KVR Audio

goldenhelix · Post by **goldenhelix** » Thu Jun 01, 2017 7:30 pm

Looking for a good virtual instrument and want to know people's opinions. The three main contenders I've come across seem to be

Hauptwerk
Spitfire Union Chapel
Solokinetic Toccata

I can find very little in the way of reviews of the last one. Hauptwerk seems to be considered the standard with Union Chapel being considered good but maybe not as potentially large sounding.

Anyone have experience with any of these and want to weigh in?

dmbaer · Post by **dmbaer** » Thu Jun 01, 2017 8:11 pm

Don't know anything about Hauptwerk. But you should definitely add this beauty to your short list:

http://soundbytesmag.net/points-of-kont ... us-sounds/

Union Chapel is absolutely superb, but is priced accordingly. A review:

http://soundbytesmag.net/union-chapel-organ-spitfire/

Sonokinetic is very good with one reservation: some of the sample loops are far from seamless. The samples are long enough that this is rarely noticeable, however. Read about that one here:

http://soundbytesmag.net/sonokinetictoccata/

Finally, there's this one from BestService (the only non-Kontakt one of the bunch):

http://soundbytesmag.net/organumveneziabestservice/

Hope this helps.

FLWrd · Post by **FLWrd** » Thu Jun 01, 2017 8:57 pm

I recommend BigCat's free organs. He's got a smaller and a larger one, and they sound great. Not very baroque. http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.com/2 ... ments.html

There is also a free HauptWerk alternative, Grand Orgue, and there are sample sets for that as well: http://www.grandorgue.de/

goldenhelix · Post by **goldenhelix** » Thu Jun 01, 2017 10:42 pm

Cool! Thanks for the additional options. On further research I realized that putting Hauptwerk into the same category as these other instruments is probably unfair. I didn't realize at first that most of the actual instruments for Hauptwerk need to be purchased separately and that the true power of that particular program is the expandability and customization, but that comes at a rather gigantic cost, if one were to really pursue it to its fullest (advanced version of the program is $599, which includes one organ, and additional organ sets seem to run anywhere from $100-800, so if you were a really about your virtual organs, you could end up spending thousands of dollars to properly expand your Hauptwerk setup).

That's good to know about Toccata's loop issue. I probably will take that out of the running based on that bit of info. There are certainly a bunch of other options out there too that I didn't mention. The ones that look most attractive to me are the ones where you can actually control the stops in some way and not just pick from recorded commonly used sets of stops, but I'm willing to compromise a bit on that if it sounds good enough.

Union Chapel does sound really good but, as I said, it does seem to lack the ability to do that full power tutti sound. It's not too expensive though, so it might be a worthy addition regardless. Italian Concert Organ and Organum Venezia both sound quite good! I'll investigate those some more. Right now I'm downloading the Bigcat ones to give those a try. They actually look quite promising, so thanks for that tip! Free is always good.

evilantal · Post by **evilantal** » Fri Jun 02, 2017 5:11 am

Big ones already mentioned, but...

Another voted for the Hephaestus organ. I love it!

Another thing to keep in mind with Hauptwerk is that it doesn't have disk streaming. Loads the whole thing into memory. Sounds gorgeous though and the most flexible.

Another one is Notre Dame de Budapest Kontakt version from Inspired Acoustics. It's old and doesn't have a GUI, but the sound is great.

goldenhelix · Post by **goldenhelix** » Fri Jun 02, 2017 11:55 pm

Oh, yeah thanks for telling me that about Hauptwerk, I wasn't aware of that, although from watching people doing demo vids and seeing the loading I should have realized that by now. The cost is really the big prohibitive factor for me with that one, but I would prefer disk streaming, even though I have a fair amount of memory. It also looks like it has a USB key. Not sure if it has to be in every time you run it or only for installation, but I'm really trying to get away from using dongles at this point, one of the many reasons I have been gradually moving off of Cubase (as much as I like it) and fully onto Ableton. Seems like a minor complaint, I know, but my USB ports are precious and I don't like the idea of losing the key, especially if I'm working on a laptop somewhere.

