To clarify - this is a comparison of a recording of an organ (eg John Scott Whiteley's wonderful recording at Haarlem as noted in the video) and a recording of the same organ through Hauptwerk (eg me playing the same music on my console at home using Voxus Virtual Organ's Haarlem sample). We all agree that hearing the organ in real life is unbeatable, so comments about hearing and experiencing the organ in real life will not be counted, as I said in the video! 👍

By “immersive” do you mean all the coughing and sneezing, bored child given some toy to distract themselves by parents who are deaf to the noise their child now makes, emergency vehicle sirens, someone behind you humming along or commenting on your over/under detaché right as you are performing, or giving out “and then you add two eggs” just at a moment of silence? Is this what you mean? Luckily for me, being an organ builder means getting to hear many instruments without most of the sonic clutter that goes on in live performances, but that is an exceptional case. As for comparing recording in real-time of an organist in the actual room in which the organ stands or a “Hauptwerk” recording of the same instrument, I would prefer the former. It’s as close to hearing an instrument under ideal circumstances, but both former and latter are still just recordings subject to limitations imposed by the reproducing equipment. Please don’t interpret what I wrote above as a condemnation of digitally sampled instruments. They have their place. I have yet to hear the finished, commercially released Hauptwerk version of our Opus 11 (Rosales Organ Builders, Portland, OR) but in listening to the beta release I was dismayed to find two Trumpet notes left in a bad state by the maintenance people. In tune but with choked tone. So we have the conditions under which the sample sets are made, then the samples are subject to the whims of the consumer. Sometimes the samples are heard “right out of the box” as the sampling company has released it or the end-user tweaks the Pedal stops to be louder than the originals just for the excitement or having the Mixtures shrieking because the end-user doesn’t know any better having no training in organ voicing. And even with my training how I might leave a sample set sounding might not, and probably would not, match the original instrument. There is just no one correct way to voice an organ, but for me its definition has to include beauty and musicality. If that is achieved by Hauptwerk or other methods, bravo! In closing I would like to say that I only discovered your KZfaq channel thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown. It’s been a pleasure listening to your performances and I find how your “rig” sounds through the medium of Internet/iPhone/WiFi headphones to be pleasing enough.

It is truly remarkable that we now have the technology to support such a discussion.

It’s interesting seeing this from a year ago (when I first started watching) and now. Your technology has really changed and grown over time. Fun to see.

Well done. Love your playing!

Thank you for bringing up this topic publicly! It seems like most of us are going to arrive here sooner or later, especially with more and more virtual concerts taking place.

Hi, Richard. In all respect, the experience of visiting concerts is for me the way to listen to organ music. The church/cathedral , the temperature inside..., the smell, etc. are the missing parts in Hauptwerk. But be very proud with your beautyfull Viscount organ, it sounds amazing. Your the owner of TWO very famous Dutch organs!! That makes me sometimes jealous... For me it doesn't matter , listening a CD or listening Hauptwerk. Succes with your YT canal! Greetings from the nNetherlands

Fascinating conversation! And great comments already. My 2 cents - “it depends” - some CD recordings are quite frankly not that great - so the attention to detail and techniques in capturing the sound are important. (As you have commented some sample sets are better than others also!) A recording of the live organ captures the complete image as best as possible; contrasted with Hauptwerk where individual pipe samples are combined in real-time in software along with clever algorithms to mimic wind pressure and interactions: so... hauptwerk as a “playable recording” has the advantage of being interactive. Perhaps viewed another way - optimal would be a live broadcast from the church with you at the console. In third place would be a CD recording of you, re-broadcast. Hauptwerk sits in the middle ground - it’s the closest we can get to immersion without physically being there. I am fascinated to see where you take this conversation next!

