Upgrade to ?? Wersi, Roland, Lowrey et al

[Herbert]

I have too many organs for my own good and I know the time is coming when I will need to slim down. I know that to satisfy me I will have to get the cheque book out but to buy what I am unsure. Below is what I have now.

Orla GT800, Technics GA3, Wersi Helios. Arcus. Wega. Lowrey Heritage DS01. Contempo 80

So what at do I want?

A BIG SOUND!

An organ with superb flutes. Wersi, Hammond and if possible some creamy Lowrey flutes pre 1980
Rich piano sound, doesn't have to be the most accurate but big sound
Strings which are analog sounding like the Helios plus orchestral for classical stuff
Big brass and reed sounds, not thin.
A very good AOC as near to Lowrey as possible.
A decent rhythm box

Not bothered about styles

Must cost £5000 or less

What do you say?

[seamaster]

Roland AT800/900.

Ignore any advice to the contrary, Herbert, it will be the raving of madmen.

[abacus]

Wersi Verona/Vegas (Possibly even a Scala) with the Helios/Galaxy/CD packages + VB3/B4 VST. (The Lowrey sound can be achieved by editing the on-board drawbars) All packages are still available for purchase if not activated, plus you can also get free trials.
Roland will give you the Brass and Hammond (I would take the Roland Brass over the Wersi Brass, but the Wersi allows you to add voices to suit)
Strings will be fine on both.
Both Roland and the Wersi OAS range have been discontinued, (Both still supported) but only the Wersi allows you to upgrade to the latest instrument (Sonic OAX) in the future. (The Roland is unfortunately stuck in its present form)
Have fun choosing.

Bill

[andyg]

You've described the top end Rolands pretty much to a T, though you won't get Wersi flutes, just Hammond and Lowrey. Roland AT80SL will come in under budget, you might find an AT800 privately. As well as the onboard styles, there are big collections of Roland styles out there if you look carefully or know someone who has them. You only have to use the drum parts if that's what you wish - that's how I use mine 90% of the time.

However, definitely keep the DSO-1, presumably with that leslie! :) NOTHING gets close. Give away the CO80, sell the Orla and if you can get it working for more than 10 minutes ( :D ) sell the Helios. I'd probably keep the GA3, though.

[Markr]

Herbert,

Agree with everything above, however with so many organs you have to choose from in your possession, will you be truly happy with just the sounds contained within one.

Take a look at http://www.wersiorganshowcase.com/hdseries.html where Jeff is using a computer to put lots of VST’s on that can give you your big brass, big strings, piano, pipe and drawbar organ sounds using an organ that has midi to control it. That way you choose the organ on aesthetics, it’s MIDI capability and the sounds that you like by default, and then obtain the rest by means of VST or other MIDI expansions.

It may not be for you, but just another option to consider and given that most organs in your price range are going to be a little older, it moves your investment into something that is reusable with any MIDI device, organ or otherwise.

Good luck with choice.
Mark

[Herbert]

Many thanks to those who have responded. More views are still very welcome. Yes I should have mentioned that the Lowrey DS01 is none negotiable. I shall have it until I die. It is simply irreplaceable. I still regret selling my T. Thats my problem. I want to keep them all. Andy has suggested I keep 3. That maybe possible. Anymore views?

[Herbert]

Hi Mark,
Yes its very difficult to know whether I would happy even with a more advanced organ. I hope I would but who knows.

The link you set is very interesting. Although I love the Wersi sound, they always seem expensive even for something made at least 15 years ago. Although tbh Im not sure how old the Rolands mentioned above are.

Also with Wersi given they are running I think Im right in saying XP how does the software that you are highlighting run?

That link is very interesting. I assume that there is no such a thing as a Wersi HD? Is the name he is giving it if an OAS instrument had all that software loaded in?

[abacus]

All the software mentioned is run on a separate computer (Not the one on-board) which is controlled by his Scala, using the OAS advanced Midi System. (While the Roland Midi is better than most it’s a is severely limited compared to OAS, thus making additions more difficult, whereas with OAS the external module operates as if it is part of the OAS system)
A number of VSTs can still run on OAS but most modern ones require at least Win 7, plus most also require a 64 bit system. (VB3 is a standard option in OAS)
It comes down to 2 things really, are you happy to be stuck with what you have (Roland) with limited control of expanders, or do you want to be able to hang on to the instrument for a long time and expand it with modules/computer, that operate like they are part of the instrument. (Wersi) You also have the option to upgrade to the latest OAX as well.

