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E.M. Skinner Preliminary Demo

PostPosted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 12:01 pm
by B. Milan
Greetings,

I'm pleased to announce that a preliminary demo for the upcoming E.M. Skinner organ is now available for download. You may find it here:

www.milandigitalaudio.com/Symphonie-Romane-Mvt-I.mp3

This is the first movement of Widor's 10th organ symphony (Romane) realized with HW 1.22. It demonstrates the full ensemble and richness of the symphonic organ along with the wonderful acoustics of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Chicago. You will also hear the blower noise sample running which recreates the natural environment and adds utmost realism.

The sample set is still in testing but should be ready in another couple of weeks. At this time PC requirements have not been documented, but it will be safe to say that the entire organ will not fit in under 2 GB of RAM.

For the ultimate listening experience I suggest you have your subwoofer turned on! Please feel free to comment or contact me with any questions. Once more demonstrations are posted we will begin taking preorders.

We hope you enjoy the new demo!

PostPosted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 6:36 pm
by Jim Reid
Hmmm, "the entire organ will not fit in under 2 GB of RAM".

Ok, somewhere, there has been a discussion of a "switch" somewhere,
in the organ .def file, or maybe in XP-32 which can be "set" to
allow an application to store over 2 GB of memory, or perhaps
for the application to access over 2 GB, in fact, as I recall up to
3 GB.

So, that will be required for the HW 1.22 Skinner; how do
we set up to do this? I have 4 GB of Crucial RAM installed
in anticipation of HW 2 someday, but might as well use some
of it now, as appears will be necessary.

Best,

PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:31 am
by ReinerS
There is only one thing I can say to this demo:
WOW!!!
This is just great!

I cannot imagine that a recording of the real organ sounds any better. How about putting one up for comparison?

I wish I could afford the necessary hardware and of course the sample set.
Keep up the good work.

Greetings
Reiner

Skinner Samples

PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 10:41 am
by PeterD
Brett

Excellent - your samples are a tour de force. Now I guess we have to persuade Martin to release a LARGEADDRESSAWARE version of HW 1.22- together with the /3Gb switch in XP Pro we should be in business !

Hopefully anyway !

Peter

PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:10 pm
by B. Milan
Ok, somewhere, there has been a discussion of a "switch" somewhere,
in the organ .def file, or maybe in XP-32 which can be "set" to
allow an application to store over 2 GB of memory, or perhaps
for the application to access over 2 GB, in fact, as I recall up to
3 GB.


Jim,

The switch has nothing to do with HW or the .organ file as far as I know. This is a setting you must change on your PC under Windows XP Pro I believe. I am not familiar with the method of doing so, but perhaps others that have done this successfully could share more information with you.

There is only one thing I can say to this demo:
WOW!!!
This is just great!

I cannot imagine that a recording of the real organ sounds any better. How about putting one up for comparison?

I wish I could afford the necessary hardware and of course the sample set.
Keep up the good work.

Greetings
Reiner


Hello and thank you Reiner. As I understand it, these ARE real recordings from the instrument!!! I do know what you mean, however I think it is best to leave this as is.

Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 10:41 am Post subject: Skinner Samples

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

Brett

Excellent - your samples are a tour de force. Now I guess we have to persuade Martin to release a LARGEADDRESSAWARE version of HW 1.22- together with the /3Gb switch in XP Pro we should be in business !

Hopefully anyway !

Peter


Hello Peter. Thank you! It was/is a huge project and lot's of hard work and time went into creating this sample set.

Remember that most organ literature will not call for all of the stops at any given time so it won't really be required for repertoire to have the entire organ loaded at once. The sample set will come complete with several *** SEVERAL*** .organ files which will accomodate various amounts of RAM, 2 and 3 manual organs, pipe families (Foundations 8) etc. There will also be a Master .organ file which will have the complete stop list and percussion listed. This will help faciliate individuals in creating their own personalized .organ files.

