"New" organ for my church (again!)

[soubasse32]

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)



[quote user="arie v"]John, so what do you want your ultimate organ goal to be. A Rodgers Trillium? An Allen Quantum? A Walker, perhaps? A Marshall &amp; Ogletree?[/quote]One would hope that anyone's ultimate goal would be to have a pipe organ.[:)] It is not that impossible of a goal, especially with all of the pipe organsavailable; for example this Austin, which seems quite a lot of organ for the price. Another worthy goal might befor a congregation toadopt one ofthese 'endangered' pipe organs - many of which are quite interesting.</P>


John, forgive me forgoing off topic- occasionally I feelthe urgeto remindfolksabout the pipe organ option. [:D] Congratulations on your new instrument. [:)]</P>

[Philip the organist]

Re: &quot;New&quot; organ for my church (again!)

WOW! Love that Austin. Very similar to my beloved one at St John's ELCA, Philly, where my aunt is minister of music. Let's hope it sells as a complete unit.

[arie v]

Re: &quot;New&quot; organ for my church (again!)

[quote user="soubasse32"]

[quote user="arie v"]John, so what do you want your ultimate organ goal to be. A Rodgers Trillium? An Allen Quantum? A Walker, perhaps? A Marshall &amp; Ogletree?[/quote]One would hope that anyone's ultimate goal would be to have a pipe organ.[:)] It is not that impossible of a goal, especially with all of the pipe organsavailable; for example this Austin, which seems quite a lot of organ for the price. Another worthy goal might befor a congregation toadopt one ofthese 'endangered' pipe organs - many of which are quite interesting.</p>


John, forgive me forgoing off topic- occasionally I feelthe urgeto remindfolksabout the pipe organ option. [:D] Congratulations on your new instrument. [:)]</p>

[/quote]</p>

Soubasse32,</p>

I fully concur that a pipe organ should be the ultimate goal. However, you may have noticed that John, has been getting organs for "free". He also probably provides for the moving and some labour, out of love for getting an upgrade.</p>

Even a free pipe organ, is going to cost more when all costs are factored in.</p>

This way, John is avoiding having to go on hands and knees to the vestry and plead his case, as he is the organist and it doesn't cost them much if anything.</p>

Why is it, that when it comes to organs, there is always this little niggly thing called money come into play............</p>

AV
</p>

[jbird604]

Re: &quot;New&quot; organ for my church (again!)



Subby, thanks for the reminder that "pipes" are really what we're all aiming for! Indeed, that could happen for us someday, who knows?</P>


What is my personal ultimate goal for a church organ? I haven't actually thought about it, though I'm sure I wouldn't reject a Trillium or Quantum or even a newMonarch or Viscount if offered! Right now I'm so pleased with the Allen, and will be even more excited about it when I get the MIDI on it next week, that I'm not thinking about a future tradeup yet.</P>


Arie, your points are all well-taken and I agree with you that there should be as many separate sources mixing acoustically as possible. I suppose the main reason why I've done it this way is financial and practical. When we built the sanctuary 8 years ago I never dreamed we'd have a "real" organ such as a Rodgers or Allen. The old Conn and Baldwin monstrosities we'd had wouldn't have benefited from numerous audio channels and I built an audio system to get the most out of them.</P>


If I could do it over, I'dbuild some big spacious chambers for organ speakers so that we could haveanyconfiguration of speakers without difficulty. But without a major remodeling project, I'm left with these massive walls of speakers wired upas they are.</P>


Although, one must consider that the only PERFECT solution to the audio channeling dilemma is to have a separate amp and speaker for every note of every stop! That would be the only way to assure that there would be no electronic interaction orintermodulation distortion produced by two notes sounding simultaneously! Obviously such a thing is beyond practicality and would surely cost far more than the pipe organ it would be trying to imitate.</P>


So having any number of audio channels that is fewer than the total number of equivalent pipes (runninginto the thousands!) is a compromise. The four channels that my Allen would support if I used its supplied audio system represent a compromise, as there are around 10 stops (610 "pipes") forced out of each channel. In normal playing, of course, each audio channel is probably never trying to reproduce more than a couple of dozen tones simultaneously. But it is still a compromise, and my set up is just slightly more of a compromise than that.</P>