I'll check out Notre Dame! Always good to have other options.

Fleer · Post by **Fleer** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 2:28 am

Well, I kinda like the Toontrack EZ Keys one. Quite versatile and a sweet sound set.

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:29 am

Not in the same league as those others, but for £20 you might try this:

http://www.ariasounds.com/church_pipe_o ... ument.html

I'm eyeing the Union Chapel one myself as I've seen many performances there.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:22 am

dmbaer wrote: Union Chapel is absolutely superb, but is priced accordingly. A review:

http://soundbytesmag.net/union-chapel-organ-spitfire/

I was reading the review and noticed what seemed to me to be a typo in one of the stops: He mentioned Voil d'Amore, when it should be Viol d'Amore. I checked in the Spitfire site, and they made the same mistake. So, the reviewer clearly is not familiar with organ stops, or he would have noticed the mistake (the Viol stops are common in Pipe Organs). I hope Spitfire corrects the mistake.

Anyway, Spitfire seems to have followed their usual approach, by recording the ambient of the church. This may sound good, but can withdraw flexibility that would otherwise be there if they recorded it dry, using a convolution reverb for the ambients. It's something they also do with their other libraries.

coincidental · Post by **coincidental** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 5:32 pm

It's a typo on the patch name, but displays correctly on the Kontakt instrument (and as "Viol" on the multi-stop patches). I take your point about the wet recording, but the "close" mic is relatively dry (and I imagine getting any sort of dry recording must be a challenge in that sort of space). Not sure if there's any answer for this problem...

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 5:37 pm

Fleer wrote:Well, I kinda like the Toontrack EZ Keys one. Quite versatile and a sweet sound set.

So do I, but, I feel like it's not really the kind of product that someone looking at Hauptwerk wants.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 6:08 pm

ghettosynth wrote:
Fleer wrote:Well, I kinda like the Toontrack EZ Keys one. Quite versatile and a sweet sound set.
So do I, but, I feel like it's not really the kind of product that someone looking at Hauptwerk wants.

Clearly not

dmbaer · Post by **dmbaer** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 7:39 pm

fmr wrote:He mentioned Voil d'Amore, when it should be Viol d'Amore. I checked in the Spitfire site, and they made the same mistake. So, the reviewer clearly is not familiar with organ stops, or he would have noticed the mistake (the Viol stops are common in Pipe Organs).

Or maybe the reviewer just missed the typo as did the Spitfire person writing the documentation on this instrument. Or could it be that nobody at Spitfire is at all familiar with organ stops either?

Gee, it's incredible that such an error could get through given that any reasonable spell checker is going to spot that misspelling, right?

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 7:50 pm

dmbaer wrote:
fmr wrote:He mentioned Voil d'Amore, when it should be Viol d'Amore. I checked in the Spitfire site, and they made the same mistake. So, the reviewer clearly is not familiar with organ stops, or he would have noticed the mistake (the Viol stops are common in Pipe Organs).
Or maybe the reviewer just missed the typo as did the Spitfire person writing the documentation on this instrument. Or could it be that nobody at Spitfire is at all familiar with organ stops either?

The reviewer didn't miss the typo, because he called that sound as an example, so, it would be hard to not notice it, if he was aware what a Viol is... But it seems to me your post is simply sarcastic, so I'll leave the rest of your sarcasm without answer, because you clearly don't care about Pipe Organs, either...

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 8:03 pm

fmr wrote:
ghettosynth wrote:
Fleer wrote:Well, I kinda like the Toontrack EZ Keys one. Quite versatile and a sweet sound set.
So do I, but, I feel like it's not really the kind of product that someone looking at Hauptwerk wants.
Clearly not

Just doing my bit to keep the thread on topic. I think that Toontrack's product is really more aimed at pop producers who want a pipe organ flavor in their mixes. I like it for that and I much prefer the sound of the small church that it's recorded in to most other pipe organ samples that I've tried. However, there is VERY little control over the organ as an instrument.

Pipe organs