Hello Richard I’ll give you my opinion since I’ve studied audio engineering “though it isn’t my professional job anymore” and dabble into this a bit. So the only real experience would be to be actually in the church. Where you have the pure acoustics of the church, the reverb of the church, and the actual sound the speaking pipes in the church make and bounce off the many hard walls in the building and back to your ears. Now hauptwerk and the audio recording are very similar matter a fact the same if you start from the beginning of the process. They both rely on quality mics to capture the audio both from the pipes and the reverberation of the building. On the cd they maybe some slight EQing involved, very little compression as you don’t want to destroy the dynamic range found in classical music. Hauptwerk I’m not sure if any eq’s would be used of the loops of each pipe or if it’s just the raw sound you get from the recoding. Then finally it’s the quality of your speakers that can give you that final realizing to make you feel like you are in the building. And this is from both the cd and hauptwerk. Some modern sound systems uses DPS to wrap sound around you and you can very much feel like you are in the church and being enveloped by the sound. Let me wrap this up by saying. Really there’s the live version being in the building and then there’s the digital version which is both the CD and hauptwerk versions.

For immersion, you could wear a VR headset to be put inside the church whilst listening to the highest quality recording available using spatial audio.

The only difference I can think of between a live performance recording and a Hauptwerk "computed" recording is a potential lack of harmonics occurring naturally within the church as a result of combinations of stops and swells used. Kind hard to put it into words, but it's like saying if you're recording in a church and you've got 4 stops used, the sound will be truly that of 4 stops combining naturally... but will the computer be able to do anything beyond simply mixing the sound of 1+1+1+1? And obviously any 'shortcuts' that may be involved during the live processing of the Voxus/Hauptwerk performance, such as bitrate compression and channel/voice downmixing or anything else that goes on within the compute and memory limitations on your laptop to bring it all together... presumably it is "cd quality" right the way through. But which do I prefer? It's very hard to say... and I think that's simply because the differences are negligible now compared to last decade. Up until recently I was pretty much an exclusive listener to youtubers like the Scott brothers duo, but you've won me over by demonstrating just how excellent the Hauptwerk can sound. I really can't hear any practical difference between live recordings and what you're doing. Somehow, the format and style of your performances makes me feel like this is the next best thing to sitting up in an organ loft with you.

The pipe organ is the single most difficult instrument to record performances of. There are a LOT of poor or middle-of-the-road recordings out there on CD. And even when the recording itself is fine, they can be poorly mastered. With Hauptwerk, on the other hand, the samplers take meticulous care to get the best and cleanest possible recording. All else being equal, this puts Hauptwerk ahead of live recordings.

I listen to Gert van Hoef quite a bit, recordings made in Dutch churches using microphones and in his home using the electronic output from his virtual organ using Hauptwerk. Both are coming via KZfaq so they have the same limitation on sound quality. I consistently prefer his playing in the churches and it's subtle, but the home recordings feel a bit flat. It may be that playing on a pipe organ has an influence on his playing. The visual setting is also different. On the one hand I like the intimacy of his home, but on the other I like watching the registration changes at the church and the unique design of each organ console. Regardless of the venue, the visual accompaniment is important to me. In both types of venue I like it that he always has a camera pointing at the pedals, and many others comment on that aspect of his videos.

This is, as others have said, an interesting question. I have experienced immersion in the music at both live events and through recordings, including your own Hauptwerk offerings which I have greatly enjoyed. What does it for me is all to do with the performance. If a performer is ‘getting inside’ the music and making it sing, I can be enthralled by either.

I would say there is no significant difference in sound betwenn a good recording coming out of my sound system and your wonderful Hauptwerk instrument coming out of my sound system. I think the 'frisson' of live performance gives that an extra edge of enjoyment. I have philosophcal problems with the ethics of sampling someone elses work etc as Hauptwerk does but you, Richard, are honest about what you are playing and how it is achieved. during lockdown i have come to appreciate the digital world much more! i am so glad I have a Viscount organ on which to practise. Without it, I would have gone mad!!

Richard, your weekly Saturday recitals and Sunday hymn request programs have been a wonderful educational experience in addition to your marvelous music-making! Being a non-organist, I've learned so much from your well spoken commentary. That being said, I find the conundrum you raise to be beyond my understanding. I will, however, pass along my grandson's opinion (at 17, he's a very fine organist). He spent most of the earlier COVID-19 lockdown building his own Hauptwerk instrument (out of an ancient Baldwin electronic organ and an 8-year old MacBook Pro!), and does most of his practicing on it. He also knows very well the pipe organ CDs that I've loaded in my car's hard drive and has listened to many of them over and over. He has a ready answer to your question: Hauptwerk wins, hands down!

