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.
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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.
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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.
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Re: "New" 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:
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>>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>
>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 >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.
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>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 >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 >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.
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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.
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* - 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>
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Re: "New" 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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Re: "New" 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 & 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
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Guest repliedRe: "New" 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.
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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 & 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>Leave a comment:
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
Congrats on your "new" organ! My church also has an Allen from 1984 (a 3 manual). The sound really isn't all that bad, and it certainly packs a good punch. The only thing that bothers me is the useless Allen dealer that services it and refuses to notice and fix broken things like a flute stop that sounds like a jackhammer. I wish you were our organ technician! </p>
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Anyway, if you get a chance can you post a video of the organ? I would love to hear how it compares to ours since they are the same technology. I'm really fond of Allens from this time period, in fact I think the organ in my church beats a new Quantum installation that I recently heard. [:S]
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
[quote user="nullogik"]I've never had the oppotunity to use Allen tone cards (though I have played card reader enabled models) but it seems like you can have a huge amount of fun playing around with the different cards! Perhaps you could start making your own with DavidCasteel's Excel spreadsheet - the hours of enjoyment you could have playing around with that to get all sorts of wierd and wonderful tones.
[/quote]Anyone wanting my Tone Cards spreadsheet and the accompanying instructions document just send me your e-mail address and I'll send them to you. (Of course, to make use of that technology to make new cards, one has to have an IBM card punch available.)</P>
David</P>Leave a comment:
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
John,</p>
I don't doubt that the Allen organ is sounding different than the Rodgers, and perhaps better. It is hard to pronounce on something without hearing it on site.</p>
Personally I always felt the opposite of what you say in terms of playing the instrument. I always felt that Rodgers had more of a pipe organ feel and response as compared to the Allen digitals which felt like playing a machine-like object. In fact that is how I feel about a lot of digital organs. Rodgers instruments did have some noticeable defects from a musical point of view though. One was, the pedal stops, such as the 16', spoke way too quick, almost like a Hammond to me. another was, generally too much unification and borrowing, so not enough tonal variety at the stop level. I suppose too, with the Rodgers being over 20 years old, that the attack transients would have changed a little over the years as the electrolytic capacitor values change.
</p>
Anyways, I believe your modus operandus in organ installs is different than what I do. Unless there is space consideration, or financial constraints, I always recommend more audio channels and acoustic mixing rather than typical sound reinforcement concepts, which tends to work with big amplifiers and big speakers in either stereo or mono, and you double triple or even more project the same tone. You may get more than enough volume, and even dispersion that way, but you can't get anything that sounds like a real organ that way. You can't get an ensemble tone by shoving the organ's resources through a mono setup. Besides phase summing and phase cancellations you get increased intermodulation distortion. Who knows you may get additional harmonic distortion as well. When putting a lot of stops through only 1 or 2 channels you also lose the independence of tone, so the overall is going to be just a mush of sound.</p>
With the Rodgers, it would have been important to have speakers that acted as the final filter in the tone production. Factory voicing with Rodgers speakers generally sounded half decent. Good dealers would go in and change filter components and put on different speakers to get a much better result. Just adding different speakers could make things sound worse. The Rodgers also tended to sound much better when creative tuning schemes were used.</p>
With the Allen, you do get a more accurate tone, but in and of itself, it is kind of boring. At least with ADC, Allen used more waveforms across the keyboard, more pitch sources, and gave some voicing controls, so they were a definite improvement on the early MOS-1 organs. They still sounded like Allens to me. With a good install, these instruments could sound pretty decent. </p>
Personally, I view the digital organ as a substitute for the pipe organ. My installs tend to show it. So I tend to put on maximum audio complements without duplication (unless the room is huge). I disperse the stops of anyone division through as many, or all audio channels. I have done installs of 16 channel organs, where the Great stops would utilize all 16 channels, the Swell, would also use those 16 channels. At least you have a sense of ensemble buildup for every division, that sounded acoustic rather than electronic. I also work on the tuning of the instrument, to make the ensemble shimmer, without sounding raggedly out-of-tune.
