York!!!

[murph]

Interesting announcement.
I wonder how much ram will be needed for this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRavxM4y9QE

[1961TC4ME]

Ha! I had to laugh. Someone asked in the comments how much ram it would take and said they "only" have 128GB.

I've been living with my paltry sum of 32GB for quite some time now. I remember when 8GB was a big deal and sample sets required maybe 2 - 4GB. Where does the madness end!?!

Looks like it will be an awesome set for some of those fortunate to have the ram to run it.

Marc

[murph]

Hi Marc,
that was me in the comments. York Minster has a reverb time of over 9s. That's a very big step up on the usual 3-4s. Interesting times.....

[JulianMoney-Kyrle]

Of course if you don't want to load any more than one perspective, or any sampled tremulants, and only load one sample per pipe, you can cut your RAM requirements down by an order of magnitude. If you then don't load in 24 bit and maybe truncate the release tails (using IR instead if you wish) you can get it down still further.

However, I would imagine that as computers continue to become more powerful, sample set producers will continue to take advantage of their additional capabilities, just as other software developers have.

[IainStinson]

…and it’s not scheduled for delivery until sometime in 2026.

There are some good UK cathedral/large organs to enjoy before York Minster is available, including St Mary Redcliffe which arrives on December 6, 2024.

Iain

[Posaune32]

Considering it's Voxus, I wouldn't be surprised if it came even later than that considering how previous release dates have been delayed, including Dudelange Surround which was repeatedly pushed back for at least 4 years if I remember correctly. However, I also have high hopes about the quality of the sampleset and the demo already seems to be in a good state. I also know that they sampled the Van den Heuvel organ in Katwijk, although they didn't announce it publicly and it was only known from a forum post, so I assume that will be slated for sometime after.

Another announcement that Voxus made is that they reduced prices on Haarlem, Essen and Nijkerk apparently by up to 50 euros.

[einer_von_weitem]

Surely this is Hauptwerk gone mad. There is simply no way you can reproduce an organ like that of York Minster as a sample set. At the very least you would need more than one. A huge organ sitting on a screen in the middle of a huge building and speaking both into the chancel and into the nave. It will sound different, even drastically different, in the very many positions within the building a listener might take up. The idea of wanting to reproduce that in your tiny little living room (and compared to that building it will forever be minuscule, however generous its dimensions), or with headphones, strikes me as preposterous. At a minimum you'd have to do a sample set of the organ as it sounds in the nave and another as it sounds in the chancel, on the other side of the screen. But why? If the idea is simply to produce good music you certainly don't need this organ. The whole point presumably is simply to say "I'm playing the organ of York Minster, wow!". Only you won't. As good as Hauptwerk is (and it is very, very good -- for the right kind of organ): this is simply beyond it.

[larason2]

I think it will be ok. It doesn't need the Chancel recordings. Close, medium and far are good enough, like most sets with long reverb. All I care about is it's another Hill! You can never have too many Hill sample sets.

[voet]

There is simply no way you can reproduce an organ like that of York Minster as a sample set. ... At a minimum you'd have to do a sample set of the organ as it sounds in the nave and another as it sounds in the chancel, on the other side of the screen. As good as Hauptwerk is (and it is very, very good -- for the right kind of organ): this is simply beyond it.

I agree that an organ sounds different in different locations, however, when in a room listening to an actual organ, a person only ever hears it from one place at a time. Yes, you can walk around to hear it from different locations, but I don't think most users of Hauptwerk are looking for that experience. We usually adjust the perspectives to our personal taste.

Many sample sets are recorded from different locations in the building. York Minster presents a unique challenge, but i don't think it is insurmountable. We will have to wait to see how successfully Voxus addresses it.

[JulianMoney-Kyrle]

I think it might be a bit of a stretch to describe it as a Hill.