Bill

[Markr]

Hi Herbert,

as Bill states, Jeff is running the Wersi HD part of his set up on a Mac computer, if I recall correctly, and is purely using his Scala to provide the MIDI input to produce the sounds. However it could also be a Windows 10 PC, in reality anything that the required VST’s support. I will bow to Bill’s greater knowledge in this area in terms of which manufacturers have the appropriate MIDI control necessary to operate this, however the odd Wersi Verona comes up on eBay for about £2k which with the appropriate computer would allow you to replicate what Jeff has done.

if this route interests you at all, make contact with Jeff either from his website or via the WersiClubUSA website that Curt runs, as Jeff will I am sure only be too happy to share what he has done in more detail. Obviously it will be heavily Wersi biased, but it is the computer element that you would be interested in I guess.

thanks
Mark

[Momboc]

Once you go Virtual (MIDI Controllers + PC + ASIO sound card/audio interface) then you can use samples to emulate a range of vintage organs.

I'm not aware of any Lowrey samples in the market but here is an example of samples taken from an H100 Hammond and a Wersi Helios.

In this case the sample packs are configured for loading into a Yamaha Tyros or Genos but I'm sure that they could be imported into Kontakt

https://youtu.be/4k78zl_rf4k

You could also go for a 'twin set'; where you use a Tyros/Genos as the upper manual, add a MIDI contoller as the lower manual plus MIDI pedals

As per this example

https://youtu.be/5moOwdU4uwo

PS. It's the same person in both videos

[Herbert]

I've never used midi or vsts. I did once try a friends EL90 running Paramount I think it was. There was a long delay between pressing the notes and hearing the sound. I'm sure it wasn't trying to replicate the action of a pipe organ. What would be the reason for such a delay. Are players really using a keyboard to communicate with a computer and getting the same results as playing an organ? Obviously my experience and knowledge of this area is severely limited.

[andyg]

The delay is known as 'latency'. It's the time it takes the computer and its sound system to detect the note(s) played and produce the sound through the speakers. It can be as much as 3/4 of a second on some Windows systems, which is ridiculously long. If the computer has a decent quality soundcard or audio interface with it, you can bring that delay right down to just a few milliseconds, which is virtually un-noticeable. The best soundcards use the ASIO standard. There is something called ASIO4ALL which can fool most onboard soundchips into thinking that they're ASIO capable and you can get down to maybe 20 milliseconds. That's very playable. ASIO4ALL doesn't always work, though - it's no good on my laptop. Macs are a law unto themselves and should be able to deliver low latency. I never use them so can't tell you for sure. However, an ASIO card or interface is always best.

Some software comes with low latency drivers, Cubase comes with a generic driver that works fine on my laptop so I use that for about 11 milliseconds. My PC has two ASIO capable cards, either of which will get down to 2 millesconds, but I settle for around 10.

Of course, pipe organs don't speak immediately and the further you are from the pipes the longer the delay can get. Playing with 250 milliseconds delay on Hauptwerk is good practice for what you might encounter on pipes.

[seamaster]

I couldn't be doing with that.

[Momboc]

Latency is annoying, but it can be fixed/removed to the extent that it is unnoticable.

If you use a computer based organ then you need to have a computer that has its hardware and software configured and optimised for audio production.

Here is a downloadable guide

https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree/

[andyg]

There's some good, basic stuff in there, and I've written similar articles myself.

However, in practice, if you have a decent, well put together PC, decent components, a 7200 RPM hard drive or SSD for streaming and, most importantly an ASIO capable audio card/interface with well written drivers, you don't need to go overboard with optimisation. I spent some considerable time optimising my previous PC, but this one hasn't been tweaked since the day I built it, it's 100% out of the box. The XP partition runs all my older audio software and has never skipped a beat in over 7 years. The Win 7 partition handles Cubase 8, Sibelius etc without issues, again, with no problems.

That said, if you're going to have a PC that is dedicated solely to the virtual organ, you may as well go for it big time and remove or disable all the bits of Windows that you possibly can that might interfere or slow down the audio performance. There's tons of stuff that could go! Just how much gain there would be? I can't say, but in this situation you have nothing to lose.