The difference with my setup is that I have thousands of watts of audio power and over 30 speakers at work. That means that no single speaker is ever moving verymuch air, most of them arespeaking very softlyif you put your ear up to one. So there is practically no distortion attributable to the speakers. I think that is why my setup sounds so crystal clear. We have all heard organs set up with way underpowered audio, and you know how bad that sounds!</P>


If I had my way, I'd design an organ with say50 audio channels, and each one wouldn't have to be terribly powerful. I'd have a computer system that would assign each note of each stop, as the note is called for, toany idle audio channel, so that one could, for example, play a five-note chord with 10 stops drawn and have every single individual "pipe" come out of its own speaker! (5 x 10 = 50)</P>


As the number of stops drawn increases, or more keys are played at once, the system would assign a second "pipe" to each audio channel in turn. Using 50 channels, a 50 stop organ could let the player turn on ALL 50 stops and play a5-note chord, and each speaker would only have to handle 5 "pipes" ... In practice, one would almost never turn on 50 stops at once, so the audio channels would loaf along most of the timejust playingone or twonotes each.</P>


Wouldn't thatbe an awesome way to build an organ? Wonder if anyone has tried it?</P>


Will answer some of the other questions raised in a day or two. Thanks for all the comments.</P>


John</P>
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[circa1949]

Re: &quot;New&quot; organ for my church (again!)



John,</p>

I've really enjoyed your write-up, which I'm just catching up on now.</p>

Couple points:
</p>

&gt;&gt;The Allen computer does a much better job of simulating pipe behavior in that regard.</p>

Yes, the ADC system actually stores the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) profile in a memory address with roughly the same amount of memory as one of the sound samples. I can't remember whether it's 128 or 256 bits but it is a much higher # than MOS organs, which have 10 points. Therefore about 25X as detailed -- which ends up being about 2X as detailed in our highly inaccurate auditory system based on those funny looking things on the side of our heads LOL.* With that resolution it was possible to have very exact control over the ADSR waveform. OTOH, ADC was only 8 bits of depth, so the actual bandwidth of the system still wasn't as high as "CD" quality which is why you notice the digital hissing on some of the soft flute sounds. Going from 8 bit to 16 bit you move from 256 to 65536 possible values, e.g., 256 TIMES as much detail!)
</p>

&gt;The panning of the audio channels across the church probably had
some positive effect as well. There was a liveliness in the sound
imparted by the &gt;subtle differences in sound coming from the two stereo
sides, and particularly as mixed around a bit by the Alesis reverb.</p>


I really think you should try separating all 4 channels out at some point...I think you will get an even more realistic and lively ensemble. On my ADC-1140 going from 2 to 5 made a huge difference...granted it only has 2 frequency sources instead of the 6 you say the ADC-4000 has.
</p>


&gt;I'm going to love having the Alterables playable on the swell alone,
even as the swell couples to the great -- the alterables don't couple
unless you use the &gt;separate alterable-to-great coupler. One can load
up a big reed into both alterables and use it like a festival trumpet
without sacrificing the ability to &gt;couple the nativeswell stopsto the
great and pedal.</p>

Yes this was one of the best aspects of the ADC alterable system, to play it exactly as you describe. With "Alterable F" selected, a trumpet sound can still dominate over swell reeds that are coupled down to the great.
</p>

I'm sorry I have to disagree with Arie, from my memory of the late 80s, which is vague, but still, I think ADC Allens sounded better than the typical Rodgers at the time. That's one of the reasons I was more into Allen. I do think one way Rodgers was outfoxing Allen back then was offering those cheesy external pipe modules, even tho they only had a few ranks, the church I knew that had one played IT all the time and it really made up for the deficiencies of the Rodgers late analog tone generation system - which as I've been told here really didn't have many sets of oscillators. If I were a church making a choice between the 2 brands back then, the pipe option might have been the only thing to sway me to Rodgers.
</p>

* - edit: of course it's mostly NOT our ears, because in fact any way you convert a PCM digital signal to analog you're going to have some rounding and leveing which makes all these theoretical resolution differences irrelevant. This is mostly why, in fact, ADC did sound better than MOS, but not by any huge degree.</p>

</p>

</p>

[circa1949]

highly theoretical excursion



I stumbled upon this youtube video recently:</p>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOuhjEfkN8</p>

let's consider just the first few bars for simplicity's sake.
</p>

I was thinking: you could not possibly think that the trumpet comes from anything other than a fully multisampling organ, like the Renaissance.that it is. Perhaps a late MDS would sound similar, I don't know. Even on the low quality, NON-HQ youtube video.
</p>

