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**myorgan** · 07-04-2009, 08:21 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

AV,

I'll bite! 

I just played my first digital Rodgers a few days ago and had similar conclusions. If you could somehow record each organ (including the pipe organ) with the exact same setup, I'd be curious if anyone on the list could match each specific recording with a manufacturer, or if they just knew which one was which because we said the name.

Concerning the Rodgers, I found the IV Mixture on the Great was much duller than the Allen's IV Mixture. Of course, it could be voicing, but I found the Rodgers had no distinction when added to the Principal Chorus.

Does anyone have the possibility of recording each organ and posting the same recording (or set of recordings) for each instrument somewhere we could check it out? I understand the acoustics would probably change, but hopefully the sound would be similar for all. Perhaps record a couple of pieces with:

Diapason Chorus

Flute Chorus

Reed Chorus

Strings accompanying Solo Reed

Then, list each recording in Polls and see if we can identify the organ maker. I'd LOVE to do that, but don't have time and organ resources presently.

Just a thought.

Michael

**myorgan** · 07-04-2009, 08:21 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Deleted--duplicate.

**myorgan** · 07-04-2009, 08:21 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Deleted AGAIN--Duplicate!

**myorgan** · 07-04-2009, 08:21 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Deleted AGAIN!!!!!!!--$%^#*^%&%*@$%# DUPLICATE!

**myorgan** · 07-04-2009, 08:21 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS %^&$%&* FORUM!!!!! The original
post wouldn't post after 1 minute, so I clicked on post again.
That wouldn't post for over a minute, so I clicked again, and again,
and again.

ADMIN, perhaps this should be fixed? I've never had this problem before!

Michael

**Guest** · 07-05-2009, 11:29 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

I'm interested in hearing "the rest of the story".

**jbird604** · 07-05-2009, 12:45 PM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Me too, Arie. Please expound.

Michael, what I'm waiting for is the opportunity to actually audition several different organs side by side in the same venue! That would be interesting. Maybe if you and I put our collections together, maybe meet in Ohio or somewhere . . . 

As much time as I spend every day with Allen, Rodgers, Johannus, Baldwin, etc., I doubt that I could correcty identify a particular organ on a recording, unless I happened to have some specific knowledge, perhaps an unusual stop on one or another organ.

But if someone has the time and resources to put together a good test like this, I'd sure enjoy trying.

Listening tothe demo CD's that the builders put out, it'squite astounding how good they sound in recordings. But hearing them in person isanother matter. In good acoustics, they can sound very pleasant. If acoustics are poor, even the best and latest models will be unpleasant to listen to, regardless of what they say about digital ambiance or virtual acoustics or portraits or whatever.

I usually THINK I can tell if I'm hearing pipes or digital, but I have been fooled more than once. I am interested in whatever insight our Canadian friend has happened upon!

I've started to think that digitals should not be about "fooling" people into thinking they are hearing pipes, but instead concentrate on a reasonable illusion tonally,and a convincing job of doing what an organ is supposed to do -- fill a room. That, to my ears, is where many digitals fall short, even those that otherwise give a fairly good representation of the tones of pipes.

John

**nullogik** · 07-06-2009, 01:22 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Count me Arie, I would love to hear your story.

As for arranging a mass gathering of different makes...that would be incredibly fun but immensely difficult to organise. It would be easiest to achieve this at something like Musikmesse when the manufacturers are there anyway.


Could I identify brands from a mystery set of recordings? That might be fun to do, but then most of us have probably heard most of the demo CDs that are out there in circulation.

**hybridlover** · 07-06-2009, 09:10 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Arie - 

You are always insightful and interesting to read. Please do share....you can cut the suspense with a knife!

AV

**ahlborn** · 07-07-2009, 09:54 PM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

<div style="text-align: left;" id="result_box" dir="ltr">Hello Arie,</div><div style="text-align: left;" id="result_box" dir="ltr"> I am very curious to hear the rest of the story! </div><div style="text-align: left;" id="result_box" dir="ltr"></div><div style="text-align: left;" id="result_box" dir="ltr"></div><div style="text-align: left;" id="result_box" dir="ltr"></div><div style="text-align: left;" id="result_box" dir="ltr">
</div>

**dhm** · 07-08-2009, 01:04 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Come on, Arie, let's hear it!
[quote user="jbird604"] Michael, what I'm waiting for is the opportunity to actually audition several different organs side by side in the same venue! That would be interesting. [/quote]
In Germany/Austria you can do this. There are various dealers (e.g. Kisselbach, Sakralorgelwelt, etc) who have most of the main European and American brands side by side under the same roof. If only we had that in the UK!
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[quote user="nullogik"] As for arranging a mass gathering of different makes...that would be incredibly fun but immensely difficult to organise. It would be easiest to achieve this at something like Musikmesse when the manufacturers are there anyway. [/quote]
Except that virtually all the main digital organ producers decided not to go to the Musikmesse this year, and probably never will again.

Douglas.
[Waiting with bated breath for AV to spill the beans!]
<o:p></o:p>

**arie v** · 07-08-2009, 07:56 AM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Hi,

Oh yes, about last week.

Last week in Toronto, the Royal Canadian College of Organists held their annual get together. It was celebrated as the 100th anniversary fest of the founding of the institution. The hotel used for the occasion was the Royal York Hotel, which may at one time have been the largest hotel in the British Empire, possibly even the world. Anyways, a very proper venue for the occasion. I am not a member of the college, but did go to see the exhibits on July 1st. All exhibits were in the same room. Casavant was there, L'etourneau was there, Allen, Rodgers, Hauptwerk was on display, and several vendors selling sheet music and CDs. Only Rodgers (Roland) and Hauptwerk had anything with them that made sound. The new Allen dealer had some displays with pictures of consoles on them. He told me to look at the picture of a french style console, and "imagine" hearing the instrument. I told him I "imagined" hearing an Allen.

The Rodgers organ there was a 3 manual drawstop with 2 big speakers attached to it. It sounded absolutely brutal. Everytime I heard it just sounded bad. I commented to someone that it sounded so electronic and speakered. The response I got was, it must be the room. Well if that is the case, why did the Roland harpsichord sound so good, sitting right next to it. Also, at the other end of the room, there was a Hauptwerk setup, that sounded so much superior to the Rodgers. All in the same room.

The next day, I took in several of the concerts. First one was late afternoon at St. Mary Magdalene's Anglican, a more Roman than Rome, smells and bells church. This was the church that Healy Willan toiled in for 40 some odd years. Since my teacher's teacher's teacher was Healy Willan, I thought I would darken the portals of this church at least once in my life. The acoustics in this place are marvelous, the pipe organ probably very ordinary, but sounded very nice on this occasion, even with the church full of people. 

In the evening I took in a concert by Ken Cowan on the new Casavant at All Saint's Anglican. Said to be an English style organ, but I sensed that some of the reeds were French. Later on I spoke briefly with the man from Casavant, and he put it this way, "it is English with some spice". I like how the French describe things. The church was absolutely packed for the occasion, there must have been at least 500 people there. To keep the place from having organists dying of overheating they left windows open, which was a problem as you could hear lots of traffic noise as well as transit buses screeching to a halt right by the church. Anyways, the organ sounded very nice, stayed perfectly in tune, and Ken Cowan is an outstanding player, giving good account of the instrument. This concert concluded the RCCO fest for 2009.

On Friday evening the Allen dealer scheduled a concert on a new Allen install. No doubt he was hoping to catch some of the RCCO crowd to come to this concert before they left town. Earlier in the day, I worked on an organ I helped install over 25 years ago, a Classic analog instrument. In many ways, this instrument still sounds competitive to more recent digital instruments, especially when it comes to ensemble and overall texture. 

This new Allen is installed in a Polish R.C. Church in Mississauga (just west of Toronto). If a picture is worth a thousand words, go to the following web-site, www.kolbe.ca/galeria.html. Click on the 3rd set of pictures where it says Montaz nowego instrumentu organowego. The pictures show the "baby being born" so to speak. The pictures give somewhat a feel of the church, which is very hard to describe, and also Polish power, in getting the console into the loft. What surprised me too, was seeing that this organ was delivered by the factory, and installed by factory personnel. In the pictures you can see Aram Basmadjian, head of custom organs putting up speakers. 

This is a kind of church building I would not go begging to put an organ in. It just was not designed for an organ. No good place to put speakers, a rather dead acoustic. And yet the parish wanted a pipe organ, so I was told, but settled on one that "sounded like one". The sanctuary is maybe 120' wide, and 60 to 70' deep. Has a flat ceiling maybe 20' high from the main floor. Much carpeting thru out the place. From an acoustical point of view, what was most damaging to the acoustics were all the laminated beams on the ceiling. And here is where I think the Allen people made the biggest mistake. They hung a good number of the speakers on these beams firing at the back wall. Where they were hung was only about 8' above the walkway. I believe 8 speakers were hung on that beam, which was sort of in the center of the church, and also the walkway. At the end of this beam, on each side they hung 4 speakers each way firing at the end of the the walkway. Again right by the walkway, you could literally reach up and touch these speakers. Four more speakers, were hung close to the ceiling right above the gallery in the center, facing the interior front of the church. These speakers carried the big trumpets and reeds, and possibly some other sounds. This organ had 2 large speakers, looked like SR-1 sub woofers, sitting right in the walkway against the wall. Without lights on, you would probably walk right into them. Above the altar, more speakers, these were said to be the reflections package, some kind of ambiance system. From the program notes, it said the organ had 24 amplifiers (channels), and 28 speakers.


For the concert I sat fairly close to the console (in the loft), except I was not as centered to the speakers as the organist would have been. What did it sound like? Well good and bad. From where I was sitting, I got the effect of the interlaced audio, where manual stops are routed through 4 speakers, rather than 2 or 1. This spreads the sound out better, and you get less signal jamming on single stops. When the organist played some Bach chorales, from where I was sitting, I was hearing close by half the notes of the solo line, the other half, coming from a totally different location. Sort of a ping pong effect. Very annoying, especially as it was well played and the stop combinations quite beautiful. Just some of the organ sounded this way, and a friend of mine, sitting on the main floor, said the effect was audible down there too. The organ had decent ensemble, and sounded good in many ways. However, not much of fooled me into thinking I was listening to pipes. The strings sounded very nice at times, the flutes nice also, the principals like typical Allen principals and reeds much like a lot of their reeds over the years. Allen organs still sound like the sample data is limited and there is much processing going on. Obviously care had been taken to make the organ sound reasonably good, at least by the choir and for the organist. 

Afterwards, I was standing in the walkway right by a bank of speakers, and someone ripped some big chords on the organ. Man, did it sound electronic. I just didn't think that electronic organs in 2009 still had sounds in them that were not much different from sounds in the 80s. Mind you these speakers were only about 3 feet from my ears. On the Allen Organ Owners list, you always find them talking about how for their favorite Allen to sound good, the sound has to bounced off a wall or ceiling. I guess that is an admission, they either don't like what comes out of the speakers, or they don't like how the speakers project the tone. It should also be said that where the speakers were mounted by the walkway, a number of folks were standing there during the concert, leaning on the railing. I'm not sure why they would be there, other than to watch the organist, but periodically, you heard the organ sound go a little strange. What happened, was when someone walked around, you got this doppler effect in the sound. The organ sounded about the right volume from where I sat, but probably would have sounded muted and distant on the main floor.

In any case, a moderately successful install in a bad room. Instead of the interlaced audio concept, they may have been better off, with a reduced number of audio channels, but duplicated. That way the sound would have been better dispersed. You could tell more effort was expended on this instrument, than was typical on recent installs of Allen organs in the Toronto area. Many of them are just not very good sounding instruments.

A few weeks ago I installed an A-G organ in a room with decent acoustics. A 3 manual organ with 16 audio channels attached to it. Turned out nice. Individual stops sound much more realistic than the Allen. Ensemble is credible as well.

Checked out a Johannus Opus 37 last week. Not the last word in realism, but then it was an entry level instrument on internal speakers.

So what did I come away with in the last week,

1) pipe organs, sound like pipes, they have a different feel to them than a speakered organ. They also fill a room better

2) the room the organ is in, they say the room is stop #1. I believe it.

3) there are still far too many sounds coming out of digital organs that sound little or no better than late 80s or early 90s instruments. Why I am not sure. For 2009 I expected much more realism. 

4) I believe Hauptwerk, or something similar (embedded PC type tone generators) is the way to go for more authentic tone generation. Most of what the manufacturers are putting out is a variation of 1990s technology. With Hauptwerk promoting "digital prints" of historically significant organs, to me that is really interesting. More and more organ lovers are buying into this concept.


I guess one of the things about servicing organs, is you get to see, try, play organs that were built in various eras of technology. Even today, some of the good analog organs from the 80s excite me, Some more recent digitals do not do much for me. I still get excited working on old technology like pipes, and really enjoy hearing and or playing a good pipe organ.

So much for a week of organ overload..........

AV

**robmcw** · 07-08-2009, 05:51 PM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Thank you Arie for that great report. I see what you mean by 'Polish power'.



Rob

**jbird604** · 07-08-2009, 06:36 PM

Re: Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Thanks, Arie. So much truth. Indeed, the room is the most important stop. I have heard anancientanalog in a gloriously live and spacioussanctuary,making soundfar more thrilling than the latest digital in a dry little space. I've heard an ancient MOS Allen in a lively church that could bring chills, and you know it's not the technology!

So you're hearing much the same tonality in current models as in those of the 80's? Of course, good organ tone is timeless... but that's not exactly what you mean, I take it. 

You'd thinkAllen had to re-sample everythingfor Renaissance organs. After all, the MOS "sampling" was nothing more than harmonic analysis and crude wave-shape drawing.And only the middle C pipes weresampled!For Renaissance there is surely a second or so of pipe sound per sample, including an attack, steady tone, and decay. And pipes sampled at several points in the rank, right?Or is there? Maybe not so much.

Thanks for the description of that new installation. Sounds like they threw a lot of money at it, but perhaps some of it was not well-conceived. That's too bad. But we see that all the time, and often much worse.

I still want to get them all in the same room together and play them side by side. Who knows, maybe something like that will happen one of these days.

John

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Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

Heard an Allen, Rodgers, Roland, Classic, Johannus, A-G, Hauptwerk, some pipe organs

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