He hee heeee! Bet that draws a lot of hits!

Weds night at choir practice I finally confirmed what I had thought for a while:
The pipes above the choir loft in my church are fake. The pipe organ is a digital instrument with transistor amps and good sized BR speakers behind the scrim behind the pipes. There had been a pipe organ in that space a verrrrry long time ago, judging by a picture I was shown, but alas, it is no more.

I'm sooooo bummed. Having looked up the specs on the organ co's speakers, I'm convinced that subbing AN E's would do a better job using the sand amps that are in place, and that Hi Eff E's or horns and tube amps would take the sound quality to a whole 'nother level.

I've even thought of putting two auto tubas under the pulpit/choir loft area instead of having one lonely 15" BR sub floating 15' off the ground with no wall behind it. Can you say "duh!" I knew that you could!

To prove my point, I'm going to buy a couple of the organ co's CD's, transfer them to an iPod and playe them through the Kit 4 and a pair of E's up on the platform the organ speaks are on.

I'd much rather do a real pipe organ, or the intriguing mix of digital samples and real pipes, but I'd have to create a family fortune first . . . . .

• BU Symphonic Organ

There are more than you would think, though. I've discovered that there are 6+ pipe organ companies in CT alone. For the most part I expect they are maintaining and rebuilding older organs, and in some cases augmenting them with digital ranks to expand their capabilities, but I was surprised at how many there still are. I may have to create a checklist and go on a New England listening tour. I remember going to a Messiah sing about 30 years ago in Boston in a big ole church in Copley Sq and the BIG pipes were teeth/filling and gut rattling. Nearly a subliminal effect, but what POWER.

In the '70's I shopped for speakers with a copy of Also Spracht Zarathustra. If the speakers couldn't do a decent job on the opening rumble, I wasn't interested.

Plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose!

• SR1 Seismic Radiator Subwoofer

Achieving 98dB wouldn't be all that hard, but I'm not overwhelmed by the look of their speakers, either.

What's really driving me on this is that the organist frequently uses a reed voice that really sounds like crap, and I'm tired of standing right in front of it with my eyes crossing over when he plays. I'm hoping the lousy sound is the result of mediocre sand amps and mediocre xo's and drivers, not crappy reed samples, which I can't fix.

There might be one of two problems with the reed stop that causes your eyes to cross - if it sounds distorted it's turned too loud and overdriving the midrange and high frequency drivers into nonlinear excursions. This is a very common problem with the smaller digital organs - the folks who install them turn them as loud as the equivalent pipe organ would sound (100+dB at 10-20 ft distance), which is too loud for the speakers to handle, and you get a noticable amount of harmonic and intermoduation distortion when the loud reed stops and/or the full organ are played. Only an audiophile would notice anything is wrong because everyone else believes it's normal for loud music to be distorted.

The larger Allen organs solve this problem by using many speaker cabinets including high efficiency cabinets for the more powerful solo reed stops. The new four manual Allen organ at 1st Methodist in Houston has 160 speaker cabinets. That may sound like overkill, but it's the equivalent of a pipe organ that would have more than 5,000 pipes. With all the stops drawn this organ really does sound glorious, but if it has been designed with too few independent signal paths (separate DAC's, amps and speaker cabinets) it would sound really crappy.

If the reed stop isn't distorted but sounds thin and strident it's probably intended to sound that way. One popular solo reed stop on pipe organs is a trompette en chamade (horizontal trumpet) voiced on high wind pressure and often used to play the solo trumpet line of a fanfare like the ones Purcell, Handle, and Clarke wrote in the 18th century. The Royal Trumpet stops in the organ at St Pauls Cathedral in London are voiced on very high wind pressure and sound to me like a tuned diesel locomotive whistle. It's thrilling when the organist plays a fanfare on them with antiphonal responses from the full main organ (10,000+ pipes) which is located about two football fields away at the other end of the sanctuary. But it's one of those things you either love or you hate; everyone who hears it is moved, either to extasy or to the nearest exit.

For a sample of a Trompette en Chamade go to track four on the link below. It's Michael Murray playing the Purcell Trumpet Tune, with the trumpet part played on the State Trumpet Stop of the 143 rank E.M. Skinner organ at the Cathedral of St John the Divine.

• Purcell Trumpet Tune - Track 4

Ive only heard an organ once for about 30min,it was cool!Just wish they had it turned up a little more and i could hear it for longer!

Id never heard non organ sounds appearing from behind the huge pipes it was wierd!

• NORMA IN DUNEDIN