Pipe organs

[planetearth]

No no, that's not really what I'm looking for. I want something much more flexible than that. I'm just saying that particular free one does that one sound fairly well.

Also, whoever it was that recommended Notre Dam de Budapest... can you give me a better explanation than the web site what the difference is between "Looped" and "Full"? In the feature comparisons, there appears to be no difference, but one costs about twice as much.

There isn't much on their site about the difference, but I would imagine that the "looped" sounds are less expensive because they're not full-length samples of each note. I would bet the sustain is looped, and you may or may not hear it. Here's all their website says: "The Full Edition contains unlooped samples for further realism". My concern is that the "looped" edition has more stops than the "full" edition (62 vs. 10), has more reverbs (7, vs I guess, none or 1--all it says is "stereo"), and takes 7 DVDs, compared to 4 for the "full" edition.

I don't know if you saw this, but those instruments are made for Kontakt 2. They should open and play properly in Kontakt 5, but it's difficult to say if they will, and they will almost certainly have to be converted to the new file format, since these are .NKI files. All I saw about Kontakt issues with that sample library was this link https://www.native-instruments.com/foru ... sing.37381. In it, Kontakt users discussed the library and some minor issues they had with it over a decade ago. Your mileage may vary, of course.

And as far as the "typo" war that's raging here, when I've done beta-testing for synths and soundsets/libraries, I've pointed out to the developers any typos I saw. In most cases, the developers simply didn't care to fix them. I see typos in NI (and other) libraries all the time, and I wouldn't expect that to get better any time soon. It's a shame, because to me (and many others), if you can't be bothered to spell a word correctly (especially when you have Google at your fingertips), how careful were you in the coding of the instrument?

There are typos and errors all over Inspired Acoustic's website, and that goes to the concern about errors in the coding. If you even try to compare the "looped" and "full" editions of this sample library, you'll see that the "full" version seems much less "full" than the "looped" one, if you're to believe one of the comparison charts, yet another shows them to have all the same options. (Compare the "Features" and "Contents" comparison charts to see what I mean. http://www.inspiredacoustics.com/en/pro ... b/overview)

Steve

EDIT: After looking at the "trial" version of this library that's available to download, it would appear that the "unlooped"/"Full" editions may have much shorter sustains than you might want. In that case, the looped versions might be more desirable. But again, the comparison charts contradict themselves (and each other) so often, that it's difficult to determine what the developer meant when naming these libraries the way he did.

I didn't download the trial version, since most of it was for Gigastudio 3, and what was left for Kontakt 2 didn't make much sense, as far as the name. You might want to try that though, to see if it even works well in Kontakt 5.

Steve

[goldenhelix]

Thanks for your input. I will probably not pursue Notre Dame de Budapest because of the potential Kontakt issue anyways. I hear that it is a nice sounding library, but there are probably enough more contemporary options available that I don't need to invite the possible headache of using something that isn't really made for newer versions of Kontakt. It seems for my price range, Hephaestus and perhaps Spitfire are the better options proposed so far (for the price, the Aria one also sounds quite nice), unless I become rich and can indulge my Hauptwerk fantasies

Keep the recommendations coming though! Haven't made my decision yet.

[aMUSEd]

tbh the free Hauptwerk seems enough for my needs, never got round to installing it before though

bear in mind as well as price the full versions also require their own USB Key dongle

[evilantal]

tbh the free Hauptwerk seems enough for my needs, never got round to installing it before though

bear in mind as well as price the full versions also require their own USB Key dongle

Free version of Hauptwerk wasn't an option for me, since it can't be used for commercial purposes.

[nineofkings]

A free, vintage option to tide you over in the meantime may be the Jeux soundfont - http://www.realmac.info/jeux1.ht

Excellent stop selection, very pretty flutes and very aggressive solos. Sounds weird and unimpressive dry (because nobody hears pipe organs dry) but put it into a quality hall reverb and it comes to life. I may post some music I've made using it later as a sound example


EDIT: Here is some music. 2 very short pieces totaling about 2 minutes. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gid7qix1ouayb ... s.mp3?dl=1

[fmr]

A free, vintage option to tide you over in the meantime may be the Jeux soundfont - http://www.realmac.info/jeux1.ht

Excellent stop selection, very pretty flutes and very aggressive solos. Sounds weird and unimpressive dry (because nobody hears pipe organs dry) but put it into a quality hall reverb and it comes to life. I may post some music I've made using it later as a sound example

I remember having tried it a few years ago, and I was impressed. Don't know how it compares today, but it was really comprehensive, in terms of the stops sampled.

Another good alternative, that doesn't cost that much and is really good, IMO, is the Garritan Pipe Organs https://www.garritan.com/products/classic-pipe-organs/ - Not many individual stops, but it spans organs from many periods, from the Renaissance to the the Modern Age, and therefore is very versatile.

[goldenhelix]

Jeux has an impressive number of sounds that seem well recorded. I wish it had a GUI of some sort that let you combine them in a slightly more easy fashion than running multiple instances of whatever Soundfont player you are using (I'm using sforzando), but I foresee that this could get a fair amount of use.

I did have a look at the Garritan organs and they sound good.

Incidentally I found another one from Soundiron called Lakeside Organ which sounds pretty good. It's probably not what I'm looking for exactly because of small number of stops, but others may find it worth checking out for $49.

