Pictures and info about the Frankfurt music fair

Hello all,

as promised, following some more pictures and infos:

At first the new stand "R&M" together with "OrganART Media":



In front you see an example of a 3-manual custom-built fully integrated solution. The solid oak wood organ console in pipe organ quality has 3 UHT-manuals, organ pedal, organ bench, 2 in-built touch screens as virtual left and right stop jambs, 16 pistons and two pipe organ swell pedals:



Actual the new Ducroquet-Cavaillé-Coll organ for HW2 is loaded with its special designed virtual stops.
At left and right side you see our optional near-field active monitor system (including invisible subwoofer).

The following picture shows our historical special Italian pedal (1 1/2 octave compass with short octave) as well as the Spanish pedal (8 pedal stubs) designed for use instead of the modern pedal for authentic playing of those organs. Only 2 connectors have to be removed:



Following an example of a 2-manual custom-built organ console for use with an external Hauptwerk system, consisting of a high-performance Hauptwerk computer system and a 17" touch screen. The organ console contains MIDI control for manuals, pedal, swell pedal and pistons:



Actual the new HW2 Silbermann organ with special designed virtual stops for easy touch is loaded.


These are only two examples of custom-built consoles. Each console will be manufactured by pipe organ builder Harald Rapp based on customer specifications. So all type of consoles are possible, even a 5-manual Cavaillé-Coll type console with solenoid action stops, if you like...

Hauptwerk (2) again has proved its professional design, quality and stability. All organ consoles ran 4 days, 9 hours a day on very heavy load (Boellmann toccata, Widor toccata, improvisations ...) without any system problems!

The stand was visited by hundreds of people, a lot of high professional organists and organ professors all over Europe. The main reaction was: INCREDIBLE!

Therefore again the greatest compliments for Martin Dyde, the ingeniously computer specialist, software developer, mathematician, physician, organ specialist etc...

One of the highlights was the visit of world famous organist Hector Olivera, playing on the big console Widor, Franck, modern improvisations etc.:



Hope, you got some impressions!

If you want to have special information on custom-built consoles, pedals, prices, orders etc. please contact us. We'll ship worldwide.

http://www.thevirtualpipeorgan.com
http://www.organartmedia.com

PS:
Don't be afraid, the OrganART organs will still be available for use outside our custom-built organ consoles. All organs will be transformed to HW2 step for step. Please check the forum for announcements in future!

Thanks for the pictures and writeup.

Who is standing next to Hector?

Ted Williamson

At left and right side you see our optional near-field active monitor system (including invisible subwoofer).

Dear Prof. Maier,

could you give us more details about the monitor system - and can you recommend it? I'm just looking for such a system including subwoofer. In Germany, the Syrincs M3-220 obviously is widely used. And in a parallel thread of this forum, the M-Audio system (BX8A with SBX subwoofer) was described. Do you have tested any of these speakers?

Best regards,

Peter Mende

Thanks for your request!

I was looking for many years for an audio system, which would be able, to produce an authentic organ sound for our room based Hauptwerk organs. It should come very close to head phone sound characteristics. Even the best HiFi speaker systems, I tested, didn’t fulfil my requirements.

With the new generation of active near field monitors by Genelec- the high end producer of studio monitor systems - I found the second best solution besides head phones.
Genelec is said to be the world leading company in studio speaker equipment of all size. Today nearly every professional recording studio, broadcast stations and sound engineers use Genelec.

The new developed Genelec subwoofer has a lower frequency range at 25 Hz (!), although his size is not too big! Even a 32´ stop has an incredible clear and strong sound (rattling of the organ case, fourniture, windows etc. garantueed...)

These systems are so-called near field monitor systems, which mean the organ player sits within a well adjusted near-field of the speakers, thus having mainly the original recorded room sound with little interference by the room characteristics, where the speakers are installed.

What you get, is an incredible room based sound, where you can locate each pipe, the different wind chests, the room depth etc. The sound characteristics come very close to head phone listening.

Note that near-field monitoring is completely different from traditional speaker use, where you want to expose a sound for a (big) room. At the player's position, you'll have the original sound pressure, whereas in a few meters distance, the volume decreases significantly.

I strongly can recommend the Genelec system for near-field monitoring, never heard a better system before. It's another price class, than Syrincs or M-Audio systems, but not too expensive, compared to high quality HiFi speaker systems.

We have developed a pipe oriented designer solution for the Genelec system, containing solid wood foot, all cables invisible etc. for direct connection to audio cards (see pictures above).
The speakers are completely adjustable for optimal near-field monitoring.

(German) people are invited to have a demo in our show room.
Please contact us for details, prices, arranging a date for a visit etc.

PS:
@ T. Williamsen:
I don't exactly remember, who this person was, I think an English organist.

That's very interesting.

What are the Genelec references you selected?
The 8040A, with a 7070APM sub-woofer?

-Joe42

We used the new 8020 monitors together with the new 7050B subwoofer (25-80 Hz).

The results, especially also in the subbass area are spectacular.

