1902 Cavaillé-Coll, Saint Eucaire - Now available

[B. Milan]

1902 Cavaillé-Coll, Saint Eucaire

We are pleased to introduce our latest offering for Hauptwerk, the 1902 Cavaillé-Coll two manual 18 rank symphonic organ from Saint Eucaire, Metz, France located not too far from the larger Notre Dame Cavaillé-Coll. The virtual instrument comes standard with multiple microphone perspectives, a perspective mixer, perspective presets, multiple releases, sampled tremulants for select ranks, several console page views and four extension stops.



The organ is a delightful piece of history that has stood the test of time and was recently given an extensive overhaul carried out by the Bernard Aubertin organ-building firm which will help lead it in to the future for decades to come.

Virtual Console

The all beloved virtual console playing in Hauptwerk:


Full view featuring all stops including the extended stops.


Left view featuring Récit stops including the extended stops.


Right view featuring Grand Orgue and Pédale stops including the extended stops.


Perform with a whole new perspective



We took a new approach with this organ and it is the first of its kind from MDA. We are offering two recording perspectives which are fully controllable by the organist via the settings page Perspective Mixer. By using these perspective faders you may choose between organ and church perspectives or anywhere in-between. This technique uses two independent microphone positions during the sampling process and both are played back simultaneously allowing you to set any mix that you prefer.

The Organ perspective is closer to the organ console and offers more of an "organist perspective" while the Church perspective is more reverberant (although not too distant) due to being recorded further from the organ out in the church.

Each perspective may either be mixed together in any combination from 0%-100% or is perfectly able to be used on its own without the need for the other perspective. This is ideal for those that may not have enough memory to load both perspectives together or that do not have the processor power to handle twice the polyphony. As it is only an 18 rank organ the net result for polyphony usage is equivalent to a 36 rank organ playing (if not using the extension stops).

Practice your music using the Organ perspective for a cleaner sound, but with natural reverb (and multiple-releases of course!) to help pinpoint those inaccurate fingerings or phrasings, then once you've mastered it, record to MIDI through Hauptwerk 4, then you can simply change perspectives to hear how you sound out in the church with a clean technique. You don't even have to get off the bench!

Several "Perspective Presets" are included that may be controlled via MIDI pistons or touch screen to change between the perspectives, or you can connect a MIDI controller directly to the faders (or again by using a touch screen) and create a custom mix.



The settings page includes an expression pedal link option which allows the two Récit expression pedals (one for Fonds and one for Anches) to act as a single pedal turning the Fonds expression pedal into a Master expression pedal.



It also includes a volume knob to control the blower noise levels.



The instrument comes complete with the virtual console display, a full view display, left and right jambs and the perspective mixer settings page as well as both organ and church perspective recordings for each rank. We also are including sampled tremulants for the Voix Humaine 8 and Basson/Hautbois 8 ranks offering the best possible reproduction of tremulants for virtual organs.

As mentioned, we're including 4 additional ranks created from the sample material which expands the organ to 22 ranks (44 ranks when loaded with both perspectives plus additional sampled tremulant ranks brings the complete organ to 48 ranks loading in Hauptwerk).

A. Cavaillé-Coll for everyone

And now for the best part... we are offering all of this for a very low starting price of only $99. We've priced it such that nearly all Hauptwerk 4 users can get their hands on a top French romantic organ while keeping some money in the bank.

We will begin accepting orders this Friday. As usual it will be available for immediate download (roughly 14 GB over 4 installer files) and it also comes on 4 DVDs. Memory requirements range from around 2 GB up to 16 GB depending on the configurations in both Hauptwerk and if you load one or both perspectives. Several audio demos will be available and we will also have a short video walk through of the instrument.

Lastly, the first 10 customers will receive a free booklet in French that outlines the history of the organ as well as information about the restoration process and contains numerous photographs taken during the restoration. We only have 10 to give away (direct from St. Eucaire), so if you want one watch this forum or sign up for our newsletter at http://www.milandigitalaudio.com/newsletter or check back to our website to get notice of the release this Friday and be one of the first 10 people to purchase the instrument.



Fear not, if you are not in the top 10, you can still read the history as we have done a little of our own translating which will be published on our website History page for the instrument.

We hope you will be as excited about this new release as we are and we look forward to hearing you play music on it.

I'll post back here once the shop is ready for accepting orders, until then please enjoy a little Vierne demo which sounds lovely on this instrument using a mix of the two perspectives. Further details regarding the organ, it's specification and its history will be included on our website.

Fantastic! Looks like my guess of a Farnborough Abbey sized Cavaillé-Coll wasn't far wrong then...

[micdev]

Brett,

Congratulation for what look like a great organ, not too resources intensive and at a very affordable price. Should be appealing to a lot of Hauptwerk users. The "perspective", as you explained will be ideal for learning/practice.

Lots of interesting "stuff" in that exciting announcement.

Best of luck with this new instrument

Regards
François

P.s. Brett, would it be possible to scan St-Eucaire booklet so that the "not first 10" can still download it? (There is maybe some copyright issues thou..)