Skinner

PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 1:31 am
by GDay
Hello Brett,
You are very cruel indeed to issue such a fabulous demo while giving no release date or price information. I need to know whether or not I can afford this set. Don't keep us hanging!
GDay

PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 2:15 am
by BachsFugue
Brett,
The Widor was stunning, and the ambiance was spectacular. Well done!

PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 8:39 am
by ReinerS
Hello Brett,
sorry if I was unclear. I meant of course a recording of the actual pipe organ vs the same piece on HW with your sample set.

Greetings
Reiner

XP-32 and Dual Processors....

PostPosted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:26 am
by Jim Reid
Aloha,

It has been brought to my attention that dual processor motherboards
will "use" more than the 2 GB limit of RAM when XP-32 is the
operating system.

"WindowsXP has a 2GB limit with only one processor installed. On a
motherboard with two processors, the limit is 4GB. In order to get to
4GB, the RAM must be dual channel or DDR and installed in pairs."

And, those paired RAM chips must be for EACH CPU--- I think!
But maybe not. However, the penalty for the strips not being
in pairs is that the memory will operate at only about 50% of
rated speed, at least that is what I have been told.

In my set up here, I do have dual processors and each CPU has
one Curcial 2GB RAM strip of the DDR sort (actually even more as
they are ECC chips).

With XP-32 Pro installed with which I am operating my Hauptwerk
set up, when I check "system info" here is what I see:

Total Physical Memory...........4.096 GB
Available Physical Memory.....3.17 GB

So, does the above mean that XP-32Pro on this machine could
actually use up to that 3.17 GB available even if the RAM strips are
not in "pairs" for EACH CPU, but now just one 2 GB strip for
each of the Opteron CPU's?

If so, then I could load and use the full Skinner sample set on
my present set up (don't know if the full virtual console would
fit on the display or even if one will be available, however).

Best,

PostPosted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:41 pm
by B. Milan
Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 1:31 am Post subject: Skinner

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

Hello Brett,
You are very cruel indeed to issue such a fabulous demo while giving no release date or price information. I need to know whether or not I can afford this set. Don't keep us hanging!
GDay


Sorry about that! It certainly wasn't my intention to keep you in the dark. However a price has not been determined as of this date. As soon as it has I will post some information here and on our website. The plan was to have the Skinner released within the next couple weeks. I will still try to meet that deadline, HOWEVER, due to the size of the instrument and the length of the current samples (5-7 seconds of main attack then another several for release) it's been decided to go through the samples and redo as many loops as neccesary to get the file sizes down some more. As it looks the whole lot right now would come in at nearly 4 GB! So even those with the 3 GB switch would still not be able to load such a beast. Due to this there may be a slight delay on the Skinner release. However I hope it proves worth it so that uses may load much more together at the same time for realtime playing.

Please note that these current longer loops will be preserved and become available with an upgrade to HW version2. The multi Loop feature will use the current loops and the newly created ones plus possiblty another set depending on the outcome of the samples. If desired you can choose to load only the shortest loop pairs in HW2 thus saving more RAM.

If so, then I could load and use the full Skinner sample set on
my present set up (don't know if the full virtual console would
fit on the display or even if one will be available, however).


Yes, you could load the entire organ and a file will be available with the sample set. We've been working on the console layout and the entire stop list will fit if you have a monitor with a screen resolution of 1280x1024. It uses a 10 column layout with a Medium Large by Medium Large HW setting.

Thanks to everyone for the generous compliments!

PostPosted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:38 pm
by stenberg
Brett,

The following qoute is taken from Charles Braund of Silver Octopus Studios:

Of course the two programs (GigaStudio 3 and Hauptwerk) are entirely different animals and GS will be unlikely at any time, to cater for the many very specialist aspects of organ sound production that will be catered for by HW. However, for those who are happy with what it offers that is different from HW, it will be a very interesting project.

I know that I will certainly be running both programs since each has its own idiosyncrasies and benefits that are lacking in their counterparts. (Bet Martin will address those in time).


I totally concur with the above sentiments. However, until Hauptwerk 2 is released it would seem that GigaStudio has the upper hand when it comes to handling sample sets in excess of 2 giga. I understand you will also be releasing a Giga version of the Skinner Organ too and until Hauptwerk 2 is available that could be a more attractive option in the short term provided of course your Giga release is imminent.

You comments on this would be appreciated.

Gunnar

PostPosted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:56 pm
by B. Milan
Hi Gunnar. Yes two totally different beasts all together GS 3 and HW 2. GS 3 arrived here a couple weeks ago and I've had some time to begin learning it. I'd rather not talk too much about a Giga version on the HW forum since it is a bit inappropriate. I can say that it will be a while before a Giga version comes out. This is because I need to create several pre-registered combinations and record them as such from within Giga. Although the instrument stacking feature is a great improvement it will not help at all with polyphony the size of the Skinner. So I can't give you any promises on a release for that version yet either. I apologize that it has taken this long already with the Skinner samples, but that's what it takes to get it right and sound good. And yes a Giga release is imminent and will be eventually for all the sample sets.

Double RAM with Dual Processors and XP-32

PostPosted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:05 pm
by Jim Reid
Hi Gunnar,

Don't give up on using more than 2 GB of RAM with your present
dual processor PC. I believe that I can verify that my set IS using more
than 2 GB of RAM when I load my largest organ. The large organ is
a 25 stop instrument in Gonningen/Wurttemberg, Germany, see:

http://www.organartmedia.com/Goenn-Intro.html

The samples are by Prof. Helmut Maier, and are especially long, so per
my XP Pro system info read out, it stores 1.37 GB of data into the
RAM chips.

Now, my same screen reads out that only 3.17 GB of the 4 GB installed
is available to be used after XP Pro is up and operating;
or some 0.926 GB of the RAM are in use as "overhead" for the system:
XP, the SCSI drive and whatever else. I am surprised at such
a large amount going to overhead.

Anyway, after the Goenningen organ is loaded "only" 1.8 GB of RAM
remains unused.

So with the organ loaded, the total RAM being used seems to total
2.296 GB in use!

My next largest organ, at least in RAM sample space used is
the 3-manual Schantz organ by Jonathan Orwig; it consumes
"only" 1.26 GB when loaded; but these must be much shorter
samples than Prof. Maier's as the organ contains a total of 46
stops, but there is some "duplexing" (same stop playing on
more than one manual, maybe at a different pitch level, or
is that unifying?).

Charles Braund's 25 stop Romantic Organ, based upon pipe samples
from two or three Father Willis organs, uses only 400MB, but the
samples contain no reverb or other room acoutstics. The samples
are "dry" and the pipes were "miked" at very close range. Still, maybe
I am doing something incorrect here with the Willis samples, seems
to be a very low bit count in RAM for them.

Anyway, interesting to have learned this. Wonder what will pop out of
the woodwork next as we tinker with these virtual organs??

Best,

PostPosted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:21 am
by NeilCraig
Hi Jim

Why is XP using nearly 1GB of RAM? Worst-case scenario on my system (meaning no tinkering of services, firewall, NAV, various other things loaded at startup) is 157 and if I'm using Hauptwerk *seriously* i.e. recording a demo, Windows is given a sub-90MB footprint.

You might want to check you've not got things like QuickTime starting automatically, also have you checked for spyware? I had to "recover" a PC recently for a client who had so much spyware invading memory at startup that not even explorer.exe would load.

I'm not scare-mongering, just mystified as to why your overheads are so large.

Best wishes//Neil

PostPosted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:30 am
by cdatzko
NeilCraig wrote:Why is XP using nearly 1GB of RAM?


I have thought about this issue on my PC, too. I'm using around 300 MB right now, with 700 MB free. I think that Windows, if it has more available, uses more. Most of this is used for Cache, I think. I also think that there is an option somewhere in the Windows Control Panel where you can influence this behavior. I'd do this, if the system memory is little more than the memory required for an organ: Load an organ, play each and every note with every stop at least once, and then Windows should have noticed that this is all needed and you should be able to play smoothly.

Christian.