Pipe organ sounds must meet high artistic requirements in order to be able to play the organ as a full-fledged musical instrument. The sounds must be clear and transparent, such as a choir with sopranos, altos and tenors or a string orchestra with violins, violas and cellos.
The sounds need a base of low tones, such as the voices of men in a choir, or the double bass in the strings. The organ has the registers Stopped Diapason and Subbas to produce deep tones with great Gravity. They can do their job well as the foundation of the sound construction if the pipes are widely scaled.
In addition to gravity and clarity, an organ sound must also sound sweet. This is especially audible in the soft, but clear four-foot flute sounds. The flute sounds do not have to be loud, but produce a clear sound, which colors well with tones of higher position. The similarity with my pipe organ is that sounds can be heard up close. The DRY samples were recorded at a short distance from the pipes, where the reverberation does not yet play a role.
The reverberation of a large number of churches has been recorded separately and stored in the memory of the Hauptwerk organ. The convolution reverberation can be chosen as desired and then has the same influence on the sound as the acoustics in the church. So hears the organist at home the church sounds as if he or she were playing the organ in the church.
Sonarte from Capelle aan den IJssel built my new Hauptwerk organ. There was only one benchmark for the choice of the organ's audio system: Reverence quality. My organ should sound like a pipe organ.
each pipe sound that is reproduced must correspond 100% to the original sound
The speakers are clearly visible at the most ideal place to radiate the sounds. The bass tones come from a system based on wooden Subbass pipes. The velvety soft volume of the sounds is accompanied by a deep intensity.
The soft sounds have a great Gravity.
Everyone is welcome to convince themselves of the special sounds here. Mail to: John Boersma
Constantly I receive e-mails asking me to explain how the wind model works. Sample sets are offered with rave stories about the fantastic wind model. The questioners believe the roaring texts, which, however
the wind model is glossy paint over a rusty carcass;
it camouflages samples that are poorly made
The tone from a pipe fluctuates and therefore a tone sounds lively. It is an important feature of any wind instrument, such as flutes, oboes, and the other wind instruments in an orchestra. Thousands of organ pipes I have made and each pipe I have tested immediately. The noise should not be too much, because the wind energy must be completely converted into sound energy. Imperfections can occur and will be repaired to keep the tone as pure as possible. But a clean tone is not a rigid tone, the fluctuations are an integral part of the tone and ensure the liveliness of the sound.
When the tones are recorded for a sample set, the fluctuations must also be stored in the sample. In post-processing it is the art of the sample maker to remove unwanted noise without affecting the fluctuations. Unfortunately, things often go wrong there and with the noise, the fluctuations have also disappeared. Making samples of an organ is a difficult job, which requires the expertise of voicers of organ pipes.
The tone with the missing fluctuations sounds rigid and that is masked by a technical trick. The amplifier that transmits the tone is modulated with a rapidly changing signal that varies the volume. The rigid tone with the fake fluctuations was named the wind model. For me as a maker of pipes it is incomprehensible that organists do not hear the difference.
When I have installed a sample set, the first action is to disable the wind model. I only use sample sets from Sonus Paradisi and from Prospectum; here the original fluctuations can be clearly heard. Both sample makers belong to the top of Hauptwerk and their samples are closest to the sounds of a pipe organ.