Fri Nov 04, 2022 12:15 pm
In the meantime, while "patiently waiting" for a better Skinner, I started listening to my old CDs of Girard, Stambaugh, and a few other Skinners to see if it was possible to get close to some of the sounds with the samplesets I have: Immanuel, San Francisco, Mt. Carmel Wet, and Glendale.
I'm mostly concerned with hearing an authentic big Skinner ensemble that I feel is missing, not signature stops. So Glendale is out of this exercise simply by being too small. Mt. Carmel Wet is out because of the single releases, and truncating them to add convolution reverb isn't very satisfactory to me.
On the CDs, I'm reminded of these attributes I used to love hearing on Skinner recordings:
1. Warm, strong, blended Diapasons -- not hard, biting, and completely disconnected from other flue families.
2. Shining upperwork -- not gritty and brittle.
3. Smooth chorus reeds -- not twisted-sounding Trumpets and Clarions that try to curse out the flue plenum.
Of course, I'm not the guy who sits near the organ in recitals -- it hurts my ears -- so I expect the room response to be very involved in the sound. Much the same perspective as the CDs I have.
So, can I get a sampleset to imitate that somewhat? The first thing to change is that the CDs are *never* as close to the organ as Direct/Dry and possibly even the Diffuse/Ambient positions in the samplesets.
In fact, the CDs are mixed to sound somewhere between the Diffuse and Rear-facing mic positions.
I tried the following experiment with San Francisco after some trial-and-error:
A. Route the Rear and Diffuse ranks to my front speaker groups.
B. Route the Direct (Dry) ranks to my rear + reverb speaker groups, using rear-facing IRs from St. Maximin, about 6 seconds.
C. Set sliders to Direct 16, Diffuse 64, Rear 127.
I also omitted the Great reeds, because their "oi" sound doesn't blend, and coupled the Solo Tuba, which is enclosed and blends pretty well, at 8 and 16 for full organ only. I also eliminated stops that weren't nominally in the original Skinner such as the Great Breaking Glass Mixture.
The result of letting the Rear mic position dominate is a surprisingly CD-like ensemble, if nowhere near perfect. I guess if you get far enough away from a brutally ugly-sounding organ up close, it can blend into something good...
I'm going to try this backwards approach with Immanuel if raising the levels on the Rear ranks turns out to sound okay. As shipped, the Rear perspective is comparatively too quiet to tell what it really sounds like. Of course, the Direct and Ambient perspectives of Immanuel already blend better than the corresponding perspectives of San Francisco. Different rooms, different organs.
So, trying to make use of what's available while we wait!
Edit: Quick test done on Immanuel. Ambient perspective alone has a nice dark sound that works for my front speakers. Rear perspective doesn't help to me, being thinner and not much more reverb, so I turned that ("Diff") slider off. The same rear approach as for San Francisco, Direct ranks with releases truncated routed to rear speakers with added reverb at about 40 - 50% volume on the slider gives me a plausible ensemble. More tweaking to do on both.