What I was also thinking though, was the low audio resolution of youtube makes it act as a kind of "Homomorphic filter", a term from image processing, but I'm using it to mean, "makes everything sound the same, yet makes certain differences more noticeable." Although I know the trumpet comes from a recent organ, I could believe the diapasons he is using as the background are from an ADC organ. What this means to me is that the ADC system was more effective for a diapason chorus, although obviously not completely adequate, than for reed sounds. As John notes, a Mixture and a trumpet sound get their own card in the ADC4000 - to get them more memory for more realism. (the mixture specifically, to allow it to break.) Yet if I actually heard this R270 organ in person, I would probably recognize the diapasons as being from a higher definition system. This was apparent to me when I played a Rennaisance tech. C8 someone was selling, about 2 week before getting my ADC-1140. I think Allen's technology ADC and earlier technology actually was most successful with diapason tones. The flute tones too easily show the quantization noise, and demonstrate the lack of realistic chiff, and the reeds' attacks are not detailed enough. But with the 4X4 multisampling mixture, the diapason chorus deficiencies are well hidden. So my point is the "homomorphic filter" of youtube audio can still reveal truth about the limitations/benefits of the technology involved.... Think of most non-organists ears as "youtube ears," they are not going to hear the details that we do...</p>

So to sum it up, if you can hear the difference on youtube non-hq, it's a huge one that even Joe Public would hear.
</p>

</p>

</p>

</p>

</p>

</p>

[jbird604]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



All this technical info is very interesting, circa. Helps me understand to some extent the differences among the various Allen models. </P>


As I understand it, then, ADC and MDS, just like MOS, were "single waveform" sample systems -- no long samples stored, just single waveform data from which the tone is reconstructed. Then, when Renaissance came long Allen began to do what other makers had done for a while -- store actual one or two second samples of each stop (and multiple samples per stop across the keyboard range).</P>


So Renaissance is more akin to Hauptwerk, though not as intensive since it doesn't actually have a sample for every note of the scale. But Renaissance does allow for note by note voicing. MOS, ADC, and MDS never had that, of course, because the system did nothing except createa tonefor each note on demand from a common waveform recipe, and the system was not sophisticated or fast enough to store and read note by note voicing data, even if there had been sufficient memory to store it.</P>


I believe Arie once remarked that he felt the hardware of the older systems, such as ADC, might actually outlive Renaissance because of the simplicity. (Forgive me if I misquote you, Arie.) I tend to think that too. It seems that the current systems of all the major builders are on a bit of shaky ground -- a bit like computers running on Windows or Linux or something -- not something to bet the farm on.</P>


The old hardware-only systems, even MOS, seem to me like they're going to basically last forever, which might be unfortunate in the case of MOS!</P>


I too think the older systems were quite effective in creating diapason tone. After all, if you have the basic waveform to work with, then you have a system for using that waveform to output it at any chosen frequency, then "jitter" it with random noise so that it sounds somewhatlike a continuousrecording of a pipe, and give it an attack and decay envelope roughly similar to that of a pipe, what more could you ask for?</P>


That technique was pretty well developedby the ADC era, even at the beginning. So I'm pretty happy with all the stops of this ADC. Even flutes and reeds are quite pretty, at least until you play the top-most octave. I think my ADC job is going to be as satisfying to my ears as most of the Renaissance installations I hear around here.</P>


Thanks again, guys, for all the comments. Really enjoying the dialogue.</P>


John</P>
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[jbird604]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



Some amateurish photos I took of the console after getting it installed at my church:</P>
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[jbird604]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



Here's a console I WISH I could have at church. It's a Wicks in a local church and what I love about it is the built-in music desk! I can actually see the hymnal without changing glasses. Alas, I'm not likely to run across a free Wicks like this any time soon.</P>


</P>

[nullogik]

Re: highly theoretical excursion

[quote user="jbird604"]

Some amateurish photos I took of the console after getting it installed at my church:</p>
<p mce_keep="true">[/quote]</p><p mce_keep="true">Interesting to see Allen were still using the Chapel console in the ADC era. Thats the same console type I have for my TC-3S. I love old Allen consoles of that era, they were incredibly well built using nice chunky pieces of timber. Even the latest Allen consoles don't appear to be as robust as these old Chapel style consoles are.
</p><p mce_keep="true">My father suggested that my TC-3S might make a nice roll top writing desk [:O] "Scarilege", I said!</p><p mce_keep="true">By the way thats a lovely homely looking Church you have there. Are the organ speakers located behind the panels adjacent to the wreaths of flowers on the wall?
</p>