Very interesting... I would imagine that being in the actual cathedral would bring the maximum over-all experience, visual combined with auditory. (The actual sound / auditory experience would vary depending on where you were sitting in the cathedral.). I “believe” that the Hauptwerk will produce a better sound reproduction (for listening) because of the attention to capturing each individual pipe in every rank. One of my dreams is to eventually have a Hauptwerk in my home. I’m new to the pipe organ at church... but to be able to hear and “play” the great organs of the world seems very exciting! Thanks again.

Richard, this topic has come up before. I'll give you some background. I'm an audio engineer / IT bod and in discussion with an audio programmer was the discussion of how we could get a digital reproduction as close to how sitting in church would be. What came out and still comes out is how accurate you want to be and at what level you're satisfied with that accuracy. As we know, VPO sample sets are effectively "recorded into stone". The mic positions are fixed to taste to give as close a rendition of the sound in place. Yes, each pipe is recorded but given the physical building and the way the resonances interact with each other, you'll never get that sound with any VPO because they are all single pipe recordings played together. You could take a dry set and put it in a convolution reverb of the church / hall the organ is in, but again that convolution reverb sweep was done from a static set of mics in one position. If you're listening to a stereo reproduction on CD with quality speakers, that may be enough to immerse you to that satisfaction level. Surround sample sets give you more depth but it's still not as true as it can be. If you take OrganTeq with it's modelling, it sounds cold to me. The sound is in front of you, like a piano. Even with the reverb they provide it just sounds like it is further away. It certainly doesn't sound immersive. Which brings me back to the programmer and I's thoughts. Building modelling. The only way you're going to get as close a sound to the real thing with the interaction between notes, delays etc is to model the whole setup. That entails modelling the building as surfaces, modelling the pipes in the chambers, placing the chambers where they actually are in the building AND having dynamic listening position placement. Depending on the listening mode using how many audio channels are available, you'd get a much more immersive sound. Picture this. You've got a playback of a piece going. Using the mouse, you can move the hearing position around church / hall to find the most satisfying place for you. If you move the listening position directly next to the swell chamber then you'll hear those pipes as if you were that far away, much less reverb. If you move the position halfway down the nave, you'll get a much more reflected sound. All the notes are interacting with each other and the surfaces in the building. The bonus of modelling is much less RAM required for samples as it is all done computationally, however you would need an i7 quad core and above to deal with the amount of calculations. The tricky thing is pipe modelling in that when you record each pipe for a VPO sample set, its output is there in the recording. Whilst you can model pipes like the Cavaillé-Coll style of OrganTeq, does this sound like Saint Sernin? You could measure each part of the pipes to get the most accurate measurements but which churches would allow you to do that, plus it would take a lot longer than recording each pipe.

Hi Richard, thanks for the video and for starting a very interesting debate. I think the actual sounds we are listening to are pretty much identical as we are limited by the sound system in our home. I certainly can’t tell if I’m listening to Hauptwerk or the real thing! The concept of immersion is more interesting to me. Recently I have been watching the Netherlands Bach Society a lot on You Tube and I find the whole concert experience is enhanced greatly by having candles near the screen, burning incense sticks (yes seriously) and lowering the room lights. That way I am using the senses, sight, sound and smell, to make me feel I am really there in person listening to the concert in church. I notice you have organ posters all around your console at home, so in a way you are doing the same thing, no?

