It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:44 am


Top 25 of most used sample sets

Discuss and share submissions to the Contrebombarde website.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

josq

Member

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

Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 9:45 am

Based on the number of recordings uploaded on Contrebombarde last 2 months, I have made a top 25 of most used sample sets. The total number of uploads in the last 2 months is around 520.

1) Caen 112
2) Utrecht 46
3) Wernigerode Ladegast 38
4) Rotterdam Marcussen 37
5) Zwolle 23
6) Kampen 20
7) Stade Hus/Schnitger 16
8-9) Salisbury 14
8-9) Velesovo 14
10-12) Dortmund Sauer 12
10-12) Metz Notre Dame 12
10-12) Vollenhove 12
13-14) St Maximin 9
13-14) Zurek organ 9
15) Metz St Eucaire 8
16-18) Hereford 7
16-18) Tholen 7
16-18) Wasselonne Silbermann 7
19-23) Ebersmunster 6
19-23) Kdousov 6
19-23) Paramount 4/50 6
19-23) St Anne's 6
19-23) St Michel 6
24-25) Brescia 5
24-25) Doesburg 5
Offline

sonar11

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 10:57 am

Well, there are statistics and statistics :) Personally I don't see the need to make these comparisons, but if I did, I would not pick the total number of uploads per organ; I would instead limit the upload count per organ, to 1 count per person. If you have one submitter posting 10 uploads of organ ABC, it should not count ten times more than 1 submitter posting 1 upload of organ DEF.
Offline

josq

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 11:12 am

I have thought about it, but I think that would also skew the picture: there are uploaders which use the same organ for many very different pieces.

There are really a lot of limitations to this kind of statistics, but still it raises a few interesting questions.

Does this list (in a very, very rough manner) tell something about the quality/usability of a sample set?

And aren't there organs which deserve more attention, like Arlesheim, Krzeszow and Doesburg?
Last edited by josq on Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Offline

Marco

Member

  • Posts: 420
  • Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2003 5:29 pm

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 12:24 pm

I am sorry but I disagree with posting this kind of statistic with a 'top 25 most used sample sets' heading, it will just give the wrong impression: obviously older organs will not be very highly represented (as in general odds are recent organs will get a spate of new recordings uploaded when they are released).

There are some interesting mustical statistics that could be gleaned by data mining the contrebombarde uploads:

- most popular composer
- most popular piece(s) for a specific composer
- most recorded pieces (overall)
- most popular period (by number of pieces for that specific century, say)
- most popular piece length (are most uploaded pieces short? long works?)
etc.

but I personally think that organ statistics could be misleading unless a lot of caveats were added to the statistic and statistics were not limited to a very short period of time
Offline

josq

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 12:32 pm

Marco wrote: obviously older organs will not be very highly represented


Personally, I was surprised to see Kampen (almost 5 years old) and Metz (over 6 years old) quite high in the list.
Offline
User avatar

kwbmusic

Member

  • Posts: 576
  • Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:06 am
  • Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 4:07 pm

"Personally, I was surprised to see Kampen (almost 5 years old) and Metz (over 6 years old) quite high in the list"

Why not? They don't decay with age do they? The do happen to be my own favourite organs and the sounds have been around for a number of hundreds of years!
Keith
Offline

sonar11

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 5:05 pm

josq wrote:I have thought about it, but I think that would also skew the picture: there are uploaders which use the same organ for many very different pieces.

There are really a lot of limitations to this kind of statistics, but still it raises a few interesting questions.

Does this list (in a very, very rough manner) tell something about the quality/usability of a sample set?

And aren't there organs which deserve more attention, like Arlesheim, Krzeszow and Doesburg?


Well it's your statistic, but it's badly flawed in its current form. You're not answering the question: "which are the most commonly used organs this past month", you're answering the question "which organs are the most commonly used this month, by those who upload the most". It's a totally different answer, and is why I said "there are statistics and statistics".

I may be a very small time contributor though I play a lot (hour every day). Should my 1 or 2 contributions per month weigh less in the "most commonly used organs" than somebody who uploads 4 pieces per day? Why would you ding my favourite samples just because I post less uploads than the next guy? It's still my favourite organ regardless of how often I upload. This is important because the amount of uploads is still heavily influenced by top contributors. If we were seeing many 1000's of uploads per month across a thousand or more uploaders I wouldn't have as much of a problem with your current statistic.

