When designing this organ I started from the sounds of pipe organs that I have built for living rooms in countless versions. However, the sounds of a pipe organ only come into their own if they can develop in good acoustics, it is an indispensable part of the organ sound. In fact, that excludes a pipe organ for the living room, because it is not an acoustic space.

Hauptwerk is a system that can bridge this contradiction, provided certain conditions are met. First of all, samples must contain sounds recorded close to the pipes, because I want to hear it just like I do when I play the organ in the church. The sounds come as one source from the organ case close to the place where I play. I also want to experience the origin of the reverberation; that sounds completely different from reverberant sounds of WET samples in more channels, such as with Surround.

This is only possible if the reverberation of the church is recorded with an IR recording, separately from the sample and stored in the Chamber Organ. Only in this place must the dry sound be developed in the acoustics of the church. The sounds and the acoustics are therefore not stored in the same sample and follow their own way to the Hauptwerk organ. When voicing my pipe organ was next to it and I made sure that there was no difference in sound. That is only possible with good Hauptwerk samples such as Sonus Paradisi or Prospectum provide.

My organ was built by Wim de Borst from Sonarte in Capelle aan den IJssel.
In addition to being an organ builder, he is a church organist and knows better than anyone how the organist hears the sounds in the church. With Hauptwerk, an organist experiences the process of blossoming in acoustics and dying out in the distance. When an IR recording is stored in the memory of the organ in the living room, the acoustic effect is equal to the church. In the living room, too, the first tone must sound close and then blossom to full strength.

High demands must be made of the Hauptwerk organ. The correct place for the loudspeakers is at the level of the organist's ears. This corresponds to the position of the console in the church in relation to the organ case. The bass reflex loudspeakers have been given a housing adapted by ADAM for optimal reproduction of the pipe sounds. Well visible, but when they are placed in the organ case, that would seriously disrupt the high quality.

My previous organ, supplied by Noorlander, had loudspeakers with an open bass port inside the organ case; that's amateurish.
Placing the speakers outside the cabinet was already a huge improvement. It gave me a chance to compare them with other speakers. My request to Noorlander to supply better speakers was answered with: I don't have them, buy them from another company!
That became Sonarte; Wim de Borst builds organs with loudspeakers of top quality.

Sample makers compare the sounds they recorded from the pipes by listening to them with Reference class speakers. We chose the same loudspeakers for my organ; ADAM S-Series loudspeakers. These are not cheap, but the reproduction of the sounds is unsurpassed and that is noticeable when voicing the samples. It is striking how little I have to correct.
Because the recordings are digitally stored in the samples, they are converted into audible sounds by a Digital-Analog Converter. We chose the DA Converter that meets the highest requirements to exclude any chance of distortion.

For the low tones of the bass sounds, a speaker system has been designed that is inspired by a wooden Subbass pipe. The round low tones are velvety soft, but with a deep intensity. In this way, the Gravität of the bass tones becomes noticeable.
Jolanda Zwoferink obtained her PhD for her research into the Gravität of the organ sound for the correct interpretation of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This is reproduced excellently on my organ.

So Sonarte was able to build the ideal organ. Everyone can judge her for themselves