External Speakers Question

[Guest]

After looking at a lot of organs over the last month I see a major emphasis is put on external speakers, and it seems like it is the more speakers you have the better.Our current organ is completely self contained, speakers are internal. I never thought much about external speakers until recently. So, I think I should fully understand this before purchasing an organ.</P>


As a bit of background, when I replaced the sound system several years ago, I made sure to get rid of the huge speakers that were there and replaced them with a really nice Bose system that has smaller speakers but significantly better acoustics. These were custom installed by a Bose engineer to ensure audio coverage was near perfect with very little visual obstructions. </P>


Now, when I'm looking at these organs, I'm seeing most of them have several free-standing speakers 3-4 feet high and taller, and I have no clue where I'd put all these extra speakers. Our church is not that big and free space is at a premium, adding a bunch of these huge boxes will cause a lot of complaints, and I really doubt I will be able to get good acoustic results with the few places I could put them.</P>


Is there any reason why we cannot wire an organ into our existing sound system which is already tuned for the room?</P>
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[geoelectro]

Re: External Speakers Question



By making your PA speakers smaller, you made connecting an Organ to them a little harder. PA systems that carry mostly voice can get away with fairly small speakers. When adding instruments to a PA system, you really tax it with the additional bandwidth.</p>

Connecting an organ to the PA system is generally a no no. Dedicated speakers designed for the organ will serve much better. If a church is designed properly, tone chambers would be included for the organ. this allows large speakers to be used and hidden from view behind a grill cloth in the wall.</p>

That said, you might look into connecting the organ to your system but being very careful to only allow a small amount of signal, turning it up just enough to reinforce your organ speakers and get a little more coverage in the room. </p>

In many newer churches, smaller PA speakers are used hanging from the ceiling while placing sub woofers in and about the room. I've seen some very nice installs that placed the subs in the platform. Completely out of view.</p>

GB
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[Guest]

Re: External Speakers Question



So you're saying the main reason people don't do this is because sound systems typically have small speakers, limited audiorange,and cannot handle the bandwidth of the organ?</P>
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[Philip the organist]

Re: External Speakers Question



Hi Dan,</p>

The explanation I've always heard is that the engineers at Bose, JVC, Peavey, EV, and other PA makers do not intend for their systems to stand up to the powerful sustained tone of the organ. For example, if you're playing back pop music, you might have a soloist (mild, intermittent melody) over soft strings, guitar, bass playing off and on, and some drums. This doesn't put much strain on the speakers, but if you hook up an electronic organ, the signal is too powerful, especially in the pedals for the speakers to handle without clipping or being damaged. Most speakers just can't handle long continuous chords that are the feature of the organ.
</p>

Also, PA speakers are designed to point sound from a single source (the minister) to a lot of people (the audience) in a direct fashion so they can understand what is being said. </p>

An electronic organ's speakers should, as far as is possible, make it sound like the sound is coming from many individual pipes, and supporting and surrounding the listeners as a real pipe organ would do. Using a PA in most cases would make it sound very unnatural and unpleasant, as you want the sound to be reflecting around a little before it reaches the listeners. It's analogous to standing amidst a choir and having them singing in your face, or standing in the middle of the church as the sound naturally reaches you.
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[davidecasteel]

Re: External Speakers Question



It would be a very bad idea to attempt to play the organ through the PA system. As has been mentioned, those systems are principally designed to handle the spoken voice and relatively soft music (with a limited range). Even a modest church organ will have 16' stops (which produce tones down to 32 Hz) and some have 32' stops (which go down to 16 Hz); these stops in the Pedal Division are very powerful and it takes very special speakers (and amplifiers) to handle those sounds. Playing them through a typical PA system will simply destroy it (and quite soon). A very few PA systems might be able to handle the power for a short time, but the resulting sound would probably be highly distorted and very unpleasant to listen to. There is a reason why organ speakers are big and robust, and that many of them are employed. The bigger the space the organ is played in, the bigger and more numerous they need to be.</P>


Do find suitable locations to place those large organ speakers. You will not regret it. If there is no floor space for them, build strong shelves on the walls and mount them above the floor. Subwoofers can essentially be placed anywhere there is room--low frequencies don't have much directionality.</P>


David</P>

[Guest]

Re: External Speakers Question

Thank you bothfor the detailed explanations, that is exactly what I was looking for. From what it sounds like right now, this has the potential to being a show-stopper for putting a biggerorgan into this location. From what it looks like, when they were designing the church the extent of their planning for an organ was that they left 7' between the front pews and the raised platform in the front. There simply isn't any place to put huge speakers, even on the walls.

[Guest]

Re: External Speakers Question



By the way, what is the upper frequency range of organs? </P>
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[davidecasteel]

Re: External Speakers Question



I have not found any references to stops with a higher pitch than 1/2'; the top C key of a standard 61-key manual playing a 1/2' stop would be producing a fundamental frequency of 33488.0724 Hz--way above the limits of human hearing. The c an octave down would be at 16744.0362 Hz--just at the upper limits of human hearing. I doubt that any 1/2' stops exist that even go that high, because of the difficulties in producing a pipe of that size (the longest pipe is only 6 inches long, and the speaking length of the top pipe would be 3/16" (less than a quarter of an inch). Keeping such pipes in tune would be very troublesome, even if they could be built. (Frequencies extracted from an even-tempered scale spreadsheet I have.)</P>


I'm not an organ builder and have limited knowledge in this area, but I think that 1/2' ranks are generally only found in high-pitched mixtures and only in the lower ranges of those. (Mixtures progress through longer and longer footages as one goes up the scale, and the 1/2' pipes would not extend all the way up--I believe.) Most organs probably go no higher than 1' stops (top c = 16744.0362 Hz) and some of those will just repeat the next lower octave for the highest one.</P>


This is a start of the discussion, at least. I hope someone with actual knowledge of organ building practice will amplify it.</P>


David</P>

[davidecasteel]

Re: External Speakers Question



(duplicate post--sorry)</P>


David</P>

[davidecasteel]

Re: External Speakers Question



[quote user="Dan Ball"]Thank you bothfor the detailed explanations, that is exactly what I was looking for. From what it sounds like right now, this has the potential to being a show-stopper for putting a biggerorgan into this location. From what it looks like, when they were designing the church the extent of their planning for an organ was that they left 7' between the front pews and the raised platform in the front. There simply isn't any place to put huge speakers, even on the walls.[/quote]What's on the raised platform? Could some of the speakers be placed there? Stack the speakers in a corner. How high is the ceiling? As long as the speakers are above people's heads wall mounting should work. How big is the room? Can you take out a pew somewhere? Is there a room or storage closet that adjoins the worship space? Cut a hole in the wall and put the speakers inside the room. Think outside the box.</P>


David</P>

[Guest]

Re: External Speakers Question



The platform holds the choir pews, the altar, and the podium, and the exterior wall is immediately behind them. The sidewalls are almost all windows, and where there are not windows there are support arches for the roof. There are no closets, no extra walls, etc., it is simply a large open room. </P>


So.... After spending awhile thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that I would either have to replace those behemoths with more smaller modern speakers (placed in front of the platform), or use my current soundsystem. I'm not ruling the sound system out quite yet because when I re-designed it a few years ago I didn't put in a "PA" system, I put in a full-fledge sound system that is more than capable of handling this kind of load and can make the eardrums of the congregation bleed if I crank it up. *grin* I'd just have to figure out how to get the low-end range, as the system is configured for <FONT size=2 face=HelveticaNeue-Roman><FONT size=2 face=HelveticaNeue-Roman>90Hz to 16kHz right now. </FONT></FONT></P>


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[davidecasteel]

Re: External Speakers Question



Subwoofers under the choir pews?</P>


How high is the "raised platform"? Could you put the subwoofers under it and install grillwork at its front?</P>


David</P>

[Guest]

Re: External Speakers Question



I know of several places to put sub-woofers, so I think I'm set... Most of the details remain to be determined based off of which organ we end up getting.</P>


Thanks for your input!</P>

[Jay999]

Re: External Speakers Question



Hi Dan. Just a couple of extra inputs to your dilemma.</P>


First...at least you are not looking at pipe organs! The space considerations you have mentioned are more than rarely what us pipe organ guys have to deal with in planning a new pipe organ for a church. LOL</P>


In traditionally laid out American churches, there is a critical rule to observe when considering an organ. The Choir, Organ, and the Organist should all be together in one location. This is because the Choir will not sing well to organ accompaniment, if the organis not strongly present within their singingarea. The Organist should be in that same space so the organ can be controlled (volume wise and stop registration wise) in accompanying the choir. If the organist is separated from the choir or the organ, volume and registration becomes a frustrating listening chore for the organist. This is the first rule of all professional organ builders, and you would be wise to observe that for a successful organ installation in your church. In a few rare occasions, I have seen the choir, the organ, and the organist separated, and the work and frustration of all the music making people having to deal with the separationphenomenon was sad. When I had a conversation about those problems with the music staff, in all cases, there was quitea lot of animosity,blamed on poor planning and poor judgement of the people that either designed, or signed off on the installation.</P>


If you are dealing with professional dealers of electronic church organs, there is no excuse for them to not come up with a plan that would be in observance of this rule, and also satisfy the visual and tonal aspects you needto achieve.</P>


If you are consulting with good professional organ people, let them make suggestions as to the placement, and the required equipment for the organ. Please don't stifle the tonal success of the instrument by cutting costs in the speaker system. If the price of the organs you are considering is too high, due to the required speaker installation, then the instrument needs to be smaller, or the church funds allocated to a new organ purchase needs to be raised enough to cover the organ you need, plus an adequate speaker system.The single most important component in an electronic organ is an adequate speaker system.</P>


I apologize to you if I sound harsh. What I mean to convey here is what experience has taught me over a period of 50 years in the church organ business. I wish you every success...but please do some research before you settle on your purchase. You and your choir will be appreciative of a knowledgeable decision for many years to come.</P>


Very best wishes.</P>

[Guest]

Re: External Speakers Question



Thank you for your input. I appreciate the variety of angles people have presented me with, and will definitely take all of these into consideration before any final decisions have been made. </P>


I agree, getting a good sound out of an organ is important. Heck, that is what organs are all about! *grin* I will make every effort to get every ounce of sound out of whatever organ we decide to go with, and will do it in the most efficient manner. On that same note, one thing I have been a stickler with is that I don't want to turn the church into a speaker forest in an effort to achieve optimum sound. That is the part that will become my challenge.</P>
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