World famous organ of Martinikerk Groningen will come

Dear Jiri,

As the Martini organ requires Hauptwerk V, I would advise to offer it to the public while the discount for upgrading is still active. And for us to enjoy it most, before the Christmas break. For myself being able to play this very fine instrument would be a big incentive to switch to HW V now, and it would help me in my decision, also on how to spend the christmasbonus, to know the details of when it comes available, how good my computer needs to be and how much I'd be refunding you for the huge costs you have made. Not everybody may follow this topic so closely, and a new announcement of the organ being available will surely be picked up by many, even if people are busy with HW V.

If you are worried about the extra workload in handling the orders, you could also announce it now, but say it will be on sale at January 2nd (or whenever you return from holidays), and make another announcement then. Then we can already listen to the demos and plan for the HW V upgrade.

kind regards,

Sander

Thank you for the words of encouragement! I have uploaded St. Martini packages yesterday, for all the flavors which will be available. It will be the semi-dry, direct, diffuse, distant, rear channels. Alltogether 10 channels, 5 listener's perspectives. Sold in volumes according to the user wishes, because different people have different needs and preferences.

My testers are now testing the packages, if they are OK for the release. I expect this to happen during the weekend. If all OK, I will distribute the packages among my resellers to get them ready. And the release would happen towards the end of the next week. (But I do not wish end up as MDA with delaying the release more and more, so, I will not tell the exact date.) It may happen that my testers still discover some error and I will have to re-work the packages, causing further delays. So, I can never say the exact date of the release.

Looking forward to it!

Thank you very much ! This will be most appreciated by many people , I'm sure.

St. Martini, Groningen - a sample set for Hauptwerk
After a year of development, St. Martini sample set is ready for you. I gave all my skills to this sample set, since I want it to be the best sample set of all times. There is a good reason for that: the Groningen Green Monster, as it is sometimes called, is deemed by many as the organ no. 1 in the entire world. While sampling the organ for Sonus Paradisi, I was asking myself why is that, is it only a good marketing of the Groningen administration, or is there some ground for considering St. Martini to be the best organ in the world?

Well, I can say with certainty, that I have never heard an organ speaking in such a relaxed way. And you can feel as if the pipes rejoiced under your fingers. Of course subjective feeling, but for me, it is the best voiced organ ever. And the way it fits the sound into the acoustics of the gothic three naves is exceptional.

Since everyone has different ears, and different needs, I have used multichannel recording massively this time. As the result, my testers have helped to choose 10 channels for the finale release. Of course, not everyone needs all these channels.

The general purpose variant of the sample set is the "distant" perspective. Sold as a stand-alone 2-channel stereo sample set (sometimes called "wet"), it may be pleasing the majority of the Hauptwerk users, especially those who use headphones.

Who wish more detail of the pipe speech, those will prefer the diffuse perspective. Sold as a stand-alone sample set in a form of 4-channel surround, the diffuse perspecitve together with the rear samples.

Who like to experiment with adding reverbs, or moving the organ virtually into a different space, those will want the semi-dry variant of the sample set. With truncated releases, it is the most suitable perspective for the convolution reverb.

Who have complex needs, who wish to be able to choose the listening position in real-time, you will need the full surround variant, sold as 8-channel surround (direct, diffuse, distant, rear). The direct channels differ from the semi-dry variant, and are manufactured so as to fit the diffuse and/or distant samples, to make a nice blend .

See the presentation of the sample set for the full description.

http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/n ... rtini.html

Of course, there is a demo version for the surround as well as for the semi-dry perspectives available for free download as a small, stand-alone virtual organ. The demo sample sets will work in Hauptwerk 4. However, the full versions of the sample sets need Hauptwerk 5!

http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/blog/st- ... -demo-set/


To download quickly the demo or the full set, use the Direct Download Links instead. They will work for 2 weeks from now, approximately.

Dear Jiri, a long time ago you did a survey among your users, to know if we were in favor of encrypting the sets. I, like almost everyone, voted for encripting. You said that even in Italy there are fake resellers. Please, you should make their name public. I've always bought sets from you, but customers need to know their name to avoid making an unwary purchase.
P. Micarelli
Rome

I see Groningen is available now

Hello, Pio,
indeed, at that time (is it 6-7 years ago, already), most users wanted the encryption. I embraced it for my most precious sample sets. For other sample sets, I continue using plain wave format.

With purchasing, it is very simple: buy either directly on my web pages, or buy from theresellers whose names are on my internet pages.

So.. If we want to experiment with the IR-version and the 'normal' version we need to buy both semi-dry and surround sets?
Edit:
Nevermind i now see that a semi-dry demo set is also available.

So.. If we want to experiment with the IR-version and the 'normal' version we need to buy both semi-dry and surround sets?

Yes, indeed. The semi-dry variant is a completely different sample set. Many sample sets of Sonus Paradisi have a semi-dry (dry) variant along with the surround (wet) variant. And they usually do not share any samples. For st. Martini, the variants are completely independent in sound.

Acquiring both the variants together is the same as acquiring two different sample sets. Sometimes, a "bundle" price applies, but it is not very useful, since the experience of the past 10 (or more) years teaches, that the users of the dry and the users of the wet (surround) are two different groups of people. There is only tiny percentage of users who loves to have both the perspectives.

Of course, I have tried myself, during the development, to run the surround variant of the sample set, and the semi-dry + St. Martini IRs, side by side, trying to achieve the same sound from both. Frankly, it is not entirely possible, although when I tried hard, I had the impression that the sound is very similar. I was enthusiastic about it. But maybe that I have only fooled my own ears, which is very easy to do.

Given the many limitations of the Sonus Paradisi organ models, the semi-dry variant of any sample set is good for transfering the organ into a different space, rather than trying to reproduce the original acoustics. But again, we all have different ears, and when testing, we disagreed with my beta testers on the listening perspecitves, reverb, etc. What one was liking terribly, the other considered a compromise, and vice versa. It is always like that, with all my models. That is the reason I try to please all - by giving a choice. Choose whatever you like the most.

But indeed, I have the experience that some people find it uncomfortable to live with a choice, there are people who are happy being told what they should like, what they should use, what is "the best", what is "in" and what is "out". While there is probably nothing bad with that (and advertising companies love such audience), I am sorry that I cannot please these people. Fortunately, my long term experience says that these are in tiny minority. But perhaps, with St. Martini, it is different. I can also please the people who like being told what is the best for them: go for the distant variant. You will not be disappointed.

Thank you for the explanation.

For this, and future organs: will the corresponding IR be included with the semi-dry set?

I'm trying to determine the best way to configure this for my North American (Rodgers) console.

Would the North American equivalents be:

Bovenwerk = Swell (top manual)
Hoofdwerk = Great (middel manual)
Rugwerk = Positive (bottom manual)

Thank you,

Lawrence

I'm trying to determine the best way to configure this for my North American (Rodgers) console.

Would the North American equivalents be:

Bovenwerk = Swell (top manual)
Hoofdwerk = Great (middel manual)
Rugwerk = Positive (bottom manual)

Thank you,

Lawrence

Yes, that is correct.

(duplicate post)

For this, and future organs: will the corresponding IR be included with the semi-dry set?

No. That is not the point. Semi-dry+IR do not provide a "cheap" substitute for the surround sample set.