.