This is a very interesting question. For me, it is vitally important - and a basic point of integrity - that the listener knows exactly what they are hearing: 1) This is a commercial CD recording made at a live, public concert by Miss ABC performing on the Müller organ at St Bavo's Haarlem; 2) this is a commercial CD recording made under studio conditions by Miss ABC performing on the Müller organ at St Bavo's; and 3) this is a live performance by Miss ABC on the Hauptwerk/Voxus virtual organ based on the Müller organ at St Bavo's. I agree with everybody else that nothing can replace the real experience of attending a live event in the actual building in which the organ is installed. Live performances, on either a real instrument or a Hauptwerk simulation, are generally more engaging that commercial CD recordings made under studio conditions. This is true of any type of concert - orchestral, choral, chamber, piano, organ - and I speak as a great collector of recordings and concert-attender all my life. However, recordings are invaluable when learning and studying music; the liner notes can also be good source of info too. Something else to consider is visual impact. Performances on Hauptwerk instruments, when streamed live or upload to KZfaq, can help build a closer relationship with the performer than any CD recording. This works both ways: visual ticks, mannerisms, stumbled/jumbled words, mispronunciations, etc can something be negatively received; close-up, over-the-shoulder views of the performer in action, informative/lively intros, cuts to photos/images of the composer/organ/building, occasional cats help bring the performer to life and make the event more entertaining and alive. I dislike "noises-off" clunks (general cancel thundering, piston clunks, excessive action noises) either on real instruments or simulations. One advantage of simulations is that these noises can the greatly reduced (can't they?) To summarise, streamed performances on a well-configured Hauptwerk simulation can be a very engaging and enjoyable experience. As always the personality and skill of the performer makes a big difference. The listener can make up their own mind about what they are hearing if that is always fully disclosed. The vast majority of folk attending concerts by the late, great Carlo went home with a positive image of "an organ concert" and didn't care if he played on an Allen, a Müller, a Wiilis, or a tin can!

Well, in Holland quite some organs require two stop assistants. And quite some organs make some extra sounds of the mechanical parts moving in the organ. This makes the music not really different but the experience, the happening in a concert is definitely different. What is more 'real', a supermarket lasagna or a lasagna at an Italian restaurant? I don't know, but surely it's not the same. 😉

I would believe that, although you could get the exact the pipe sound, the acoustics and reverberation heard in the actual setting would make it more authentic. As you well know, many of the lower bass notes are not heard but felt.. Maybe this effect can be duplicated by utilizing several very expensive speakers, but I don't believe so. Real interesting topic and glad that you are exploring it..

Richard, I think the question is moot. The KZfaq experience is what it is and unless they increase the bit-rate of their audio not much improvement can be made on that front. That said, I think I prefer the Hauptwerk organs over recorded CD's. I have many organ CDs and iTunes recordings and each is substantially different in their sound primarily because of the recording techniques and equipment used and, of course, the year it was recorded (meaning older vs newer). Also, I have noticed that CDs of various types of music also rely on the monitors used in the mastering of the recording. The Hauptwerk organs (especially the "wet" sample sets), sound as much like the original as can be made, and offer a "cleaner" sound not as muddied as in a Cathedral due to the acoustics involved. The acoustics of a Hauptwerk sample set can be adjusted to some degree so that gives you some control over the final product. I am a Patreon and have enjoyed your concerts literally since you began putting your videos on KZfaq. I consider the cost to be far better than tickets to a concert as those are few and far between around here and for the price, I get numerous concerts every month! That's awesome! Thanks, so much for what you and Caroline do each week. I know that a lot of work goes into your efforts and please know that it is greatly appreciated. In summary, Commercial recordings vs Hauptwerk? Hauptwerk, for sure!

Richard, I think your question entails a number of others, and that it all boils down to whether you are a listener or a player. If you are a listener, you will need the very best kit to get the most out of a CD. If you are a player ( and you will have to be a listener too if you are ) then you may be able to get quite a lot more from a videoed performance on Hauptwerk than from a CD. If a player, hasn't yet played on a Hauptwerk organ set up, then she/he should do so very soon. The sound quality is amazing. Best wishes, Peter

I am interested in a more detailed (longer music, multiple music styles) comparison between a benchmark performance on the real Haarlem organ and on your Hauptwerk one. I know this might be quite a lot of work on your part on the licensing and performing parts. Just an idea. I also realised that performances like the Messe Solenelle recording in the Notre Dame de Paris will never be possible to recreate with digital means.

