You're absolutely right, Nick :up:, and thank you :tiphat:
The pipe organ I play at the church does not have one single nicked pipe whatsoever. This translates into a very natural sound along with all the characteristics of the air entering the pipe, which is never quite the same for each key suppression. There are lots of "mechanical" sounds ... it's a very chiffy organ ... and I love it for that quality.
In defense of the digitals though, they are improving every year ... still for some the only alternative due to space constrictions and/or budget concerns. I would rather see a "normal" digital installed in a church as opposed to a simple portable keyboard.
My main complaint on the demos for the digitals is their incessant use of extraordinarily long reverb times. Relatively few churches (at least here in the US) have reverberant buildings - many, like mine, are completely devoid of any acoustics ... the sound stops before I lift my hands of the keyboard in my church :lol:.
You are welcome !
Sure there are countless parameters that are involved until you get what comes to your ear...
Sure, it is better to have a digital than not having an organ at all!
Of course, in my opinion, digital organs are great for practice and furthermore a lot more affordable, but still under no circumstances can they replace a real organ by any means. Thats why i am against ultra expensive digital organs (see Allen, Rodgers, Marchall and Ogletree, Walker etc) since with the same ammount of money that you would give for one of the, you could afford getting a smaller but real pipe organ.
In my opinion the future of digital organs is actually something like Hauptwerk.
I believe its one of the tonally excellent ways of reproducing a real organ. There are some sample sets -Inspired acoustics- (like lets say the Palace of Arts organ in Budapest) that have multiple 40 second (!) samples for each note for every single stop. It is said that it took them 2 years to sample the entire instrument!
The extended edition of that organ costs 999$ and Hauptwerk costs 450$.
Of course you will need quite a PC to run it (and also a good Speaker system), but still, i dont believe that most Digital organ companies that have organs of more than 20K can beat the quality of these samples!
The organ I have (a Content Mondri 5800) is a great instrument -of course the quality of its samples is inferior to the ones that many hauptwerk instruments have) but still it manages to sound realistic and nice. But what i like most in it (of course thats a personal opinion) is the fact that it FEELS, Functions and looks like a pipe organ (wooden moving drawstop, wooden console, wooden keyboards and generally high quality materials). For me at least that is an imprortant factor (as well as to my practice). For no reason would i ever want to replace it, but since time goes by quickly and its technology will eventually become obsolete, an upgrade that i will sometime do for it, is to convert it to a hauptwerk instrument. (with the advanced version of hauptwerk you can take advantage and use all the buttons presets drawknobs and stuff of a digital organ) - really dislike Tab organs and plastic stuff, even when it comes to real organs. I am a lot in favor of the Mechanical action functions-
As for Physis organ, having said the above, i am not that sure HOW better it is, especially when compared to something a lot more natural and unproccessed like the samples of Hautwerk lets say... The fact that everything is synthesized in a way, really puts me in doubts about how much that instrument can stay and sound physical when various combination of stops are used. Furthermore, dont trust the recordings made digitally or generally the image of an organ presented on the internet since the real deal may vary a lot... Usually the samples given online are full of digital reverb that cover the real quality of the stop itself. Have in mind also that a Unico 500 (which uses the Physis system) costs 27.000 euros and has 56 stops. (Convert that to dollars and it will be more that 35,000...) I recall that when i visited the Content organ factory in the Netherlands, one thing that amazed me was HOW different their organs sounded from upclose than they did in their recordings !!! I would NEVER buy an instrument, whatever that might be, without PLAYING it first.
I became strictly against digital reverb, when i played at at a Cathedral with natural reverb (the Muller organ in St.Bavokerk in the Netherlands) of about 12 seconds... First of all, what the organist hears has nothing to do with what is heard in the Church -you also have to adjust your playing- and not only that but hearing a Bombarde 32 "Bouncing" arround the walls of the Cathedral after I had finished playing a piece with a nice chord, can not be reproduced in any way. So, adding reverb is something really relative.
You add reverb as if you were at the console of an organ, or as if you were in the other side of the church?
To Panos,
Well yes, i started playing the piano at 6 and since there has not been a digital one that could in anyway reproduce it (I was never even interested to play a digital piano for any reason)
But in the organ its another story. Harmonics can become even more complex, and other than that there are the individual stops and their countless combinations that each of them produces a variety of harmonics that are unique and cannot be reproduced.
As for the Physis organs, I would reccommend that if you want a cheaper solution (sometime) you can buy just a digital organ console (google "Hauptwerk Consoles") ,buy an over the top hauptwerk sample set, and a pair or more, of good speakers, and there goes your organ.
P.S: The reason why i bought a digital organ is because of the lack of organs and time to go to practice to the existing ones (if they are even available). But at least I tried to keep the organ I bought as Organ-y as i could.
Phew, that was a long message
Best Regards,
Nicholas