The combination 8040/7070 subwoofer (19-80 Hz) is the next higher price class, doubling the costs, but I think, normally you don't need such power for organ near field monitoring.

Hector is looking somewhat older as are we all - in fact I hardly recognise him from the photo. However, I would imagine that he still remains amongst the great and the good and will certainly appreciate what is being done with HW.

All that might be missing from the Frankfurt scene is Feike Asma but I believe he has now passed away some years ago.

As a point of interest it has been reported back to me (perhaps erroneously) that the organs and sample sets shown cannot be used in churches etc. for one reason or another or what might seem to be closer to the truth is that they are not available to the big boys which is more likely to be the case.

Of course this may all be a complete misinformation/misunderstanding on the part of my source who is not renowned for his understanding of such matters and is now somewhat old !

I put it down to possible copyright or developer restriction problems whereby certain sets can only be used privately as is the case with one or two sets to my knowledge - then I might also be wrong,

Having said that if someone amongst the big boys wanted to use my sample sets for a complete range of organs then I would certainly be wanting to negotiate a far better pecuniary satisfaction than the sort that one obtains from our current labour of love so to speak !!!

Don't understand, what you want to tell us (me?), what are the "big boys"??

My understanding of this comment (and no doubt Helmut with explain) is that the sample sets are not “designed” to be used (re amplified) in a church that has its own natural acoustics i.e. if you played the sets in a church you would hear the reverb and acoustics of the sample set plus the church times etc

As you know some sample sets are produced "dry" and obviously these can by played without the doubling of the acoustic problem. From what I understand talking to the team at the show, Helmuts sets are designed to be played with headphones or a monitor system in a room to replicate the experience of playing a particular organ in a particular church I dont think its about competing with the "big bays as you put it,

But don’t quote me, I could be wrong!

The license for the use of these samples includes the following exerpted language....

"The licensee is not entitled to.......

5. use it for sound recording or public presentation without special permission...."

What exactly is the interpretation of "public presentation" as used in the license???
REgards
Dick Siegel

Hello all,

as Steven already wrote correctly, the OrganART instruments are specifically recorded and processed for authentic playing within the original room ambience.
This implies the use of professional headphones and/or studio near field monitor systems for obtaining the best room impression.

Playback of room based (wet) recordings within a room itself, therefore doesn't make much sense.
These topics were already discussed very much in past forum postings in detail.

These virtual organs are primarily tonal documents for research and study and are not intended for performances in public areas, like churches. Owners of really famous historic instruments don't allow their instruments to be played virtually in churches as a poor replacement for real pipe organs (so do I). There is a big responsibility for preserving the culture of those instruments.

This restriction is one of the numerous preconditions in getting access at all.

Hope, that helps a little bit to understand.

The point that I was trying to make to you/everyone has been partly explained by the additions of others after my post.

The "big boys" refer to the likes of Allen, Phoenix, Rodgers, Viscount Johannus, Woop, Keinle, GEM et al. who all visited your stand. All of them are obviously going to be interested in a system that pretty much makes their offerings look well under par and they will want to know A) whether they can buy into it or use it or B) whether they can develop something similar or better.

Viscount for instance is rejecting sampling altogether for future instruments because of their new "virtual pipe" technology. Phoenix uses sampled sound through computer soundcards in their own unique way, Artisan does it a different way again, though still using samples and some others still use the Bradford system or similar real time computing / synthesis methods.

The comments that came back to me were that HW couldn't be used in a church environment for whatever reason and was therefore totally useless as an alternative technology !

Obviously this is not the case in any way, shape or form since there are many church installations using HW (for better or for worse in some cases) but having said that, I understand the way in which you use your sample sets might lead them to come to this conclusion.

Apropos to that I have always firmly believed that there ought to be two sets of sample libraries in each case if one is looking to cover all angles because a sample set designed for personal small monitor/headphone usage in the home is utterly different from that required for a large building where speakers are at some distance and vice versa.

I'm sure any one of us will bear this out by the fact that sitting inside or directly in front of any organ is a totally different sound experience to listening or playing it from a distance.

I certainly respect the modus operandi of OrganArt and others working in the same direction and I intend to go in that direction with certain historical organs myself because it is the only way to retain the true authenticity of the subject in question.

Certainly taking some quaint little historical Shnitger or whatever and trying to make it into some big 4 manual is as idiotic as it is likely to be wrong just as taking the Albert Hall organ on huge wind pressures and trying to make it into a subtle little chamber organ is equally so. My comments were initially posted as a general concensus of opinion fed back to me from some of the larger manufacturers most of whom really haven't got a clue.

You only have to look at Allen who took the pipes from the Schulze at Tyne Dock chucked them into an anechoic chamber for sampling and proudly announced that their sound was Schulze. Sadly the end result was about as close to Schulze as you and I are to reaching Pluto by train !

Hope this clears things.

All that might be missing from the Frankfurt scene is Feike Asma but I believe he has now passed away some years ago.

He died in December 1984.