[circa1949]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



Yes I agree Nullo, it's a beautiful console that looks great in the church.</p>


As I understand it, then, ADC and MDS, just like MOS, were "single
waveform" sample systems -- no long samples stored, just single
waveform data from which the tone is reconstructed. Then, when
Renaissance came long Allen began to do what other makers had done for
a while -- store actual one or two second samples of each stop (and
multiple samples per stop across the keyboard range).</p>

No, I would say MDS was a multi-waveform system. Although, from studying the patent they filed in '89 or '90, my guess is they used a variety of techniques to cut corners both on the memory required and the processing power required (although, being a discrete logic system, it wasn't as though each soundboard was going to need a CPU, but rather a lot of circuit traces!) For example, for the steady state, instead of actually storing 5 seconds of a true steady state, they stored a signal that represented the modulation that occurs to the steady state, then randomly select points within this sample for the various notes played. So, essentially a type of compressed multisample. That's why it didn't quite sound as good as Renaissance. This is exactly what the only detailed MDS recordings I have sound like to me. (some dude in Michigan who was trying to sell his 3 manual MDS organ made them back around 2004, he directly connected the organ to mixer, a reverb unit, and the recorder.)
</p>


So Renaissance is more akin to Hauptwerk, though not as intensive
since it doesn't actually have a sample for every note of the scale.
But Renaissance does allow for note by note voicing.
</p>

Yes this is the key difference, Renaissance did offer "note by note" voicing, even though it still interpolated between samples of a given rank's notes. The way it probably did that was, again, to really store the difference parameters of each note versus the base sample.
</p>


I believe Arie once remarked that he felt the hardware of the older
systems, such as ADC, might actually outlive Renaissance because of the
simplicity. (Forgive me if I misquote you, Arie.) I tend to think that
too. It seems that the current systems of all the major builders are on
a bit of shaky ground -- a bit like computers running on Windows or
Linux or something -- not something to bet the farm on.</p>

Well that's definitely my thinking as well. Those old through hole boards will last til the "cows come home". Also, as the designer of the ADC system said on the yahoo group, they used totally standard components except for just a couple custom chips, and of course the EPROM memory is custom programmed but only a power surge or nuclear attack could erase that! So in theory, oh, let's say you have a capacitor go bad (unlikely as most of them are ceramic capacitors) and kill a PMI DAC08 chip, you can just put another PMI DAC08 chip in. Of course, that doesn't mean a PMI DAC08 will be easy to find...for all we know Allen owns 90% of the world's spares LOL.
</p>


The old hardware-only systems, even MOS, seem to me like they're
going to basically last forever, which might be unfortunate in the case
of MOS!</p>


I too think the older systems were quite effective in creating
diapason tone. After all, if you have the basic waveform to work with,
then you have a system for using that waveform to output it at any
chosen frequency, then "jitter" it with random noise so that it sounds
somewhatlike a continuousrecording of a pipe, and give it an attack
and decay envelope roughly similar to that of a pipe, what more could
you ask for?</p>


That technique was pretty well developedby the ADC era, even at the
beginning. So I'm pretty happy with all the stops of this ADC. Even
flutes and reeds are quite pretty, at least until you play the top-most
octave. I think my ADC job is going to be as satisfying to my ears as
most of the Renaissance installations I hear around here.</p>

"Flutes and reeds are quite pretty" - oh yes, they definitely can be. My point was just that, on my organ at least (and using the tone cards, which on an MADC organ actually have the same resolution as the built-in ADC samples) the most successful tones are a diapason chorus with a mixture. It is sort of the "porridge that is just right" for the ADC system. The ADC4000 had a hautbois stop right? That is one of my favorite MADC tone cards, so I assume it sounds just as good on the ADC organ. Of course a hautbois should be fairly smooth, so it doesn't matter as much that it doesn't have the incisive attack of a trompette.</p>


</p>

Thanks again, guys, for all the comments. Really enjoying the dialogue.</p>

Thanks for sharing the organ with us!</p>

</p>

</p>

[jbird604]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



Yes, I have the Hautbois stop in the swell, and I was noticing yesterday how smooth it sounds. A really nice stop, and I suppose it's the same as the one you'd get on MADC with the card. That's a nice thing about MADC card readers. My partner plays on an MADC 3100 and his card voices are noticeably better than mine.</P>