According to Harrison & Harrison, Elliot and Hill built an organ in 1834, and Hill & Son reconstructed it in 1869. However, Walker & Sons built a new organ in 1903 incorporating some of the old pipes, which was then revoiced and expanded by Harrison & Harrison in 1917 with further work by them in 1931. It was rebuilt again in 1960 by J W Walker, making it much brighter and more suitable for Baroque repertoire according to the fashion prevailing at the time, and altered further in 1993 by Principal Pipe Organs. The latest revision has only recently been completed. Again this was by Harrison & Harrison with the aim of returning it to how it was in 1931.

[larason2]

Haha, that's Hill enough for me! I have the Berlin Burton and Peterborough, and neither of those are perfect Hill either (though Peterborough is pretty close). The Burton organ is quite changed from how he left it, but you still get the nice personality of some stops. I don't think there's any Hill organ that's as he left it!

[IainStinson]

If you are interested in the history of the organs in York Minster you should look at Nicholas Thistlethwaite: The Organs Of York Minster 1236 - 2021, Positif Press, 2021. ISBN, 0906894735, 9780906894736.

Also see https://www.harrisonorgans.com/wp-conte ... r-2021.pdf

The H&H site includes a specification that indicates the origins of each stop in the current specification.

Iain

[JulianMoney-Kyrle]

I grew up with the Hill organ in College Chapel at Eton College, though mostly I used to practice on the T C Lewis instrument in Lower Chapel, which has now been replaced by a new one by Kenneth Tickell. None of the HW sample sets really come close to it. There was also a Dutch organ in Shcool Hall, originally by Mittenreiter and rebuilt by Flentrop in 1972 after the Dutch pipes were rescued from a 1924 Willis monstrosity that never worked properly. In addition there was a Mander extension organ in the Music Schools and a Shnetzler chamber organ in College chapel. I would love to see some of these sampled for Hauptwerk (well, maybe not the Mander).

I have Peterborough and the Berlin Burton Hill. I use Peterborough quite a lot, depending on what I am trying to learn. At the moment my project is the Franck Choral No. 2, so I am spoilt for choice with Cavaille-Coll sample sets.

I would love to see another Tickell organ sampled. St. Mary-le-Bow is so beautiful, and remarkably versatile for its size. I once had the opportunity to play the 4-manual Tickell at Keble College, Oxford for five minutes when the Bristol and District Organists Association arranged a visit there, and that whetted my appetite for more. Another organ that impressed me on the same trip was the Grant, Degens & Bradbeer organ at New College. Again I would love to see that sampled, or maybe one of the others by G, D & B (St. Mary's, Woodford, perhaps, or the Servite Church in Chelsea?).

[RichardW]

... they "only" have 128GB.

I don't know what they are messing about at. Back in the 1970s, I got my work computer to play the BWV565 Toccata using only a fraction of the full 16kB available!

OK, it was only the main tune and the notes were recorded on paper tape for timing as much as anything because the computer did not have a real-time clock.

In fact, it was quite an embarrassing experience. I waited until after normal works hours to try it out and just after the music started, the head of the site appeared at the door demanding to know if I had done this. I thought, that's it, I am going to be fired! I said yes and he went away to bring in one of his heads of department. Apparently, the site head was an organist himself and his department head was an avid bell-ringer so, luckily, my job was safe.

Regards,

[JulianMoney-Kyrle]

We did something similar at school in the 1970's (yes, we had an actual computer - a second-hand Marconi-Elliott 903 which I suppose could be described as a rather cut-down mainframe) though ours only had 8 kB RAM. I can't remember quite how we did it. I think it was something to do with turning the (paper) tape reader on and off quickly enough to make an udible note. By default it would run quietly at 250 characters per second, but it would start and stop abruptly with a click. I remember once copying a tape character by character to the tape punch, which ran at 100 characters per second, and the reader was able to start and stop at the same speed, so clicking at 100 Hz (or maybe 200 Hz). Probably there was some kind of loop put in to delay it in order to get lower frequencies. I expect it wore out the tape reader rather quickly and if a teacher had caught us we would have been banned from using the computer altogether.

There was also a system for making the computer beep, which was probably safer.

I learnt to program it in Fortran and in a limited version of machine code.