</p>
I am glad that manufacturers are at least seeing the benefits of increased audio channels. I notice that Allen has increased the # of audio channels by 50% on larger models, and then you can increase that by going the "interlaced audio" route.</p>
Anyways, the main thing is if you and the congregation is happy with the improvement. An organ in a church is a tool for making music and aid in worship. If it does it better than the previous instrument, so much the better the woship experience. </p>
Sometimes I am impressed by older organs, and rather unimpressed by recent installs. Goes to show that, progress while definite, is rather slow for the most part. More important is the quality of the install and setup to make it musical.</p>
John, so what do you want your ultimate organ goal to be. A Rodgers Trillium? An Allen Quantum? A Walker, perhaps? A Marshall & Ogletree? You never know, what will become available for free. Who would have thought a decent Allen organ, not that old, becoming available for free. Goes to show how society values these items these days.</p>
Must run............</p>
AV
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
Thanks John for keeping us updated, I've really enjoyed reading these posts. Its nice to be able to follow a story from installation right through to the first performance.</p>
I've never had the oppotunity to use Allen tone cards (though I have played card reader enabled models) but it seems like you can have a huge amount of fun playing around with the different cards! Perhaps you could start making your own with DavidCasteel's Excel spreadsheet - the hours of enjoyment you could have playing around with that to get all sorts of wierd and wonderful tones.
</p>Leave a comment:
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
After using it for two services today,suffice it to say I'm now thoroughlyconvinced it was a good trade. Yes, Arie, the 890 was a fine analog, possibly about as good as they got. And the ADC4000 is not as advanced as the later ADC/MDS and certainly a different animal from today's long-sample digitals.</P>
But it was just so much more like playing pipes. The randomness of tuning was just right and reminded meconstantly of that typical slightly out of tune pipe organ. And the Allen attack and decay characteristics seemso much more pipe-like. Yes, the 890 has separate keyers for all the stops and each has some sort of attack/decay modifier, but still the analog's attacks and decays are much like flipping a toggle switch on and off, just too electronic. The Allen computer does a much better job of simulating pipe behavior in that regard.</P>
I used the "chiff" all the time during congregational singing, and it seemed to put just the right amount of punch into the tone, clarified the rhythms. And it's a very basic chiff, not the more refined chiff of late ADC and not nearly as realistic as the true sampled attack transients of today's digitals. But it works as a punctuation tone and I never felt the congregation lagging. I do play with a lot of detachment during congregational hymns.</P>
It was gratifying to have a number of folks come by the console to express their enjoyment of the "new" organ. Folks who don't know anything about organ except that they enjoy the music were commenting that it just seemed to fill the sanctuary better, that it blended better with the singing and with the piano. A common comment was that it sounded "brighter," and perhaps the mixtures are a little more aggressive. But I suspect it was the crisp articulation and the extra clarity of the non-unified choruses that folks were hearing so distinctly, even without knowing what the difference was.</P>
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 subtle differences in sound coming from the two stereo sides, and particularly as mixed around a bit by the Alesis reverb.</P>
CARD READER: Came in handy already. I played a simple on-the-fly arrangement of "Sweet Hour of Prayer" as the ushers collected the morning offering. I had loaded the Chrysoglott card into one of the Alterables and blended it with theceleste strings on the swell. I played a stanza on this combination, then switched to a fuller foundational tone, then finished with a phrase back on the chrysoglott/celestes. Very simple and stress-free, but effective and interesting.</P>
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 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 couple the nativeswell stopsto the great and pedal.</P>
Next week, if nothing happens, I'll have MIDI on it and then there will be new territory to explore. Partner will be going to the church with me one day this week to listen and we'll probably make some minor changes to the voicing. It can only get better!</P>
John</P>
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
John, your country church may have some drawbacks; but not in the music department. God has used you to bless the congregation in a way most small churches have never known. May you enjoy thoroughly your "new" Allen!Leave a comment:
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
John,</p>
I, too, am enjoying your posts about your church's "new" Allen.</p>
Keep us posted.</p>
Allen
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Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)
Philip,</P>
You are very kind, my friend. Once I get started I don't know when to quit!</P>
My wife heard the organ today and immediately pronounced it an improvement over the other one. And she's a pianist, not particularly an organ fan. That was encouraging to me!</P>
We see, hear, and play different organs every day of the week, so it's hard for me to be objective. All organs are "different" but it's hard to conclude that some are "better" than others -- when comparing essentially excellent instruments to one another.</P>
But I'd staked a lot on my belief that this one, being digital, was going to have advantages over the other one, in spite of being the same age and a little smaller. I do think I did the right thing.</P>
Can't wait to play it for the congregation tomorrow. Hope you have a great day of worship. Bless your people with uplifting and grace-imparting music!</P>
John</P>
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Guest repliedRe: "New" organ for my church (again!)
I enjoyed it.
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