So to answer your questions: No, this list is not indicative of the quality of a set (popular != quality). A sample might be popular in this list because A) Some very prolific uploaders happen to play it, B) It might be cheap to purchase, C) it might be a "home organ" for a large amount of uploaders (ie Dutchies picking dutch organs) D) Some organs might be very newly released and not everybody is able to purchase a sample every few months (Doesburg, for example, might fall into this bracket). E) I'm sure there are many other reasons.

Sorry, but the only answer you can get is that the most prolific uploaders this past month happened to play on these 25 sets. That's it, nothing more. You can't use such a statistic for any other purpose.
Offline

oliver_mayes

Member

  • Posts: 531
  • Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2009 9:05 pm
  • Location: Crystal Lake, IL

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 7:01 pm

I agree with Sonar11. I play everyday and have two favorite organs but I don't upload to CC. I don't own any of the listed organs but do enjoy listening to others play. I don't see that the above list really means anything.
Ollie Mayes
Offline

petervdzwaag

Member

  • Posts: 23
  • Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 4:24 pm

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostMon Mar 17, 2014 7:28 pm

The popularity of Metz is not suprising at all. You get a great Cavaillé-Coll, it fits in 16GB and polyphony is no problem. I can't afford to buy a new top-end computer every year. I mean, 86GB for Zwolle. C'mon... :shock:
Offline

josq

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostTue Mar 18, 2014 1:51 am

Dear Sonar11, I have said that these statistics have a lot of limitations, and I'm aware of the one you mention, and I think that's true for everyone here.

Nevertheless, I should have added "on contrebombarde" to the title of this thread.

No one has to attach any conclusion to this list, but one interesting conclusing could be how much top contributors skew the representation of sample sets. It may make them interested in using different sample sets when possible - there are several good quality sets which really deserve more attention.

On the other hand, among the top uploaders there are a few very good organists. So if you consider to buy Caen, Rotterdam, or Utrecht, it may be ensuring that these sets are so popular in the context of Contrebombarde.
Offline

sonar11

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostTue Mar 18, 2014 7:51 am

josq wrote:Dear Sonar11, I have said that these statistics have a lot of limitations, and I'm aware of the one you mention, and I think that's true for everyone here.

Nevertheless, I should have added "on contrebombarde" to the title of this thread.

No one has to attach any conclusion to this list, but one interesting conclusing could be how much top contributors skew the representation of sample sets. It may make them interested in using different sample sets when possible - there are several good quality sets which really deserve more attention.

On the other hand, among the top uploaders there are a few very good organists. So if you consider to buy Caen, Rotterdam, or Utrecht, it may be ensuring that these sets are so popular in the context of Contrebombarde.


I don't think you get it; adding "on contrebombarde" to the title changes nothing. I don't have a problem (necessarily) using contrebombarde data, but you're using it incorrectly. Here is an example; Let's say tomorrow I go out and purchase a new ford focus (car), and tomorrow you go out and purchase a honda civic. Because I live in the country in North America, I use my focus every day, back and forth to work, to visit people etc etc. Because (let's say) you live in Europe with better public transportation, you only need to use your civic once a week. Now in April some car fans get together and try to draw conclusions; "the focus must be a more popular car than the civic because it is used more often in the month by me". Does that seem anywhere close to accurate? No, it isn't, because we both use our cars.

A person using a sample on a monthly basis should be a binary count; "yes", or "no".

Finally, you still seem to be under the impression that you can use popularity to define quality. You can't ever use popularity to infer quality, for anything, not just HW. That is a common misconception. Even if your statistics were correct, and even if those 25 samples were ranked correctly, none of that in any way means that "Rotterdam" must be higher quality than "Tholen". As I said in my previous post, a set can become popular for many reasons that have nothing to do with quality. Here is a hint (and possible reason): What do those 3 samples you listed (Caen, Rotterdam, Utrecht) all have in common? Well yes they are all Sonus Paradisi (and I agree that his sets are high quality, no problem there), but they are all famous organs in real life. Wouldn't that have a huge impact on "desire" to have the HW version of that organ? Compared to say, some less famous organ in Tholen, Smecno, or Zoblitz?

