It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 2:54 am


1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

Existing and forthcoming Hauptwerk instruments, recommendations, ...
  • Author
  • Message
Offline
User avatar

Voxus Organs

Member

  • Posts: 24
  • Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:13 pm

1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostTue Apr 09, 2013 3:04 am

Dear all,

I'm pleased to announce that our second sample set, the beautiful 1832 Van Dam organ, Grotekerk Tholen (NL) is now available for purchase from our website: http://www.voxusorgans.com/en/webshop/tholen
For more information about the organ visit: http://www.voxusorgans.com/en/tholen

Tholen is a 24bit, 4 channel, multirelease sample set. It features a easy to use perspective slider which allow you to move from very close to very far from the organ.


Anthony Van Noordt - Psalm 24,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmWmGoeHVxg

J.S.Bach - Little Prelude and Fugue in F BWV 556 ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74j-HknoJws

Lefebure-Wely Sortie in Eb,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq_rY10c5YI

K.J.Mulder Meditatie Psalm 133-3,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loHtDLxWxEo

F.Asma Fantasie over de Avondzang,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0LqgSVOAyc

J.S.Bach Trio Sonata No.4,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLnT7E-zDhA

W.A.Mozart Fantasia in F minor,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRQ3Wm5gjFQ


Best regards,

Voxus Organs
Offline
User avatar

IainStinson

Member

  • Posts: 1391
  • Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:08 pm
  • Location: NW England, UK

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostTue Apr 09, 2013 8:19 am

Thanks for the details of this instrument. The instrument and your sample set look very interesting. Thanks too for providing an English translation for those who need it. (There are still few words which are not English such as "meer dan 32 Gb RAM" but I'm sure we can all cope!)

Have you any plans to provide left and right stop jamb displays which could enable the organ to be used with dual touch screens? A number of the more recent larger sample sets have this feature.

Is the Echo division enclosed with a "swell" pedal or is it a quiet division without the ability to change the volume of the division?

Thanks.
Iain
Offline
User avatar

Voxus Organs

Member

  • Posts: 24
  • Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:13 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostTue Apr 09, 2013 10:36 am

Hello Iain, thanks for your interest!

IainStinson wrote:Have you any plans to provide left and right stop jamb displays which could enable the organ to be used with dual touch screens? A number of the more recent larger sample sets have this feature.


At this moment we have no plans for adding two extra tabs, but it is always possible to load the 2D stop tab on both sides. They are very easy to use.

IainStinson wrote:Is the Echo division enclosed with a "swell" pedal or is it a quiet division without the ability to change the volume of the division?


The organ has no swellbox in real life and we wanted to keep the samleset as close as possible to the original organ.

Thanks
Offline

adri

Member

  • Posts: 1545
  • Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2004 6:33 am
  • Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostSun Apr 14, 2013 7:10 pm

Small review of the Tholen sample set

I received this set free of charge in exchange for translation work done for their website as well as another larger project. So, as a token of gratitude I am offering a small review, after trying the set for about a week now.

First of all: the sampling quality is tops; the implementation of the "slider" is very successful; the acoustics are very pleasant, not too much and not too little; "just perfect". So Voxus has shown what they can do as a relative newcomer onto the scene of sample set makers. Indeed: high quality sampling! The delays have been worth it, I feel.

Because I no longer live in Holland since 1973, I cannot speak well about this organ for contemporary or early 20th century Dutch worship material, which is quite popular among organists there. The popular tremulants are very well implemented, and you have one on each manual!

Rather, I will speak more from the angle of the organ literature of the past, focused especially on the time period of a few decades before and after the year in which the Tholen organ was built. The 19th Century choral fantasias (e.g. Samuel de Lange), JG Bastiaans, Richard,Hol, CF Hendriks Jr., et.al. go extremely well here. I have tried several of their works on it already.

Note: If you are expecting too much from this organ, you might be disappointed. It's not a Baroque organ. it doesn't have that kind of brilliance. Yet, lots of baroque music will still go well here, however. But I do believe that it is very necessary to suspend all expectations for a moment and allow the organ to speak for itself. To force your own musical tastes on this or any organ would be an error anyway. It is never a good approach; after all, but there is so much music that will go very well here. Since Hauptwerk has a growing number of organs for every kind of music and taste (well, almost---I would welcome a large Renaissance organ like Leiden), there is no need for false expectations, nor forced approaches.

