Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:06 pm
I would like to add my comments on the Hereford 23/46 (Volumes 1/2).
Let me say first of all that I consider that this organ is quite competitively priced for its 46 stops, and that fact should be encouraging to people looking for a cathedral organ sample set that does not break the bank.
A speedy response from David Butcher for the FTP/Download details, and MDA for the dongle update, meant that I was able to start downloading within about 24 hours of my order. What did slow me down was the fact that I am a victim of poor rural broadband speed here, as in many English villages - I can manage little more than 143kbyte/s. Unfortunately, my connection with the server seemed to falter overnight everytime, so I had to do my downloads during the day, and each file of approximately 3GByte took nearly 7 hours! And then remember that there are four of them. At least I was able to install the evaluation edition, and then volume 1 (23 stops) within a day or two, to be going on with, and then volume 2 (46 stops) yesterday.
Somehow, I expected this organ to be very similar to the Salisbury Volume 1, but it is quite a different beast. Yes, as others have mentioned, it has been recorded rather more closely (and I rather like that) than the Salisbury which gives it a different atmosphere. The acoustic is not quiite as overpowering as the Salisbury - due to the combination of somewhat closer microphne positions, but also owing to a difference in the size of the two buildings. And then, there are discernible differences in the tone colours of some of the ranks - given the fifteen years separation between the building of these two organs it may not be surprising. Hereford probably sounds more like Lincoln than Salisbury.
I think that this organ is recorded at a somewhat lower level than some of my other organs - it has already been noted that the Swell division may be quieter than the others but I also found that quite a few of my other organs are generally louder for the same audio settings.
This organ fits very comfortably into 16 GByte of RAM, with all ranks at 24bit (+ lossless compression) , and I think that there is a good possiblility I will be able to fit the full organ into the same amount of RAM (possibly with a few ranks sacrificed at 16 bit) when it is released.
I am using this organ with three physical manuals only, and I have not yet decided on my final choice of method for managing this. Currently I am directing Choir and Solo divisions to my lower manual. I really do like the strings, which are very sweet indeed. Some of the pedal pipes in the bottom octave are quite "chiffy" - especially, (I believe) the Bourdon 16'. I was a bit disconcerted at the "Stop Action Delay" of which I have had no experience in real life organs and so I applied the option of removing it!
I am still exploring the organ, and if I manage to make a recording without my usual serious mistakes, I may put something onto Contrebombarde or YouTube.
Finally, I was intrigued not to see an announcement of the availability of this organ on the front page of the HW website under the News banner, but maybe that is because the DVDs are not quite available yet.
Many thanks to David, and regards to all,
Ken