This is an especially interesting topic to consider in our covid-19 era with in-person concerts called off and performances moved online. I saw an internet commentator declaring in-person concerts permanently a thing of the past. I wouldn't be surprised if that person has never attended a live performance. There is a dynamic behind live performances that you just can't capture with recording equipment, and on top of that, the quality of one's speaker system can have a detrimental effect on the playback. Most of us aren't audio engineers. That said, these days whenever I listen to a pipe organ, I'm always suspicious that I might not be hearing the real thing-is it a hybrid pipe/electronic organ, or are various frequencies reinforced/supplemented with subwoofers? The Salt Lake Tabernacle organ (Aeolian Skinner 1948) now has subwoofers supplementing the lower registers; I know this both from my personal conversations with the full-time organists there and seeing the subwoofers in person. Apparently many people expected a more prominent rumble given the organ's size. If I remember correctly, it's possible to turn off the subwoofers, but it may require somebody to manually do so in the guts of the organ.

I was particularly fascinated by the recital you gave on the organ in St Bavo Haarlem because their weekly organ recitals during the summer were a regular fixture for me while I was working in that part of the Netherlands 2-3 years ago. The Hauptwerk version has a considerable advantage in that you are playing a modern console with all the electronic and mechanical aids that are simply not present on the real thing. Some of the recitals I went to had a video feed from the console to the audience and I don't remember the 'clunk' that you comment on as a sound effect when you press the general cancel button on your console; as far as I recall the equivalent of a general cancel on the actual console was two assistants frantically pushing in as many stops as they could at a time, which was at least two or three armfuls if most of the stops were drawn. I think Hauptwerk is a fascinating alternative to the traditional 'computer organ' concept, where a set of sound samples are routed the a massive array of loudspeakers in order to synthesise a real organ in a real church/cathedral/concert hall. For your next acquisition I would recommend the Arp Schitger organ from the Grote or St. Michaëlskerk, Zwolle. It appears to have a couple of extra stops, and an extra manual over the St Bavo organ, which might be a challenge!

I just came across this video and I see its already 2 years since it was introduced. Here’s my thoughts. I had the opportunity to work for a organ builder/ tuner in Ontario Canada for about 6 years. I was just out of high school and and this organ company was looking for a key holder for the tuners. So since I had been studying organ for several years I decided to take up the opportunity. I travelled throughout Canada and even into the USA a few times and have played and heard many fabulous instruments during that time. Now some 30 years later I have the opportunity using Hauptwerk software to travel, in a virtual atmosphere, around the world and pick up where I left off some 30 years ago. And what a treat it is for me as an organist to be able to do this using this technology. Some day, and through much expense one will be able to reproduce the authentic sound of a particular organ and how it reverbs throughout the building. But for now the quality I am hearing through my audio system is pretty real. I’m sure the more one spends on a good quality sound system will bring us even closer to the cathedral type sound we would all appreciate but for now I’m content with the sound I am getting at a reasonable cost.

Hi Richard, First of all, your channel is interesting. And this question too. First of all, I have my computer connected to a DAC and the DAC to my (serious) stereo set. On the speakers I could only hear a slight difference in volume, or maybe a hind of a different microphone position (The CR Recording is probably done differently than the Hauptwerk recording). Same as if you would listen on different positions in the church. So a big, modern organ with a steady wind supply, I could see your point that although there might be a slight difference, that could be neglectable from a listeners point of view. As a player there are 2 intertwined elements that cannot be replicated by Hauptwerk and that is the mechanics from the keyboards to the valves. Again, if you compare a big modern organ with electrical wiring (or pneumatic), there is no difference. But especially on older, or authentic organs, the way you press the keys do influence the sound of the pipes. Not so much pressing in, but letting go makes a subtle difference. If combined with a dynamic wind supply, it could mean that the way you travel the keys, influence the wind supply to the valves. Even more so, the cadence of the music could bring the bellows in a certain rhythm was definitely brings a difference to the sound. The latter can never be replicated by Hauptwerk. But in the end, as an opportunity to study at home, rather than sitting all night in a dark, cold church it pretty attractive too :-) So I believe a very, very decent alternative but not the real thing.

