Hello All--
I've finally achieved what I think will by my setup for quite some time. (Much thanks to my very patient and loving wife!)
I've had a long journey to where I am now (haven't we all.) It all started with the generous offer from my parent's-in-law when they offered to help me purchase the 3 manual johannus I found online. It was quite a steal, especially considering it's (relatively new) vintage, built in MIDI, and very light use (older retired gentleman). At the time, I was still working on my master's degree in pipe organ performance. I've always lamented the fact that organists are always stilted when it comes to getting their own instruments. Thankfully, my in-laws are extremely generous.
As soon as I got the Johannus I knew I wanted to do hauptwerk. This of course started with my laptop and the free version of hauptwerk and some small free samplesets. It was a great start. Eventually I purchased two equator audio d5's and about 6 months later I got the smallest SVS sub, the sb-1000. I also found a dealer on ebay who sold factory sealed saffire pro 40's for much cheaper than retail (score!). This resulted in what you see below:
I always felt assaulted a bit by monitors (speakers) being right in front of my face so I put them up on monitor stands. This helped at the expense of a little bit of clarity. Unfortunately, my music room is a bedroom in our house with the organ, a dresser, a desk, 4 doors (hallway, closet, bathroom, back door), and my grand piano in it so I don't have any room to change a thing until we move....
Always on the prowl to see how I could expand, about 4 months ago I stopped into a local pawn shop and found two Rokit 8's (g2) for $200 for the pair (each normally sells for $250) which I thought was a steal. I find them a bit boomy so I didn't want to use them as mains, so I ended up relegating them to be my rear channels. To have them as rears I needed stands so I did some searching and found some quicklok stands that are very heavy duty. They are also quite tall at 43" which puts the speakers at perfect head height while seated on the bench. (As an added bonus, I paid 30% of retail for these. I ordered them from a seller on amazon. Turns out, a system glitch gave them to me at the (very) wrong price but they decided to honor the sale! Score!)
(In the middle you can see my partially restored 1903 Chickering Parlor grand which weighs in quite substantially at 6'4" and way too many pounds... Another ebay find!)
Finally, as christmas approached I was interested in getting at least a second set of monitors for my front channels. Originally I ordered a pair of Focal Alpha 65's from sweetwater but ended up sending them back. They are phenomenal speakers, but I didn't get as much of a bass gain as I was hoping and I didn't think that their substantial price hike warranted the smallish gain I felt I got over the equator d5's. So, I sent them back and discovered a sweet deal on sweetwater's website: at the time of my order, the presonus Eris E5's were going for buy one get one half off. My Sweetwater rep offered me the deal on all 3 pair so I took the plunge. I figured that while they aren't top of the line speakers, having more of a pretty decent speaker would be better (for what I was wanting anyway) than one pair of super speakers. This way I could get not only a broader sound, but make use of the 10 outs on the saffire pro as well as lower each speaker's load. (As an aside, I'm sure there will be some purists who might disagree with me on this.... however, I was always bothered by how directional the sound was and how "narrow" the sound field is when you only have one pair right in front of you. I must say that I am much happier having a broader (literally) wall of sound since, to my ears, this strikes me as more realistic in my room... not to mention being able to hear various pitches move back and forth is awesome!)
Voila! As you can see, I had a problem: where do I put 6 new speakers?! I decided to get a nice piece of lumber, paint it black, cover it with a layer of 1/4" neoprene foam to isolate the speakers, and mounted it up on the two stands I already had. While it seems a little perilous, they are fairly sturdy, especially since the heads of the monitor stands clamp the board and the whole thing is pretty well balanced.
I mounted the speakers upside down to put the tweeter closer to my head for an (assumed) increase in clarity. The whole arrangement is the exact width of my console and leaves 1.5" in between each speaker. (For those of you not wanting to shell out and arm and a leg for monitor pads (especially if you need to treat multiple speakers like I did), consider getting a larger roll of neoprene foam online at amazon. It's fairly cheap and can treat a lot of area and still provide some benefit. (I found this idea somewhere else on some forum.) I was able to use the leftover foam to also pad my rear monitors and still have a nice chunk for underneath my sub, all for about $22.)
Also note my lighting solution: I found a hanging fixture at home depot. I think it's meant for dorm rooms but it works perfectly. All it is is a socket with a very long chord and some wall anchors. You simply pop in an anchor into the ceiling, twist in the provided hook, and hang a lamp shade on it. Then you can plug it into a wall socket. Works like a charm and is minimally invasive and can be positioned anywhere without having to do recessed lighting or actually wire for a new fixture.
I was able to find an awesome LED lightbulb that is a 100w equivalent so it is very bright, but it only uses about 13w. It runs cool (so much better than piano lamps!) and the peculiar thing about it is it is aim-able. It was designed for recessed fixtures but in this case, it is perfect. I've tilted it slightly forward (as you can see below) so the brightest portion of the beam is toward the music rack. Since it is directly over head, it lights up my whole console area. A little over-the-counter dimmer also makes it a nice evening light when the room isn't being used but I don't want it dark.
Speaking of lights, while my console has built in pedal lights on each side which are, in truth, quite acceptable, I wanted something brighter. Home depot to the rescue again! I found an awesome LED lightstrip that is almost as wide as the manuals. I mounted this squarely over the pedalboard and it makes for the brightest pedalboard you've ever seen. It has two settings for when I don't need it too much and because of it's width, it lights the whole area very evenly. I think it will help when I make some videos in the future. (Again-- it runs cool too. I had had a halogen lamp under there but kept burning my knees!)
Finally, I decided that I wanted to do two upgrades:
1.) I found that the MIDI functionality of the saffire pro 40, while adequate, felt to me a bit sluggish so I knew I needed a new (dedicated) MIDI interface.
2.) I wanted a bigger sub!
For MIDI, I settled in on the new iConnectMIDI2.
This unit is simply awesome. For mac's it requires no driver. It is simply plug-and-play. I have found that it is nice and quick (it is noticeably faster than the saffire IMHO). It also has dual in's and out's. This was important to me for future expandability. Eventually I want to replace my johannus's keyboards with 3rd party's while leaving as much of the original midi capability of the console in tact (if this is possible. this project is quite far down the road...) I wanted to be able to plug in the console as well as a new keyboard stack if necessary.
As for subs, SVS is awesome. They have a policy where if you order a sub and want to upgrade within a year, you may do so and get a full credit of the first sub towards the new one. Voila! I went from the little SB-1000 to the 65 pound behemoth PB-2000! Merry Christmas to me!
It was quite worth the upgrade and I eventually hope to acquire a second. (I also want to save for a down payment on a home so don't hold your breath.) I have it up on a table next to the console to place it a little closer to me to make it a bit more visceral. This puppy digs deeeeep (17hz -3db). It also peaks at 1100 watts so you can rest assured that it has some punch to it. Just got it in the mail the other day and listened to the Saint-Saens on it and WOW. WOW. You don't know what you're truly missing until you have a sub that truly digs super deep with gusto.
A few other tidbits and I'll wrap up.
I am very fortunate in that my console is fully MIDI capable. While the pistons are proprietary and I haven't been able to get HW to recognize them, all my manuals, pedals, and all my stop tabs are fully programable. Since this model has one of the larger stoplists, I find I'm rarely wanting for a tab to use (save it's european omission of super and sub couplers). Each manual has principals, flutes, strings, celests, all the usual mutations and reeds, etc. When I'm programming a new organ, I simply use whatever stop tab corresponds mosts closely. IE- a 8' Montre on the GO gets the 8' Principal tab on the great. It's simple enough and works quite well. The St. Eucaire sample set translates very nicely to my organ's physical stoplist. Since I can't reassign the pistons, I simply use my 8 levels of internal memory to control the physical stops which activate the virtual stops. Not quite as flexible as using only HW's built in controls, but still 100% functional. (As a quick aside for 3m organ users out there: use your 3rd manual as a permanent coupling manual for smaller 2m virtual instruments!)
_________
I was having quite the ground hum issue so I decided to invest in some power conditioners. (We have really dirty power here and it flickers a lot too. I have a battery backup on my computer and in under a year it has registered 372 different times it has needed to kick on....)
I ended up purchasing two Furman M-8x2's for safety reasons. I'll add that I live in Oklahoma and we get crazy thunderstorms. I didn't want to risk a surge wiping out thousands of dollars worth of organ and speakers. If you've never watched a video of how power conditioners work, google it. There's one that compares a furman to a regular power strip. Each has a lightbulp powered up from it. The demo deliberately surges the furman and the powerstrip. The powerstrip's lightbulb burns up at the surge and the strip catches on fire and literally burns up. The furman simply shuts off, waits for regular power conditions, and then powers back on. Simple as that. So, I have one guarding the console, monitor, audio interface, and lighting, and the second acting as protection feeding my 3rd unit the PylePDBC70 which feeds my speakers (excluding the sub).
The Pyle is a lifesaver for me. Since I have my monitors mounted up above me, their power switches are inaccessible. So, I use this strip to turn my 8 front monitors on and off 1 by 1 so I don't overload the outlet by powering them all on at once. It works like a charm! I couldn't recommend it more highly. It also has some 50/60hz filtering which is common noise introduced by AC units. I've noticed that the hiss my speakers give is more "white" and quieted now.
______________________________________________
So, that's my story. I hope you enjoyed the journey as I have. It's taken me well over 2 years but I'm finally to a point where I can smile in a big way. I simply love learning about other people's setups so I wanted to share mine in full detail for anyone else out there like me.
To summarize:
I'm running Hauptwerk Advanced (current) on a 27" imac (3.5 GHz Intel Core i7) with 32gb of ram
3m Johannus Sweelinck 30 w/ full MIDI. I've wired a 30' firewire cable to the Saffire Pro 40 interface which controls 8 channels of front audio. (I also ran a very long HDMI cable over to the hauptwerk screen as well.) I have the 6 Eris E5's as 3 stereo pair in my 'main' group and the two Equator d5's as a stereo mix down. I have a stereo Nuforce uDAC feeding my rear channels with a splitter for the sub. (This makes a very easy and great stereo setup for anyone with small setups who want to feed monitors or headphones at a great price! This was my first audio interface with my laptop but it works so well I still use it.) I direct all rear and pedal ranks to this group and use the sub's built in crossover controls. My primary samplesets are the St. Eucaire CC and the Claviorganum (new from sonus paradisi) which serves as a phenomenal little practice instrument. Nice and dry like a practice room with cute 8+4' flutes. I also thoroughly enjoy the Mietke harpsichord.
Cheers to all and thanks for reading!
James
I've finally achieved what I think will by my setup for quite some time. (Much thanks to my very patient and loving wife!)
I've had a long journey to where I am now (haven't we all.) It all started with the generous offer from my parent's-in-law when they offered to help me purchase the 3 manual johannus I found online. It was quite a steal, especially considering it's (relatively new) vintage, built in MIDI, and very light use (older retired gentleman). At the time, I was still working on my master's degree in pipe organ performance. I've always lamented the fact that organists are always stilted when it comes to getting their own instruments. Thankfully, my in-laws are extremely generous.
As soon as I got the Johannus I knew I wanted to do hauptwerk. This of course started with my laptop and the free version of hauptwerk and some small free samplesets. It was a great start. Eventually I purchased two equator audio d5's and about 6 months later I got the smallest SVS sub, the sb-1000. I also found a dealer on ebay who sold factory sealed saffire pro 40's for much cheaper than retail (score!). This resulted in what you see below:
I always felt assaulted a bit by monitors (speakers) being right in front of my face so I put them up on monitor stands. This helped at the expense of a little bit of clarity. Unfortunately, my music room is a bedroom in our house with the organ, a dresser, a desk, 4 doors (hallway, closet, bathroom, back door), and my grand piano in it so I don't have any room to change a thing until we move....
Always on the prowl to see how I could expand, about 4 months ago I stopped into a local pawn shop and found two Rokit 8's (g2) for $200 for the pair (each normally sells for $250) which I thought was a steal. I find them a bit boomy so I didn't want to use them as mains, so I ended up relegating them to be my rear channels. To have them as rears I needed stands so I did some searching and found some quicklok stands that are very heavy duty. They are also quite tall at 43" which puts the speakers at perfect head height while seated on the bench. (As an added bonus, I paid 30% of retail for these. I ordered them from a seller on amazon. Turns out, a system glitch gave them to me at the (very) wrong price but they decided to honor the sale! Score!)
(In the middle you can see my partially restored 1903 Chickering Parlor grand which weighs in quite substantially at 6'4" and way too many pounds... Another ebay find!)
Finally, as christmas approached I was interested in getting at least a second set of monitors for my front channels. Originally I ordered a pair of Focal Alpha 65's from sweetwater but ended up sending them back. They are phenomenal speakers, but I didn't get as much of a bass gain as I was hoping and I didn't think that their substantial price hike warranted the smallish gain I felt I got over the equator d5's. So, I sent them back and discovered a sweet deal on sweetwater's website: at the time of my order, the presonus Eris E5's were going for buy one get one half off. My Sweetwater rep offered me the deal on all 3 pair so I took the plunge. I figured that while they aren't top of the line speakers, having more of a pretty decent speaker would be better (for what I was wanting anyway) than one pair of super speakers. This way I could get not only a broader sound, but make use of the 10 outs on the saffire pro as well as lower each speaker's load. (As an aside, I'm sure there will be some purists who might disagree with me on this.... however, I was always bothered by how directional the sound was and how "narrow" the sound field is when you only have one pair right in front of you. I must say that I am much happier having a broader (literally) wall of sound since, to my ears, this strikes me as more realistic in my room... not to mention being able to hear various pitches move back and forth is awesome!)
Voila! As you can see, I had a problem: where do I put 6 new speakers?! I decided to get a nice piece of lumber, paint it black, cover it with a layer of 1/4" neoprene foam to isolate the speakers, and mounted it up on the two stands I already had. While it seems a little perilous, they are fairly sturdy, especially since the heads of the monitor stands clamp the board and the whole thing is pretty well balanced.
I mounted the speakers upside down to put the tweeter closer to my head for an (assumed) increase in clarity. The whole arrangement is the exact width of my console and leaves 1.5" in between each speaker. (For those of you not wanting to shell out and arm and a leg for monitor pads (especially if you need to treat multiple speakers like I did), consider getting a larger roll of neoprene foam online at amazon. It's fairly cheap and can treat a lot of area and still provide some benefit. (I found this idea somewhere else on some forum.) I was able to use the leftover foam to also pad my rear monitors and still have a nice chunk for underneath my sub, all for about $22.)
Also note my lighting solution: I found a hanging fixture at home depot. I think it's meant for dorm rooms but it works perfectly. All it is is a socket with a very long chord and some wall anchors. You simply pop in an anchor into the ceiling, twist in the provided hook, and hang a lamp shade on it. Then you can plug it into a wall socket. Works like a charm and is minimally invasive and can be positioned anywhere without having to do recessed lighting or actually wire for a new fixture.
I was able to find an awesome LED lightbulb that is a 100w equivalent so it is very bright, but it only uses about 13w. It runs cool (so much better than piano lamps!) and the peculiar thing about it is it is aim-able. It was designed for recessed fixtures but in this case, it is perfect. I've tilted it slightly forward (as you can see below) so the brightest portion of the beam is toward the music rack. Since it is directly over head, it lights up my whole console area. A little over-the-counter dimmer also makes it a nice evening light when the room isn't being used but I don't want it dark.
Speaking of lights, while my console has built in pedal lights on each side which are, in truth, quite acceptable, I wanted something brighter. Home depot to the rescue again! I found an awesome LED lightstrip that is almost as wide as the manuals. I mounted this squarely over the pedalboard and it makes for the brightest pedalboard you've ever seen. It has two settings for when I don't need it too much and because of it's width, it lights the whole area very evenly. I think it will help when I make some videos in the future. (Again-- it runs cool too. I had had a halogen lamp under there but kept burning my knees!)
Finally, I decided that I wanted to do two upgrades:
1.) I found that the MIDI functionality of the saffire pro 40, while adequate, felt to me a bit sluggish so I knew I needed a new (dedicated) MIDI interface.
2.) I wanted a bigger sub!
For MIDI, I settled in on the new iConnectMIDI2.
This unit is simply awesome. For mac's it requires no driver. It is simply plug-and-play. I have found that it is nice and quick (it is noticeably faster than the saffire IMHO). It also has dual in's and out's. This was important to me for future expandability. Eventually I want to replace my johannus's keyboards with 3rd party's while leaving as much of the original midi capability of the console in tact (if this is possible. this project is quite far down the road...) I wanted to be able to plug in the console as well as a new keyboard stack if necessary.
As for subs, SVS is awesome. They have a policy where if you order a sub and want to upgrade within a year, you may do so and get a full credit of the first sub towards the new one. Voila! I went from the little SB-1000 to the 65 pound behemoth PB-2000! Merry Christmas to me!
