New Sample Set - St. Davids Cathedral, Wales

[voet]

I have listened to the YouTube recordings of this sample set by Sam Sleath, Richard McVeigh and Fraser Gartshore. It is really impressive. Richard McVeigh mentioned that St. David's sounds a bit brighter than St. Mary's Radcliffe, which he is preparing for release later this year. For those of you who have already purchased this sample set, what is your assessment? How does this compare with other English romantic sample sets?

[vpo-organist]

The demos sound very good. I would probably sit down and make a 6-channel set out of them (a bit more acoustic)
The Allegro by Widor in particular needs more acoustics for my taste.

By the sound of it, Ivan has done everything right! R e s p e c t !

[ivanbarritt]

The demos sound very good. I would probably sit down and make a 6-channel set out of them (a bit more acoustic)
The Allegro by Widor in particular needs more acoustics for my taste.

By the sound of it, Ivan has done everything right! R e s p e c t !

Thank you vpo-organist. St Davids is an incredibly dry cathedral hence why there’s isn’t too much reverb. My future sample sets will be in 6 channel surround sound.

Ivan

[mnailor]

My first impressions of the full sampleset on my system, only an hour or two after installing:

This is a beautiful organ, recorded very well. The Diapasons are warm and stately, the reeds are full of character, and the flutes and strings are well differentiated and not too quiet. The fifths plenum is bold and clean, the thirds mixtures add the right amount of pungency, and the trumpets and trombone do what they should for the full chorus.

There are enough moderate-pressure, characterful voices to play old English music. French symphonic sounds good enough -- given that this is an English organ -- with some added reverb, but, yes, 3 - 4 seconds isn't enough for that.

I made a few adjustments so far that sound good to my ears in my environment:

Great and Pedal, all ranks -3 dB to hear the Swell and Choirs better
Tuba -6 dB
Front ranks send 50% to perspective 2, releases truncated, routed to rear speakers with Caen rear reverb added

[ivanbarritt]

Hello Everyone,

Recently some people have been struggling to download the Demo and Full versions of the St. Davids Sample Set.
I have now switched to AWS S3 which can hanlde multiple people downloading Sample Set files at any time.
There should now be no issues with downloading the Sample Sets.

Ivan Barritt

Barritt Audio

https://barrittaudio.co.uk/

[sclg]

I'm very tempted by this but only have three manuals. I know I could use floating manuals (which I did with Hereford) but it's not ideal. Another alternative is to assign both 'Choirs' to the choir manual.
Any views?
Thanks

[marcus.reeves]

This is exactly what I have done, and do for all the four manual English sets I use. It works really well and, for me, is what I’m used to on larger 3m English pipe organs, where the ‘solo’ stops and a second set of strings etc would be found on the choir organ. The Willis III organ in St Mary’s Church in Southampton is a good example of this. (In fact it would make a great sampleset for Hauptwerk, with a great acoustic and an enclosed 32’ pedal reed!)

Given that English choir divisions are usually fairly quiet in comparison to the swell, it makes sense to keep the two main divisions separate. The multitude of coupling options (with unison offs) means that you can still route the solo (or east choir in St David’s) division more or less anywhere you want it. It’s a super set, Ivan has done a great job!

[voet]

i did the same thing that Marcus did and it works beautifully.

[vpo-organist]

After so much praise and enthusiasm, I tried out the demo and tested it a little.
Regardless of this sample set, the demos usually sound very nice and tempt you to buy them quickly.

Anyone with a little more experience knows that problems can “hide” in individual sounds.
It is therefore always a good idea to test the sample set before buying.
But that is a problem, if you can't test the entire sample set.

I have noticed the following things:

GREAT
Clarible Flute 8 - from C1 upwards over 2 octaves conspicuous, unpleasant air noises from probably leaking pipes.

Open Diapason No.2 8 - other elements in the organ resonate in the pipes of the lowest octave

PEDAL
Bourdon 16 - in the lower octave you can hear unpleasant background noises.
Fraser Gartshore said in his introduction to this artefact only “ouhh”.

EAST CHOIR
Contra Gamba 16 - the lowest g# emits something indefinable. I wouldn't call that a “tone”. a-b-h above it doesn't sound good.

The tremulants vibrate quite quickly. There are no adjustable artificial trems as with Sonus Paradisi.
Manual detuning is not available.

[vpo-organist]

Which division is on which keyboard?

IV. West Choir?
III. Swell?
II. Great?
I. East Choir?

[mnailor]

West Choir on I
East Choir on IV

[mnailor]

Are you saying that the noises and defects you listed were added by the sampleset and not present on the real organ, or that they are real and the sampleset producer should have edited them out?

I'm always disappointed by samplesets that sound like the organ was recorded in pristine new condition as a result of "fixing defects" after recording. Too many samplesets sound like a digital organ after over-editing the samples. I want to hear it "as recorded" as much as is reasonable, as long as it is still playable. Non-speaking pipes do need digital replacements, but wind hiss and speech differences are just part of real organs.

Wanting a cleaned-up sound is legitimate, too. I hope someone will expand on SP Adlington's "bad pipes" switch idea to provide original and edited samples as live options.

[larason2]

I think the "bad pipes" switch idea is a good one.I have Adlington, but I've never used it, because I don't want to listen to the bad pipes. I also don't like when sample set producers leave in strange artifacts like part of the room rumbling or a particular pipe sounding off. Sure it's how the organ actually was, but sometimes you can't use a particulr rank as a result. But I don't want it to sound like a digital hardware organ either! I think most big sample set producers have a good balance, only editing when it's really not playable.

[mnailor]

Well, I don't want to hear the boiler turn on or doors slamming either...

[vpo-organist]

West Choir on I
East Choir on IV

Thanks. I had already uninstalled the demo and couldn't check for myself (I have created a midi panel for the set).

Are you saying that the noises and defects you listed were added by the sampleset and not present on the real organ, or that they are real and the sampleset producer should have edited them out?

They are real. I leave it up to each listener to decide whether this is acceptable and whether the manufacturer should do something about it. I just said what I noticed.

I can't say whether the g# in Contra Gamba 16 is an error in the organ or in the sample set.

but wind hiss and speech differences are just part of real organs.

If you listen to a new real pipe organ and you don't notice any artifacts, then you don't like the organ?
If leaking pipes are repaired, then the organ sounds very good, but your sample set does not.

I hope someone will expand on SP Adlington's "bad pipes" switch idea to provide original and edited samples as live options.

Aha, apparently you also have an acceptance threshold. Everyone can decide for themselves what they find acceptable.

If an organ sounds too straightforward or too electronic, you can use the detuning feature. That really helps and I can decide for myself how I want it.
But I've heard pipe organs that sound really straight/artificial. They don't have a detuning feature