What a very affordable jewel¡ Amazing, astonishing...and more synonymous: You guys do not stop inventing beyond our imagination¡¡¡
Thanks¡
Luis

Here's a French website with lots of info/photos:


http://orguesainteucaire.free.fr/Cadre%20site.htm

This looks very interesting Brett, I think you've just raised the bar on what new samples should be like... Sampled tremulants, surround, and perspectives; not to mention some pretty stunning graphics! I'd love to hear more recordings of it though before possibly placing an order

videos/audio:

http://www.youtube.com/user/eukkarius?feature=watch







Specification of actual organ:
(MDA's screenshots shows an extended version of the organ)

Grand-orgue
Bourdon 16
Montre 8
Bourdon 8
Flûte harmonique 8
Salicional 8
Prestant 4

Récit expressif
Cor de Nuit 8
Viole de Gambe 8
Voix céleste 8
Flûte octaviante 4
Nazard 2 2/3
Flageolet 2
Plein-Jeu 3 grs
Basson 16
Trompette 8
Basson-Hautbois 8
Voix humaine 8

Pédale
Contrebasse 16
Soubasse 16
Flûte 8
Bourdon 8
Violon 8

Combinaisons
Accouplements II/I en 16 et 8
Tirasses I et II
Appel d'anches II
Expression des fonds II
Expression des anches II
Pédale d'orage
Trémolo des fonds
Trémolo des anches

Hello Brett,

I like the new features, perspective mixer, presets and so on, very cool! The price is very cool as well!

I can imagine you will be swamped with orders come Friday, you will find mine in the pile along with all the others.

Excited to get this one!

Marc

I guess I could always "wait and see"... but the curiosity is killing me; how dry is the "dry" / "organ" perspective? If I wanted it to get as dry as possible (for practicing), how many seconds would the reverb be?

[B. Milan]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

I guess I could always "wait and see"... but the curiosity is killing me; how dry is the "dry" / "organ" perspective? If I wanted it to get as dry as possible (for practicing), how many seconds would the reverb be?

It's not dry at all and still has acoustics (note, it is not called a Dry perspective, rather Organ perspective), but the direct pipe sound itself is more prevalent then the acoustic due to the microphones being closer (up in the organ loft near the organist). If you want you may use the Hauptwerk release truncation option to shorten the reverb, but I think you will find that it has a nice natural sound out of the box which still offers a less reverberant practice instrument than the church perspective. Acoustics in the church are around 3-3.5 seconds on average.

Hello Brett,

I noticed the varying levels of RAM required depending on how it's loaded. From what I can gather here it looks like a person can load it either as "organ" perspective (i.e. can't adjust the perspective), "church" perspective (same), or load it using combination of both and then use the sliders to adjust the acoustics to one's liking? If so, can it also be safe to assume when loading so a person is able to use the slider ajustment, is it then in surround sound?

I see you mentioned a walk-through video and will probably explain how this all works then in more detail.

Thanks,

Marc

[B. Milan]

Hello Marc,

It's quite simple actually. Each rank has two entries in the initial rank option screen labeled Organ and Church. If you load both Organ and Church ranks, then you can mix between them, if you only load one of the ranks but not the other than the mixing will have no effect since the alternate rank it not loaded.

You can certainly use them as surround if you like and route the organ ranks to closer speakers and the church ranks to rear speakers etc. We didn't want to label it as a surround instrument since the surround channels generally imply mostly just reverb and not a perspective that might be playable itself without a front channel sounding. With ours you can use either/or, or both together.

One you see how it works you will easily understand how it comes together.

Hello Brett,

I think that's a fantastic idea! Thanks for the explanation. I look forward to getting this set and trying out the various options, it also gives me an excuse to finally address that 8gb limit on my computer.

Marc

Do the church and organ perspectives take into account the random de-tuning feature in HW, or could one end up with a case where the two perspectives are not in tune with each other (as often happens at present with "surround" instruments)?

[B. Milan]

Hello Carson,

Great question. In order to work around this we fixed the temperament option to Original organ tuning. With this the random detuning options in Hauptwerk are ignored.

Even if we set the identical ranks with the same parameters the fact is that they would still be random, so there is a chance they could drift in pitch. The current version of Hauptwerk doesn't have anything to cater for this so it cannot be worked around within the organ definition (we have however logged as a future enhancement in Hauptwerk to allow for this). We could have set the random tuning parameters to 0 however then when a temperament other than original is chosen the organ would be in perfect tune which we felt sounded too sterile and digital and wasn't something that we would want reflecting for the sound of the organ, therefore in order to make sure that there are no potential tuning pitfalls such as the others you mentioned and to ensure that the organ will remain sounding realistic we set it to only play at original temperament.

We did however go through and re-tune many pipes to give it a more stable tuning overall where notes may have been beating a lot. Those using the Advanced Edition can of course still tune each pipe further if they wish using the pipe and rank voicing tools.

That said, the base pitch option may still be changed, so if you don't want to use the base pitch of its current temperament which was at 441.5 you can set it back down to 440 (but the temperament ratio itself will not change as this is treated separately in Hauptwerk 4).

Lastly, the samples are already prepared for any future updates that would allow us to use other temperaments (meaning the samples have the actual pitch embedded within them which is required for Hauptwerk to properly use other temperaments), so once we can get this into Hauptwerk a simple change to the ODF will offer an update for this.

I hope this helps.