I will stop arguing, and I apologize to you for making an issue out of this (I'm not trying to attack you personally), but I wanted to post this because I am absolutely against publicly posting "these sets are higher quality than those sets" types of statements. You may form your own opinion of course, but I don't like public comparisons of X vs Y when it comes to sample set producers. HW is too small, and we need the efforts of all producers to keep this incredible software moving foward.

Edit: after reading your last post again, I also wanted to mention one other issue I have with your post; just because an organist is talented, it doesn't mean he automatically has the ability to pick out high quality sets. I know of several people who can barely play organ, but fix (or build) organs for a living and can easily pick out flaws in a sample. It also works the other way, I also know of organists far better than myself, but who don't necessarily know anything about sound, recording etc. Hopefully now you understand why I have so much trouble with what you've posted here.
Offline

josq

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostTue Mar 18, 2014 9:02 am

Many thanks for your extensive comments, Sonar11. Though I do not agree with everything you say, several of your points are valid and valuable.
Offline
User avatar

organtechnology

Member

  • Posts: 1886
  • Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2009 4:58 pm
  • Location: DFW, TX USA

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostTue Mar 18, 2014 10:12 am

I think what we are looking for here is like counting an album popularity by how many copies are sold and not by how many times the album is played. Its a different metric but both are valid statistics.

Pax,

Thomas
Complete Hauptwerk™ systems using real wood consoles, PC Sound Engines, Dante Audio for Home or Church. info (at) organtechnology.com http://www.organtechnology.com
Authorized Hauptwerk; Milan Digital Audio and Lavender Audio reseller.
USA and Canada shipments only.
Offline

1961TC4ME

Member

  • Posts: 3144
  • Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:45 pm
  • Location: Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostTue Mar 18, 2014 12:48 pm

It could be the top 25 organs used, the top 25 TV shows watched, the top 25 brands of beer sold, although all interesting statistics, I don't draw any conclusions from lists like this and they don't sway me one way or the other. I might say "oh, that's nice" but that's about as far as it goes with me. Each of us has different reasons for what organs we use, the kind of music you most like playing, sound preferences, stop preferences, how many manuals, wet, dry, the list could go on and on.

I use CCH for basically 3 things: The occasional upload as I may want to share something I did, to enjoy listening to others that have uploaded a piece, and last but not least to check out instruments that interest me. Whether they've ranked high on a list or low is not a factor for me, what I'm mainly interested in is do I like what I hear? Like purchasing anything else, does it do what I want it to do no matter where it landed in some list if even at all? I thank josq for the list and found it interesting but of no relevance to me one way or the other, again it was more just like "ok, that's nice" and simply entertaining. In his defense he appeared at least to me to more just be providing an FYI in case it interests you, not starting a debate on quality. Where the can or worms got opened up (and I think was perhaps misunderstood) is when it turned to the list being in some way suggesting the quality of a given set. When I read that part I immediately dismissed it and pretty much said to myself "no, I don't think that's the case" but it was an interesting thought.

If we were talking about compiling a list of the top 25 high schools in Minnesota and why based on graduation rates, proficiency, average grades achieved and so on, then that's a meaningful list to me. When it comes to a list like josq put together, things are in the eyes and ears of the beholder and there could be so many things that could be considered "quality" by a given person. I feel lists like this are fine, but since they can be so preferential and based on so many factors, they've never offered me much more than simply an interesting read and in the end I go with what I like anyways.

Happy Hauptwerking! :D

Marc
Offline

josq

Member

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

Re: Top 25 of most used sample sets

PostTue Mar 18, 2014 1:28 pm

I think I will stick with the following:

*This list is mainly a bit of entertainment

*The sample sets at the very top of the list are there not for nothing: they are well suited for many different pieces. To confirm this conclusion, don't look too much to the list, but listen to the uploads. (The Ladegast however probably got there because of the surround update)

*There are several sample sets which are known for excellent quality, but which are not on the list or at the bottom of it. Those sample sets may deserve a bit more attention on Contrebombarde. I know that several of the top uploaders do have some of these sets.
Next

Return to Contrebombarde Concert Hall

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests