ADC 7000 going to smaller speakers

[IndianaBill]

Greetings!

After about a year with the ADC 7000 in my house, I have come to realize that taking up a bedroom with nine speakers (3 HC-12s and 6 HC-15s) and two racks of amplifiers is not the best use of space. Also, with the speakers down the hall in a bedroom, the level of sound is not the best. I am sure it's blasting in that room, and I'm even more sure the neighbors hear it well. It's just not an ideal listening experience for my guests and me.

So I was thinking of going to powered speakers. The only thing I am not sure how to do is make the pedal sound adequate. The other option is to have some cabinets custom built with four channels in one cabinet and five channels in the other. I have noted when Allen builds a multi-channel organ with internal speakers, there is only one 15-inch speaker, and there are x number of mid-range and tweeter speakers. How do they accomplish this?

As always, I appreciate the thoughts and feedback of Forum members. Thank you.

[rjsilva]

When I picked up my organ from a church they had nine full range speakers and two large subwoofers (all from Walker). I only ran 4 channels because of space. Over time I bought two Klispch Ultra 5.1 systems and upgraded the satellites (to RSX). The Ultra 5.1 subwoofers handle the lowest 16' stops well but I liked the sound of the dual 15” woofers in the Walker B2 better so eventually I set that back up.

So I have ten Klipsch RSX speakers and two Ultra 5.1 subwoofers on top of the organ console, along with a JBL Control One in-line with the Walker B2 (which is in the corner). If I wasn't using the B2 this 10 channel system wouldn't take up anymore space than the console. And it sounds very good.

[toodles]

Best thing to do is look at the voicing chart to see what pitch levels go to the specific channels. If the lowest pitch is 8 ft, then smaller 2-way monitors with a 6-1/2 inch or 8 inch woofer and a tweeter should work OK. Look for something that can get down to 64 Hz for those channels.

For models with built-in speakers, Allen has the voices with high bass demands go to the channel that uses the 15 inch woofer, and usually those organs do not have 32 ft pedal stops or they are a Contra Violone. That is unlikely in the case of an ADC-7000. That said,, the heaviest bass requirements are probably in just 2 channels.

[myorgan]

The ADC-7000 has 3-32' flues, and 1-32' Contre Bombarde. I don't have my ADC manual handy, but I believe all the flues are in the same channel.

Michael

[rjsilva]

Just to clarify my post, the Klipsch Ultra 5.1 sends all bass frequencies from any input to the subwoofer, so each channel gets the same potential bass performance. The Ultra (or Promedia) subwoofer would teeter out on 32' stops though, so he'd need another speaker for that channel.

Granted the Klipsch system isn't made anymore and they can only be found used, and they also should be ‘upgraded' (several default parts overheat). It took me a while to find them cheap and then find the RSX satellites cheap, but one highly regarded person sells upgraded complete systems with RSX speakers. Here's one of his listings.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F332612778787

[myorgan]

I just had a chance to look at the voicing chart for the 2-cage ADC-7000, and noted the 32' flue stops both come from the A-cage and through amplifier #3 (Slot 4A). The 32' Contre Bourdon comes from the B-cage and through amplifier 6 (Slot 6).

Hope that helps.

Michael

[IndianaBill]

Thank you everyone for your input. As always, it is greatly appreciated.

I was actually looking into Klipsch speakers. Thanks for the link, rjsilva! These do sound like my best option.

Thank you, toodles. I did check just so I would know: two channels down to 32' pitch, four channels down to 16' pitch, and three channels down to 8' pitch.

And thank you, Michael. Always a big help. Interesting thing - or at least I wasn't expecting it - the card in B-6 has eight pots just for that one voice. I couldn't figure it out until I realized that for this one voice, there were actual controls for groupings of notes. Isn't that a weird thing to offer just for a 32' reed? Or is it because it's a 32' reed?

[myorgan]

It is because it is a 32' Reed. Those pitches can be accentuated by a large room, where the wavelength matches a particular dimension in the room, so the pitch stands out much louder than the rest of the pitches. That's why those tone controls exist. On your cage chart (B chart only), there should be an explanation of those ranges right on the chart.

Michael

[jbird604]

A drawback to downsizing might be the unpleasantness of the sound "up close and personal" -- the organ will sound very different to you on the bench with speakers all in the same room with you, as opposed to your current setup with the speakers down the hall somewhere. So you may need to come up with a way to compensate for that. If the organ has built-in ADR-4 reverb, or some other digital reverb, you may be able to adjust that to give a more satisfying up-close sound, or you may just get used to it. Pointing the speakers away from you, up toward the ceiling, or at a wall, so the sound can come to your ears reflected rather than directly out of the speakers may help a lot.

I have a pretty limited amount of space for my own home organ (Allen R-230) but it's only four channels, so I don't have the same complications. But I have all speakers pointed up at the ceiling and spread around the small room so the organ sound is much more diffuse than it would be coming from a single stack of speakers pointing right at me. Also, the R-230, being later technology, has a very good built-in reverb system that is easily adjusted right from the front of the console, so I can play around with it until I'm satisfied.

Using non-standard speakers is considerably more difficult on a very large Allen such as your 7000. The audio requirements are much heavier, and there are definitely drawbacks ("outphasing" and compression) that may become serious when channels intended to be separate are combined. So the typical "home theater" type of system may or may not be suitable, depending on how sensitive you are to those side effects.

For example, a system that puts the bass of all the channels into a single sub will be combining the bass from pedals stops in channels 3A, 6A, and 6B, all of which have different Frequency Generator references, thus slightly different pitches for the same notes. Trying to play the same note from each of those three sources through one speaker system will result in a very noticeable "beat" -- a slow rise and fall in volume -- that could actually pull more power than the amp/sub can handle, thus creating distortion or at least compression.

To avoid all such effects, you would need to use nine separate FULL-RANGE powered speakers -- one for each of the nine full-range output channels. PLUS separate powered subs for each of the bass-heavy channels. If your 7000 is not equipped with the Allen sub-bass crossovers (and I assume it isn't, since you don't mention having any B-40's or other Allen subs as part of the system), you will need to run the powered subs in parallel with the full-range speaker on those channels that carry low bass frequencies. This may be necessary only on channels 6A, 3A, and 6B (the heavy pedal channels). But you will need to be sure you are buying hefty enough full-range powered speakers for the rest of the channels, since some of those channels have 16' stops as well, though they are simply 16' manual stops which don't normally require nearly as much bass capability.

Anyway, it's a do-able project, just not necessarily quick and easy and cheap. I'd check with internet sellers such as Parts-Express and Newark, as well as musical electronics providers such as Sweetwater for a good selection of both full-range and bass-only powered speakers.

[rjsilva]

Your advice is always full of knowledge jbird, although that doesn't sound like much downsizing... :)

There will be drawbacks with downsizing for sure, but I think the system I mentioned sounds quite good. The RSX speakers are a huge upgrade over standard lower-cost home-theatre systems. They sound a little more pleasant than the Walker speakers in the midrange and treble.

And if he had two or more systems the bass issue you mentioned could be alleviated somewhat by running the bass channels into separate systems. Those Ultra 5.1 subs with dual 8” woofers perform very well. Certainly not suitable for an auditorium but great for home-sized rooms.

When Organteq comes out I plan on using my same system.

[jbird604]

Or, if he can make room for three HC-12's in the room, use those on the three bass-heavy channels, and get some small but decent bookshelf size speakers for the other six channels.

[samibe]

Wasn't he also trying to eliminate the amplifier cabinets, too? It seemed like the OP was trying to downsize simply because the organ's audio capacity is way overkill for a home setup.

Is there a powered speaker setup that will produce reasonably accurate organ tone (at reduced power levels) that can take up significantly less space (even if it takes adding a better external reverb to help even out the ADC sound a bit)?

[Pipeorganbuilder]

Or, if he can make room for three HC-12's in the room, use those on the three bass-heavy channels, and get some small but decent bookshelf size speakers for the other six channels.

This would for sure take care of the heavy bass channels. Seems like a great compliment to the smaller speakers he has.

Michael

[jbird604]

After all the advocacy for keeping the channeling separate, I'll make a confession -- I once set up a large Allen intended to have numerous channels with a mixer, condensing seven channels down to just TWO. So I really should put away my prejudice against channel mixing and get practical.

The organ I mixed down from seven to two was in fact in the church where I used to play, and not a small church either, just one that didn't have chambers for all the multiple speakers and divisions. So I took the seven generator outputs, connected them to a small mixer that cost around $100, giving each one its own input.

I used the "pan" controls on the individual inputs to "place" the separate channels in slightly different virtual locations in a stereo field. For example, the organ had a 32' stop and I placed that channel right in the center so it could take equal advantage of both stereo outputs. The two swell channels were panned just slightly right and left of center. The two great channels were panned somewhat more widely, and the two ancillary channels (carried various percussions and big solo reeds) got panned most broadly.

The stereo mix went into a pair of high-powered amps feeding a large array of speakers above the choir loft. It sounded very nice, and I don't remember having any outphasing or other bad effects. Theoretically this shouldn't have worked very well, but in practice it was perfect for that room, and gave me the ability to move "speakers" around "virtually" -- and it would've been impossible to physically move speakers, since there were no chambers at all, just wall-mounted speakers.

So perhaps a similar setup would work for this 7000. A decent stereo mixing console with at least nine inputs could be bought for probably around $150, and a good pair of heavy-duty powered full-range speakers for two or three hundred apiece. If these powered speakers were good enough, they might even reproduce the 32' stops without any help, since the requirements in a small room are so much less stringent than in a church.

A side benefit might be the built-in digital ambiance that is likely to be a built-in feature of a mixer you buy these days. That would make it unnecessary to have a separate reverb unit, and might be more realistic than the old ADR-4 system built into the 7000 (if it even has one).

If more bass is needed, the mixer would surely have multiple outputs, one or more of which could be used to drive a separate subwoofer or two. This would certainly take up a LOT less room than the set of nine full-size Allen cabinets and the large amplifier racks of the current setup.

Alternatively, the nine outputs could be mixed down and routed directly into a home theater system, such as the Klipsch system suggested above. Then the leveling and voicing would need to be revised using both the BTMG pots on the cards in the Allen cages and the bass/treble controls of the theater system.

[IndianaBill]

Thanks John. Your insight is quite helpful. The idea of moving speakers around virtually has a lot of appeal.

Yes, the 7000 has the ADR system, but it was bypassed in the church where it was when I bought it. This organ was new in 1983 (so among the first), but it had quite a few updates in 2006. I'm guessing 2006 for all updates because that's when the battery for the alterable voices was moved and replaced. The 7000 also has the replaced DM 4 (or whatever the board is that controls the combination action), which of course has no battery. Also all 18 woofers were replaced or refoamed at that time. There are a few other things that look like they got taken care of along the way.

So this church does all this upgrading, but then closes eight years later. I guess that really isn't that unusual any more, but still kind of sad. The new contemporary church that bought the building and had no use for the organ at least had the foresight to leave everything hooked up and plugged in.

This was contrary to the ADC 5000 that I bought several months before this where they cut the wires, unplugged it, but left the console in place. I had and still have a ton of issues with that organ today.

[rjsilva]

If IndianaBill is interested, I could post a decent audio recording of 16' stops with the Klipsch Ultra 5.1 subwoofer (and the entire system). I don't have an Allen organ so it wouldn't be the same, but I could use a good sample set with GrandOrgue and it'd give an idea.

I'm really not trying to push him into using it. Obviously jbird's advice would produce a better sound. I'm just offering it for a fair consideration because of space limitations, and because it sounds a lot better than one might expect.

[mlaird]

I'm working on a similar downsizing project, but I'm taking a different approach than suggested so far. I'm building my own speakers for the main channels at least, and while I'm fairly handy with woodworking, I didn't want to tackle building my own speakers completely from scratch. Instead, I'm building a slightly modified version of the "Classix II" speaker from Parts Express:
https://www.parts-express.com/classi...inet--300-7112

Design information about this speaker is available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/classix-ii

If you model this speaker's bass response in any of several free speaker sim programs (like WinISD), you'll see that it peaks in the 40s and then drops off. With room gain, the speaker as designed can get down into the mid-30s, but not all the way to 32 Hz. I'm lengthening the port so that I can extend the bass down to 32 Hz, although I know I won't get all that much volume out of such a small speaker. I think it will be enough, and if not, I can always split the audio and route the weak channels to the subwoofer to help support what the main channels are doing. I figure that at least getting some volume out of the mains will avoid the mixdown problems John mentioned above.

If I do more tests and decide the standard-sized cabinet is really not enough, I also could build my own cabinets with slightly larger volume. Just adding two or three inches to the height or depth would be enough to change the tuning and extend the low bass response. It would require more woodworking on my part, however, so I'm hoping I can avoid that to save myself the time.

If you are at all competent at assembling a kit, you should consider something like this. There is a small amount of very basic soldering required, and some drilling of holes and gluing and clamping for the cabinets. Overall, it is somewhat time consuming, but not that hard. If I decide to veneer the cabinets, that will be an additional level of effort, but you can just spray paint them black or cover them with self-adhesive vinyl too if you want to take an easy approach.

One last though. I would suggest avoiding self-powered speakers simply to save on cost. Allen already built some great amplifiers for your organ, so you might as well use them. If you really want to avoid the space taken by the amp rack, however, you might consider relocating the amps into the console. They'd not get as much cooling there, but you probably won't push them hard enough to get past "warm."

[jbird604]

Using smaller speakers and maintaining the channel separations is certainly a worthy idea, and does avoid the negative consequences of mixing. Also would seem to be a plus to have the various stops and divisions clearly emanating from different physical locations. Only caveat is to avoid downsizing the speakers TOO much. Sounds like the units you're building ought to be perfect for reproducing organ sound in a home setting, but some of the commercially-available smaller units just won't cut it.

I have heard a setup in which all the full-range cabinets on a large organ were replaced with some tiny speakers intended to be "satellites" for a home theater system. This might have worked in a typical home theater setup, but on a large classical organ it sounded tinny and distorted and unpleasant, even though the organ's built-in audio system supposedly crossed over the bass from all the channels to a single bass output, on which he had a large powered subwoofer.

OTOH, we installed a very large Rodgers analog into a smallish church a few years ago, and there were no chambers, no possible way to wall-mount any decent speakers. Not even a suitable place for a full set of six or seven speakers in that room because the ceiling was just too low. Taking a chance, we used the dead mono output on the organ's pre-amp panel (an RCA jack intended to feed a spring reverb with a mix of all the channels), routed it to a mono amp, then to a single Allen HC-12 cabinet in the floor plus a pair of Allen PP-3 speakers which we placed on their backs up in the light trays on either side of the chancel area.

You'd think that would be a miserable compromise, but in fact it sounded great. I go back and service that organ now and then, and I'm always amazed at its sound. The church seats under 200 with a ceiling not over 12 feet high and way too much carpeting and padding, anything but organ-friendly. But for some reason, that particular old analog Rodgers all mixed to mono sounds amazingly good. Due in part, no doubt, to the excellence of the Allen HC-12 and PP-3 speaker cabinets, and to the sound getting reflected off the ceiling.

I don't think a mono mix is ideal for any modern digital organ because of the multiple pitch sources. (That old Rodgers had just one full-compass rank of oscillators, an "ensemble" rank of 48 notes, and a 37 note celeste, so there wasn't much frequency-clashing going on to cause beats. All pitches below tenor C came from the same rank, as did the highest octaves of many stops.)

A mix-down from the nine channels of the Allen 7000 to a stereo pair, using good quality amps and speakers just might sound surprisingly good. Here's a good Mackie mixer with built-in reverb that has enough inputs for under $250.

https://www.fullcompass.com/prod/281...-usb-interface