Demo's

Date

Size (MB)

Piston #1, Impro #1, Sheet #1

May 27, 2009

1.69

Piston #2, Impro #1, Sheet #1

May 27, 2009

2.48

Piston #3, Impro #1, Sheet #1

May 27, 2009

3.73

Piston #4, Impro #1, Sheet #1

May 27, 2009

2.98

Piston #5, Impro #1, Sheet #1

May 27, 2009

2.08

A Hauptwerk III/CODM “Poor-Man’s” Surround Organ Experiment
Leo Christopherson – May 2009

Problem:
Is it possible to create a surround sample set from an HW wet set that can be used through a multiple speaker system?
Could such a “pseudo” surround organ sound as good as the Sonus Paradisi surround organs?

Materials:
1) Hauptwerk version 3.2+ advanced edition
2) A multiple speaker system with enough HW outputs to at least have a “front” multiple speaker output, plus rear stereo or side speakers for the surround output
3) A wet organ sample set which may be used with the HW CODM

Theory:
The Sonus Paradisi surround sets have a complete sample set recorded rather close to the actual pipes, and they contain a fair amount of the church’s/cathedral’s reverberation (the wet samples). There is also a complete sample set recorded well away from the pipes and provides a much more reverberant sound (the surround set).

By using the HW3 CODM an organ can be created which loads the complete set of samples twice, where the second set's samples are designated with an “R” for rear. The normal wet (front) ranks need to have the reverb tails cut to provide a good, up-close sound through the multiple speakers. The second set may then be directed to the rear speakers, still containing their full reverb sound. The surround output should be changed by lower rank volumes, less treble, a slightly different tuning, perhaps some additional reverb added. This is to better differentiate between the two sets.

Procedure:
For this experiment the CODM for the St. Annes – Moseley was used. HW3 comes with a CODM .xml file already prepared which has about everything needed to start from:

“ExampleCustomOrgan6-StAnnes-WithAllFrills.CustomOrgan.Hauptwerk.xml.”

This CODM file was loaded into XML Marker for editing. Each rank of the original organ was then duplicated with an “R” designation in its name. Also, since this version of the organ has no General Pistons, a set of ten Generals were added. The new file was saved as:

“SurroundCustomOrgan7-StAnne.CustomOrgan.Hauptwerk.xml.”

A rank-to-speaker group chart was created using EXCEL.

The new custom organ was loaded into HW3 and voiced. The front set was loaded primarily in mono, with the rear set in stereo.

Results:
The sound of the organ was quite good! The front set with reverb tails cut provided the up-close feel to the organ. Even though the rear speakers contained ranks sounding very nearly the same as the front speakers, there was a much larger feel to the instrument, since its sounds were now distributed all around the room more effectively. In other words, the organ sounds like it belongs in the room. With careful adjustment, using HW3’s editing, the sound was made to be not like sitting right inside the organ chamber. A bit of Lexicon reverb/delay (especially initial delay) was added. This increased the illusion of front pipes vs. rear room reverb. Much of the reverb sound was coming from the original church samples.

Conclusion:
The experiment to create a surround HW organ from a wet one was successful. However, since the surround ranks are not recorded from the rear of the church, the sound is not as good as the Sonus Paradisi surround organ sets.

That said, it is true that this surround St. Annes is a pleasure to play!

Note:
This approach to create a surround set should provide even better results where the wet sample set is very wet. The St. Annes set has only a moderate natural reverb.

----Leo Christopherson, May 27, 2009

I will make a few recordings of this organ soon and post mp3's of the results here.