This organ invites me to discover all kinds of new music, and challenges me to work around the organ's shortcomings. So, it can and probably will make me a better musician. Also, not too complicated piano/keyboard music (especially early pianoforte repertoire) will additionally do very well here, as well as of course early and late rococo/classical organ music.

Tholen has a very low and only Mixtuur stop, but thanks to Hauptwerk, you can employ the octave coupler to add brilliance, if you wish. Perhaps Voxus could add such a feature for just this stop alone, as now all registers sound an Octave higher with this "trick".They wanted to stay as close as possible to the original organ, and I respect that fully. But nevertheless: a big thanks for the additional pedal couplers! Anyway, "we all have pipe dreams". The original "error", i.e., shortcomings in the plenum are indeed with the organ itself, and totally not with Voxus, who have done an absolutely fantastic job. In the plenum, the Posaun is tremendous, very impressive! It really adds that extra "oomph" to the tutti.

And that is one's challenge: you have to learn to deal with this organ, but as long as you do that and nothing more is expected, the organ will give you truly great satisfaction. It is a very musical two-manual organ with 3 manuals. The Knol organ in Hasselt has a mechanism on the Ruckpostiv that makes it possible to produce echoes. But here in Tholen you can do so with a 3rd keyboard! And that echo has a wonderful reed as well, as well as a 2' flute, which I really like a lot.

You can play chorale preludes of various periods, even by Bach and his contemporaries. As far as the larger Preludes & Fugues are concerned: if you register carefully, it can work; just don't overdo it with the number of stops. And/or use my octave coupler trick (!?). And 19th century sonatas in the Mendelssohn tradition will go very well here.

If I were the regular organist of Tholen, I would be very happy there and not complain about its minor shortcomings (and which organ is perfect, after all?). It is, and this is important, and I say it again, a very musical instrument, and the sampling is fantastic. The acoustics are perfect as well.

This organ is really growing on me and that's an excellent sign!

So if you are ready to start a new adventure, then Tholen is a very good choice. There is so much to explore with appropriate music! With so much free music in the public domain, such explorations do not have to cost too much either. Perhaps your library is already full of late 18th and early 19th century music, which still remains a somewhat overlooked corner of musical history.

Again, I want to congratulate the Voxus team with their quality results, and they are just getting started.......but enough said, time to play!

Bottomline: I highly recommend this sample set! It can and probably will make you a better musician.

---------------

P.S. The only thing I am puzzled about is the "Touch 3d" screen of the console, as the stop knobs are too small and on the left and right there is way too much wasted white space; this layout should be much larger and the stop labels ought to a lot bigger. I feel I cannot use this approach at all. It's probably set up for people to program stop knobs they already have on their console.

The addition of a man walking up the stairs and getting seated at the console is cute. Are there any other hidden surprises???
Offline

Positiv

Member

  • Posts: 18
  • Joined: Wed Apr 17, 2013 7:02 am
  • Location: Gaienhofen- lake of Constance- D

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostWed Apr 24, 2013 3:21 pm

Sorry Voxus Organs,

the prize of 349 € without a demoset it is for me too expensive (in Germany we say: "to buy the cat in the bag" :x ).Have you any plans to chance this?
Kind regards, Michael
Offline
User avatar

RichardW

Member

  • Posts: 899
  • Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:16 am
  • Location: UK

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostWed Apr 24, 2013 4:54 pm

apologies, somewhat OT.

Michael,

In England we have two related expressions: "To let the cat out of the bag" and "To buy a pig in a poke".

The first means to reveal a secret by accident. The second means to buy something unseen. A poke is a bag. A small poke is a "poke ette" which is where we get the word pocket. Early pockets were small sacks and not necessarily sewn into clothing. Rumour has it that unscrupulous piglet traders, who would usually sell the piglets live in a sack, would sometimes substitute a live cat. If the purchaser did not check then he had managed to get the price of a pig for a probably stray cat.

If the purchaser opened the sack to check then the cat was let out of the bag.

The above is as related to me by my French master at school in about 1963. The story is also to be found in "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" edited by Brewer.

