New recording uploaded from the Ruffatti organ in Uppsala

[VeniVidi2009]

Hi all

On Youtube you can now find a recording with much better sound, made at the concert in February 2009 on the new Ruffatti organ in Uppsala Cathedral. And with Andrew Canning playing a Procession March by the English composer Harold Nutt.

The attached pictures are kept small to give a better bandwidth to the sound. Some more files will follow later on, also from that concert in February - maybe also with the sound from the old Åkerman organ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebMHO...el_page&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/user/VeniVidi2009

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[wljmrbill]

very enjoyable with great sound.. also liked the 2 organ rendition using new and old organs combined.( on same link as one above)

[Soubasse]

Fantastic! Many thanks Veni (and for the PM too, much appreciated).

I also appreciate the stereo balance which leads me to a couple of technical questions.

1) Where was the H4 placed in the building?
2) Which organs favour which ears (I'm assuming that the Ruffati is the louder of the two placed slightly to the right?).

I can't help wondering how on earth they kept it together over that distance. I suppose there must have been some sort of monitoring which makes one think how it would have been done in Langlais' day. Superb undertaking, Thanks once again for posting, and boy am I looking forward to a return visit one day.

[VeniVidi2009]

1. The recording was made from a position between the new Ruffatti organ (that is built into the north transept) to the left of me, and the old Åkerman organ behind me on the original organ loft in the back of the cathedral. It is not easy to define the organs in the recording to be in the left or right ears because of several reasons. The mics were pointed upwards towards the ceiling to catch the ambience in the room, more than the left-right positioning of the organs (or more accurately the front-back positioning in this case) and first of all not to miss the sound behind me. The H4 has the mics positioned in a true X/Y configuration where the two microphones point inward at a crossing angle. This allows the recorder to cover a wide area. But best of all - phase differences between left and right channels are eliminated thanks to that, because sound is picked up from exactly the same position for the two mics. I think this may explain the quite clear recording in spite of the very complicated sound environment with this extremely long reverberation. According to the home page of Ruffatti the reverberation time in Uppsala cathedral is 11 seconds!

2. As far as I could see, there existed no "contact system" between the two organists, no video monitoring etc. - as you also can see in the short video clip that was published before (which is caught from another position slightly to the right of the nave console). Of course part of the music is played as a dialogue which makes it a little easier but there exists also parts with simultaneous playing where the timing is more critical. Maybe for example Andrew Canning sees this posting and can answer exactly how they accomplished the remarkably good cooperation.