I am very impressed by your Hauptwerk samples and, through my headphones, they give me a more than satisfying experience of pipe organ sound (but I take issue with the term 'more/most authentic/real'. Like unique, authentic/real doesn't need qualifying. A thing's either authentic/real or not.) What would be more interesting and relevant for me is a side-by-side demo of an Allen and Hauptwerk. A top of the line Allen organ is very expensive, but I get the feeling that a moderately priced (and sized) Haptwerk would be just as good, if not better to some ears. Maybe you could arrange that sort of comparison?

I know it is a bit off topic but for me I think there is no better immersion into the music other than playing it by oneself. A feeling that even a 12000€ headphone can't simulate. That is why I am building my own Midi Organ :-D .. Great channel by the way !!

Hi Richard, this is another Richard, from Florida, where it gets so hot that organ pipes almost melt in the sun... The Hauptwerk System sounds incredible, plus your excellent playing style seems to enhance it. I listen on a unique audio system: a Bose SoundLink Mini laying on my chest as I lay in bed, which allows me to hear all the nuances clearly, and to feel the bass pedal notes vibrate my chest!! To me it's all about microphone placement, and the Hauptwerk Engineers have done this very well and captured the ambience of the Bavokerk very well. If I was there in person, I would be down on the floor, in a crowd of people making varying amounts of subtractive noise. . distractive and subtractive! I would rather be 30 feet up in the air, rather close to the organ, where I presume the Hauptwerk microphones were. Only that would give me the real immersive feeling & experience. There I could be close enough to hear the sound coming from the different divisions of the organ, especially the Prestant. I can hear this clearly in recordings of small organs, where I really enjoy the mechanical sounds of the action, and the quiet buzzy sounds of the Regals in the Brustwerk. For the huge Muller organ, The Hauptwerk System gives me this as well as anything could, so I am very pleased with it and especially your fine playing. I love your Bach Concert; that was great; thanks very much! In the recent past you played my favorite, BWV 721, and I really liked your interpretation of that. That was on a different organ, of course, but your playing style is somewhat different from that of the organist in my other recording. I am a big fan of E. Power Biggs, and I have a box full of his Bach phonograph records in mint condition. The immersion is wonderful in his 1964 (or thereabouts) recording on the Flentrop organ at the Busch-Reisinger museum in Harvard University. The microphone placement for that recording (which I have also on CD) puts you right there in front of the organ, and the pure, clean sound of Flentrop's pipe designs is unsurpassed. I went to an organ concert there and sat near the front of the auditorium, but the sound was just not the same down at floor level. Again I wanted to be up in the air, near the Prestant, where I could also hear the subtleties of the Regals in the Brustwerk. As I said, I also like hearing the claps and crashes of the mechanical action in small organs when the Gedacts are played as a solo stop. I have many CDs which feature this, and hearing it gives me a sense of immersion. I would love to be inside the organ case when some of these quiet pieces are played. That would be cool beyond any other organ experience! Talk about immersion! That would be the ultimate immersion, to be there when the organist gives a tour of all the stops in the organ! Going from one section of the organ case to the next as the different divisions are played! Being right next to the huge pedal pipes and going from the right side pedal case to the left one as the individual pipes in each case are played! And being right beside the organist as he plays the regals! I have done this a few times, even getting to play a small organ where, as I went up the scale on the keyboard I could hear the sounds coming alternately from one side of the case to the other. And I loved those buzzy Regals!!! This was wonderful immersion! In many of my CDs the microphones are placed so that you can hear clearly where each individual note is coming from in the Hauptwerk and Prestant. Again this gives you a sense of immersion that you can't get with a huge organ where all the divisions are high above you when you sit at the console. So you see, immersion for small organs means really being there in ways that only the organist and closely located microphones can be, but in big places like St Bavokerk you need to be far enough away from the organ to hear the fullness of the echo, which the Hauptwerk System does very well, especially since their microphones seem to be placed 30 feet up in an EMPTY church - no subtractive people! And the chiff! How could I ever forget the wonderful chiff, with some stops practically spitting out their notes! And reeds, delightfully splacking into sound, and clattering to a stop at the ends of their notes! (When you are far away from a big organ, you hear little of that.) All that noise adds wonderfully to the sense of immersion, and fun! New organs without that are boring in conparison! Small Schnitger, Hinsz, etc organs are a delight to listen to, and all of that would be even better if you could be fully immersed inside the organ case. By the way, who is singing that wonderful recording of O Magnum Mysterium that you played at 5:55 in your video (which seemed to be recorded in another church with great reverb -echo)? Is it The Sixteen?

I share the enthousiasm for this topic. It is largely audiophysical in nature (cause we're not talking about the extra sounds of live recording vs. a 'clean' recording). The differences will be in stronger or weaker cancellation or enhancing of overtones, due to the different recording techniques. I imagine the only way to really get an answer is to compare multiple recordings of the live organ vs hauptwerk of multiple organs.

I've found on Hauptwerk that if you get the 'dry' sample sets (recorded in the pipe chambers with no additional reverb), you can route the audio through your favorite reverb software and adjust ambience and reverb length to accurately reproduce any 'room' size. I have about a dozen different sample sets to play with, and I can customize them however I like to suit the original space that they would speak into. I've had people in my home remark that they thought I had pipes hidden under the floor somewhere!😁 I run Hauptwerk on a later model MacBook Pro, which has a digital line out that I connect to a high power Onkyo TX-SR674 stereo system with speakers (and powered woofers) located strategically all over my house. The overall effect is pretty amazing, and it's a good thing I don't have any neighbors really close because I can literally shake the windows in the place with some of the 16 & 32 foot stops.🤣 As far as a comparison to the actual counterpart to my sample sets, I couldn't really say too much since I've never heard most of the original organs. One thing I *CAN* say, is the Hauptwerk Virtual Organ(s) will *never* be out of tune (unless you intentionally detune a few pipes for more 'realism').😉🎵🎶🎵👍

It seems to me that there are a whole range of factors which come into play: Firstly for the recording of the instrument and its use in a piece of music for a recording 1. The quality and condition of the organ; 2. The ability of the organist and the quality of their performance, ranging from registration to interpretation of the work;. 3. The ambience of the building in which the organ is situated 4. The acoustic qualities of the building; 5. The quality and skill of the recording engineer and of his/her equipment; 6. The quality of the recording medium being used be it vinyl or CD; 7. The quality of the output media being used by the listener and the acoustic qualities of the environment in which it is being played. One only has to look at the range of Sound reproduction systems to see how, in my view, this will be the bottleneck through which everything the listener hears must be passed and it will be different to actually being there! Secondly for the Virtual organ, some of these factors will be the same, but not necessarily in the same order: No 1 will apply as will 4 and 5. 6 will depend on the medium being used in the virtual organ the conversion of the recorded pipes into software. At this point no 2 appears - the ability of the organist and the quality of their performance on the virtual instrument and the whole experience of the listener will be dominated by the output medium in 7. So the one which is different for everything is no 3, the ambience of the building and being present for a live recital, will be difficult to recreate on either a recording for a CD or for the background for the recording of the pipes for a virtual organ.

I had an earlier version of the Sonus Paradisi Doesburg sample set, and Jiri has created effects that make it sound even more realistic. I liked the first version, but the upgraded version is even more realistic. He explains what he did to the sample set on his website. I prefer listening to a sample set than a commercial recording of said organ.