Aside: I once went into a bookshop to ask for Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" and the assistant said she had no beer making dictionaries at all :)

Regards,
Richard
Offline
User avatar

engrssc

Member

  • Posts: 7283
  • Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:12 pm
  • Location: Roscoe, IL, USA

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostWed Apr 24, 2013 9:38 pm

RichardW wrote:Aside: I once went into a bookshop to ask for Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" and the assistant said she had no beer making dictionaries at all :)


Did you then ask if she had any ale making dictionaries? It maybe could be the phrase that threw her a left hook? I meant book. :roll:

Rgds,
Ed
Offline

josq

Member

  • Posts: 912
  • Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2012 12:11 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostThu Apr 25, 2013 8:09 am

Positiv wrote:Sorry Voxus Organs,

the prize of 349 € without a demoset it is for me too expensive (in Germany we say: "to buy the cat in the bag" :x ).Have you any plans to chance this?
Kind regards, Michael


In my opinion, it is not justified to say this organ is "too expensive". For example, Ebersmunster from OAM has also 29 stops and is even more expensive. And Utrecht from OAM has 50 stops for EUR 539, which is a comparable price per stop.

Note that Tholen has an adjustable organ/acoustics perspective, a feature that almost all other sample sets don't have.

However, I completely understand that you ask for a demo set. Personally, I have a lot of sample sets from Sonus Paradisi, and in most cases I got convinced by the demo set. In contrast, I have no sample sets from OAM, and part of the reason may be that they don't release demo sets.
Offline

sonar11

Member

  • Posts: 740
  • Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 3:03 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostThu Apr 25, 2013 11:45 am

josq wrote:In my opinion, it is not justified to say this organ is "too expensive".


He is not saying "it's too expensive", he is saying "it's too expensive to purchase without being able to test it via a demo".
Offline

Positiv

Member

  • Posts: 18
  • Joined: Wed Apr 17, 2013 7:02 am
  • Location: Gaienhofen- lake of Constance- D

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostThu Apr 25, 2013 4:06 pm

Yes sonar11, that' s it :!: And I don't want "buy a pig in a poke" Voxus Organs will become soon the reputation of OAM. I hope so :D Michael
Offline
User avatar

Voxus Organs

Member

  • Posts: 24
  • Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:13 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostFri Apr 26, 2013 4:34 am

Dear all,

We are working on a solution, probably in the form of a 14 day trial period. Until we realized this solution will not change the introductory price so those that are waiting for it can still benefit.

Sincerely,
Voxus Virtual Organs
Offline

sonar11

Member

  • Posts: 740
  • Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 3:03 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostSat Apr 27, 2013 11:57 am

Is the sample encrypted? If so, the easiest way for you to do that is just offer 15 days full money back guarantee (minus the fee to process the encryption / hauptwerk key update by MDA). MDA can of course guarantee that the set is uninstalled before you return the money. Then you don't have to waste time / money on a trial version or programming restrictions into the set etc. As a potential buyer of this set, it would be my preferred way of testing the organ.

I've done that before with one set, it was the full set with no time limitations or octaves disabled etc; I was looking for something different at the time (it's always good to stretch one's appreciation for different organ styles), but I couldn't really get used to the sound (style of the organ). I ended up playing the organ and could hear it the way it was meant to be, it was very helpful and though I did end up returning it I would have never bought it in the first place if I couldn't properly test it.
Offline
User avatar

Voxus Organs

Member

  • Posts: 24
  • Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:13 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostTue Apr 30, 2013 1:48 pm

Dear all,

If the sample set is not satisfactory, the purchase can be reversed within 14 days
for the cost of 15 euros (dongle update and handling).
To allow everyone to benefit from the introduction discount, it will be extended until May 31 2013

Sincerely,
Voxus Virtual Organs
Offline
User avatar

IainStinson

Member

  • Posts: 1391
  • Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:08 pm
  • Location: NW England, UK

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostTue Apr 30, 2013 4:43 pm

This is very good. Thank you.
Iain
Offline
User avatar

Voxus Organs

Member

  • Posts: 24
  • Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:13 pm

Re: 1832 Van Dam organ of Tholen now available!

PostFri May 17, 2013 4:24 pm

A modern organ composition by Ad Wammes, played on the Tholen sampleset.

Ride in a High-Speed Train:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... t7oNhSX-1w

Composers website:

http://www.adwammes.nl

Enjoy
Next

Return to Hauptwerk instruments

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests