Fri Sep 02, 2022 4:24 pm
There has been a lot of discussion about how realistic Hauptwerk Cavaille-Coll's sample sets sound (all versions and producers, Metz, Caen, Nancy ) compared to their real Cavaille-Coll counterparts. The truth is, not very realistic at all. That's not to say that the sample sets don't sound good, they do, but to suggest that they sound like Cavaille-Coll's is a stretch. And this is not just my opinion, but that of a close organist friend and colleague of mine that is a titular organist at a, you guessed it, Cavaille-Coll. That opinion is also shared with their curators. In their words, "it sounds good, but not like a Cavaille-Coll".
I don't know what is missing in the sound that allows such criticism. Is it the number of speakers, the type of speakers, number of channels, etc. ? I only listen through headphones ( AKG 701's) so only hear everything through two channels, but even listening to a CD, DVD or even a HD Youtube recording through these same headphones, I always can tell what is Hauptwerk and what is a real intrument recording.
Its unfair to blame Hauptwerk technology because it is still as good as ,or better, than any of the commercially available digital organs. I consider my Hauptwerk to be the perfect practice organ with unprecedented realism and have said that for almost fifteen years. But when it comes to duplicating a Cavaille-Coll it falls short. I recently acquired the Nancy sample set and didn't find it to be any more realistic than any of the earlier sample sets. I guess there are too many variables and parameters (microphone placement, microphone distance, channels, (2 vs 32) to make an accurate sample identical to the real pipe in its real acoustic environment.