It was quite worth the upgrade and I eventually hope to acquire a second. (I also want to save for a down payment on a home so don't hold your breath.) I have it up on a table next to the console to place it a little closer to me to make it a bit more visceral. This puppy digs deeeeep (17hz -3db). It also peaks at 1100 watts so you can rest assured that it has some punch to it. Just got it in the mail the other day and listened to the Saint-Saens on it and WOW. WOW. You don't know what you're truly missing until you have a sub that truly digs super deep with gusto.
A few other tidbits and I'll wrap up.
I am very fortunate in that my console is fully MIDI capable. While the pistons are proprietary and I haven't been able to get HW to recognize them, all my manuals, pedals, and all my stop tabs are fully programable. Since this model has one of the larger stoplists, I find I'm rarely wanting for a tab to use (save it's european omission of super and sub couplers). Each manual has principals, flutes, strings, celests, all the usual mutations and reeds, etc. When I'm programming a new organ, I simply use whatever stop tab corresponds mosts closely. IE- a 8' Montre on the GO gets the 8' Principal tab on the great. It's simple enough and works quite well. The St. Eucaire sample set translates very nicely to my organ's physical stoplist. Since I can't reassign the pistons, I simply use my 8 levels of internal memory to control the physical stops which activate the virtual stops. Not quite as flexible as using only HW's built in controls, but still 100% functional. (As a quick aside for 3m organ users out there: use your 3rd manual as a permanent coupling manual for smaller 2m virtual instruments!)
_________
I was having quite the ground hum issue so I decided to invest in some power conditioners. (We have really dirty power here and it flickers a lot too. I have a battery backup on my computer and in under a year it has registered 372 different times it has needed to kick on....)
I ended up purchasing two Furman M-8x2's for safety reasons. I'll add that I live in Oklahoma and we get crazy thunderstorms. I didn't want to risk a surge wiping out thousands of dollars worth of organ and speakers. If you've never watched a video of how power conditioners work, google it. There's one that compares a furman to a regular power strip. Each has a lightbulp powered up from it. The demo deliberately surges the furman and the powerstrip. The powerstrip's lightbulb burns up at the surge and the strip catches on fire and literally burns up. The furman simply shuts off, waits for regular power conditions, and then powers back on. Simple as that. So, I have one guarding the console, monitor, audio interface, and lighting, and the second acting as protection feeding my 3rd unit the PylePDBC70 which feeds my speakers (excluding the sub).
The Pyle is a lifesaver for me. Since I have my monitors mounted up above me, their power switches are inaccessible. So, I use this strip to turn my 8 front monitors on and off 1 by 1 so I don't overload the outlet by powering them all on at once. It works like a charm! I couldn't recommend it more highly. It also has some 50/60hz filtering which is common noise introduced by AC units. I've noticed that the hiss my speakers give is more "white" and quieted now.
______________________________________________
So, that's my story. I hope you enjoyed the journey as I have. It's taken me well over 2 years but I'm finally to a point where I can smile in a big way. I simply love learning about other people's setups so I wanted to share mine in full detail for anyone else out there like me.
To summarize:
I'm running Hauptwerk Advanced (current) on a 27" imac (3.5 GHz Intel Core i7) with 32gb of ram
3m Johannus Sweelinck 30 w/ full MIDI. I've wired a 30' firewire cable to the Saffire Pro 40 interface which controls 8 channels of front audio. (I also ran a very long HDMI cable over to the hauptwerk screen as well.) I have the 6 Eris E5's as 3 stereo pair in my 'main' group and the two Equator d5's as a stereo mix down. I have a stereo Nuforce uDAC feeding my rear channels with a splitter for the sub. (This makes a very easy and great stereo setup for anyone with small setups who want to feed monitors or headphones at a great price! This was my first audio interface with my laptop but it works so well I still use it.) I direct all rear and pedal ranks to this group and use the sub's built in crossover controls. My primary samplesets are the St. Eucaire CC and the Claviorganum (new from sonus paradisi) which serves as a phenomenal little practice instrument. Nice and dry like a practice room with cute 8+4' flutes. I also thoroughly enjoy the Mietke harpsichord.
Cheers to all and thanks for reading!
James
Last edited by Romanos on Mon Feb 09, 2015 9:41 am, edited 2 times in total.