The tone card voices of my ADC are definitely not as good as the built-in spec. For example, the "Prinzipal 8" card is supposed to be used to test the level of the USTG-5 boards that produce the Alterable voices. Installing that voice into one of the alterables produces a steady state tone that is quite similar to the spec Prinzipal, but obviously lacking the characteristic attack and random motion that help make that Prinzipal so nice.</P>


However, the reeds produced by the card reader are very good, if not excellent, and the Chrysoglott is outstanding. Other percussions are less successful. And as we've both mentioned, the flute cards leave something to be desired, as the fuzziness of the low-resolution waveform is really apparent in the flutes. (I suppose that's the source of that noise anyway.)</P>


Thanks, Nu, for the compliment about our sanctuary. We do enjoy it. It's intentionally rather plain, but we have a "flower lady" who enjoys coming up with new floral displays almost weekly.</P>


Yes, the organ speakers are located behind the fabric panels in the walls just above the choir. Unfortunately, as I've noted, there are no "chambers" behind them, just a vast array of speakers mounted on panels screwed directly to the studs. There is a wide open room behind these panels, which acts as an "infinite baffle" for the woofers. The bass is just awesome, has to be heard to be appreciated. </P>


The picture doesn't show it, but the panels are a little bit "splayed" at different angles, as are the panels on the opposite side, so the sound doesn't just shoot out of there like a cannon, but is widely dispersed. There are also a pair of speakers in the floor that aim at the walls to provide even more dispersion and diffusion of the sound.</P>


John</P>
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[Austin766]

Re: &quot;New&quot; organ for my church (again!)

[quote user="arie v"]


Why is it, that when it comes to organs, there is always this little niggly thing called money come into play............</p>

AV
</p>

[/quote]</p>

I don't know how many of the members of this forum will remember, but in the thread on questionable stop names, one of them was Vox Pecuniae, a stop which speaks very loudly and with great authority. It would seem that money is what makes the world go 'round....
</p>

[arie v]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



circa1949,</p>

You are correct in saying one difference from the MOS 1 and 2 organs to the ADC was that they used more waveforms across the keyboard to define a stop. I believe on the early ADC models, they still had a number of stops with only one waveform definition. Even so, as the various iterations of ADC models came out, the waveform data was extremely short. As you say, Allen used processing to try to make the sounds behave like organ sounds. Even the MDS models had short sample data, although the put more samples (maybe waveform data is a better description).</p>

Even with the newer models, like Renaissance and Quantum, Allen still favours short sample length combined with heavy processing. At least that is the feeling I got playing a recent Q300. Even in the Renaissance and Quantum models, I find stops that sound much like their namesakes sounded 20 years ago. I don't believe that Allen uses samples that are even anywhere near a second long today, except maybe in their Elite organs.
</p>

To me the Allen sounds are quite different from the long loop samples found in Hauptwerk. They sound like recordings played back. The best Hauptwerk has a much more visceral quality to it.</p>

As to longevity of electronics today, I suggest you read up on RoHS and weep(if you don't know what that means Google it). Besides moving around massive amounts of data, which can go flaky, the new hardware is not likely to last as long due to RoHS (reduction of hazardous substances). While in general it will not present a problem, over years you will find more problems with cold solder joints, tin whiskers (caused by crystallization of the solder materials) causing partial or complete shorts. Another problem with new electronics is the technician cannot repair them in the field, because of surface mount technology. So you need board swapping to repair. So it is important for manufacturers to maintain a good stock of replacement boards for a long period of time. It will be interesting to see which manufacturers will support product after it is say over 20 years old. Most electronic products are not supported by manufacturers more than say 7 to 10 years. Allen organs from the 80s I would consider very reliable and a safe bet to still be working in another 10 or 20 years.</p>

AV
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</p>

[davidecasteel]

Re: highly theoretical excursion



[quote user="nullogik"]By the way thats a lovely homely looking Church you have there. Are the organ speakers located behind the panels adjacent to the wreaths of flowers on the wall?
[/quote]nullogik is in the UK, where "homely" does not have the same meaning that it does here in the US--over there, it is more like "homelike". </P>


Did you say that was a Baptist church? If so, I'd expect that big space between the wreaths would be the Baptistry.</P>


David</P>