[nineofkings]

My recommendation is to use a multitimbral soundfont player, like Phenome, XS-1, or sfz+. XS-1 is the best sf2 player I've ever used, and free, but only 32-bit.

[DocAtlas]

Somehow the post I made yesterday disappeared into the aether, so I'll try again.

All of these suggestions are things I need to check out, but what about controllers for playing like, well, an organist? I've got the manuals covered, but does anyone know of a reasonably-priced full-sized (25+) set of midi bass pedals? The Nord unit looks nice, but its price doesn't.

[goldenhelix]

The free sampler Tx16wx appears to play multimbral soundfonts but the loop points are all messed up when I load Jeux into it. I'm not sure what the cause of that is, but it appears I would have to set them all manually, which is time consuming to say the least and the few that I tried doing I couldn't even get a satisfactory loop point anyways.

I'm playing around right now with trying to create a custom .sfz file for sforzando to layer the parts but I have never done anything like this before so I am starting from scratch learning this. I have got as far as creating an .sfz file that loads multiple stops into it at once but not yet as far as turning on or off or mixing the levels of the individual stops. The first issue I've run into is that because it's essentially playing all the stops I have loaded at once, polyphony limits mean that this is not going to be a viable way of doing this and I'll have to either create an interface to select which stops I want to load in, effectively turning those on, or to find a way of turning them on/off pre-triggering of the sample, so as not to use up polyphony on stops that aren't even playing.

Re: pedals, I don't know of any cheap alternatives. Most MIDI foot pedals are costly for some reason. You can get a Studiologic one-octave set for about $500. If you have a set of non-MIDI pedals already, you could probably outfit them with MIDI for about half that. As far as I know you don't need velocity sensitivity on foot pedals, so you just need SPST switches wired to a MIDI controller board.

[bigcat1969]

Oh here is another freebie for Kontakt that seems to have generated some love...

http://vi-control.net/community/threads ... st-4096413

[VicDiesel]

Another good alternative, that doesn't cost that much and is really good, IMO, is the Garritan Pipe Organs https://www.garritan.com/products/classic-pipe-organs/ - Not many individual stops, but it spans organs from many periods,

.... but no portatif?

Considering that those things have only one stop that should have been easy to do. And they are so charming! (My early music ensemble has one. It's played one-handed because you need your other hand for the bellows.)

Other question: I know that pop musicians like the German organ sound best, but which libraries have a decent pretend Cavaille-Coll? I'm hoping that Garritan's romantic organ has some that.

Victor.

[fmr]

Another good alternative, that doesn't cost that much and is really good, IMO, is the Garritan Pipe Organs https://www.garritan.com/products/classic-pipe-organs/ - Not many individual stops, but it spans organs from many periods,

.... but no portatif?

Considering that those things have only one stop that should have been easy to do. And they are so charming! (My early music ensemble has one. It's played one-handed because you need your other hand for the bellows.)

I know what a portatif is. Not the same thing, but the stopped flutes of the Renaissance Organ could be a good replacement.

Other question: I know that pop musicians like the German organ sound best, but which libraries have a decent pretend Cavaille-Coll? I'm hoping that Garritan's romantic organ has some that.

Victor.

Garritan Pipe Organs has a Romantic Organ, but unfortunately, it isn't a Cavaillé-Coll. According to the manual, it is the organ of St. Bartolomeo Church in Rakovník, Czech Republic, built by Emanuel Šimon Petr circa 1800. It is a romantic organ (or a Symphonic Organ, as they are also called) and, although it doesn't have many stops recorded (just nine registers, and only five of them are single stops, the rest are combinations), I think it can perform the role. The package also have two modern organs, a Rieger-Kloss from 1956, built in Germany for the St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, and one built by the Schantz Organ Company in 1966 and located in the Riverside First Baptist Church (California).

There is also a Classical (Late Baroque) Organ (also czech) built in 1748, and, again according to the manual, it was an organ that was played by Bach himself.

The modern organs were sampled more extensively. Actually, and somehow strangely, the Baroque and Romantic Organs are the ones that have less sounds (being them stops and/or combinations). I say strangely because these were the two golden eras for the Pipe Organ, and, accordingly, these should have been sampled more extensively.

But since we can combine these, and because there are no two organs alike, combining sounds form the several organs available may lead to some "original" organ sounds. For example, by complementing the Romantic Organ with the Classical Organ and the Moder I Organ, we can have a real strong sound resembling the big organ of Notre Dame that we can hear in the recordings of Messiaen by Olivier Latry, for example.

[aMUSEd]

tbh the free Hauptwerk seems enough for my needs, never got round to installing it before though

bear in mind as well as price the full versions also require their own USB Key dongle

Free version of Hauptwerk wasn't an option for me, since it can't be used for commercial purposes.

I see. Looks to me then that the main advantage of Haupwerk, disregarding the RAM limitation, is that they have custom libraries for many very unique organs. Thing about the bigger Pipe organs at least is that they are really one off instruments, custom built for the setting and acoustics, so this makes sense, while you could have a generic organ library (or even a physically modelled one) it would not capture that unique quality quite as well.

[VicDiesel]

Garritan Pipe Organs has a Romantic Organ, but unfortunately, it isn't a Cavaillé-Coll.

Thanks for the clarification. Looks like the Garritan is still worth checking out.

Victor.