The organ recordings I really enjoy are, mostly, of organs that are in acoustically live rooms. This is because the organs sound better and because the performers, at least the good ones, allow the sound of the organ in the room to influence their playing in a musical way - the "immersion" that you speak of; the immersion of the player allows the listener to become immersed in the beauty of the music and the beauty of the sound of the music. From what I have heard of the excellent recordings you have made so far, I think the argument can be made that the experience of listening to recordings of sample set organs has the potential to be just as rewarding as listening to recordings of actual instruments. Certainly most of the comments you receive are about the music or how they feel about what they are hearing, as opposed to those who are just listening to hear certain features of the organ or to watch you at the console. Plus, there are many barriers to recording on actual organs - venue availability, instrument conditions, tuning problems, exterior noise, recording setup costs, etc. I do wonder if KZfaq is really the best vehicle for the further development of sample set organs. It has the advantage of making the recordings freely available, but that also perpetuates the idea that they are of no value. Also, doesn't KZfaq compress the files? I hope for your sake that the self-promotion you are doing on your channel will encourage listeners to purchase tracks you make available on Spotify or Apple Music. Also, KZfaq is a visual medium and requires there be some sort of video component. As admirable as your console is, watching you play it is, at least to me, an impediment to complete immersion since what we are seeing is so clearly at odds with what we are hearing. I suppose you could go to the Laurenskirk and do a video of yourself "finger-syncing" a performance, but that would be at odds as well, and expensive to boot. Maybe you should just do a slideshow of pretty pictures. Perhaps KZfaq should just be used to do excerpts of pieces with links to the Spotify or Apple Music downloads. I wish you all the best with further development. We will all be listening (and sometimes watching!)

Probably what makes it fascinating is may be impossible to answer. A bit like the vinyl and CD debate. Speaking as a non musician or technician, to my mind that electronic sound is always there (which I like just as much), but would go with it being the difference between the pipes being recorded individually as opposed to them in combination. Incidentally I don’t know if it’s of any assistance but I have always been struck by your recordings at St. Cross. There seems a distinct immersion or surround sound to them. Very easy to feel you’re actually there for some reason.

In response to your request for comments: I think there could three perspectives on this: the organist's, the listener's and the worshipper's: Any decent "pipe" organ is a combination of craftsmanship, and engineering, and as such it is a physical object which is experienced through all the senses. However magnificent the sound capture technology is, it cannot replicate the smell of the console or building, the feel of the keys, or the stiffness, or otherwise, of the action. So for the organist, however magnificent the sound, the experience will always be different if playing on a digital console. I would guess that however wonderful it is to play these great organs in your dining room, it would never supersede or equal being there. On the other hand it must be wonderful to have these sounds at your finger tips to play without having to spend vast amounts of time and money on travel. and it probably saves on the carbon footprint as well! For the listener it is different. The touch and feel of the console does not directly affect the sound you here, but the acoustic does, and I am not sure how realistic acoustic effects are when they are mixed with the other sounds and acoustic effects in the room where you are listening. Having said that a glorious sound is a glorious sound, and I am very grateful to hear it however and whenever. One important point here is this. I have lots of very fine recordings of organ music, but there is something about being part of a creative experience as it is happening, even as an audience member which makes listening to someone play a digital copy of an instrument more exciting than listening to a digital recording. I suppose it depends how exactly you define " The tricky one for me is working out whether or not the organ's primary function as a tool to enrich the liturgy, and to lead the music in worship of God, is in anyway transferred when it is digitally recreated. While I am certain that listening to a good recording may well elevate one's thoughts to a higher plain, I am not sure if a recording in that way can lead someone in worship, however the live playing on a digital copy of the Organ can indeed lead people in the worship of God, even though the building, colours, and context may be very different from the original home of the organ. Technology has given us the opportunity to use these magnificent instruments in a way that they were never intended to be used by those who originally built or commissioned them, but these new ways means that more people can appreciate the beauty of the instruments and the music that is played on them, and that cannot be anything other than a good thing.

The complexity of the building acoustic, the vibration of pipes and their interference of each other, the ultra low frequency that vibrate with your body, the different disposition of different organs(hauptwerk ruckpositiv etc...) different sitting positions in the building. These are all I can think of .

Prachtig!!!!!!!

4:34 "O magnum mysterium" by Tomas Luis de Victoria, not Thomas Tallis. What a beautiful performance! Beautiful sense of flow and rich, expressive choral sound.

Please, what's the name of the song from 4:22?

It reminds me of the Turing Test for AI. Is it possible to distinguish betwen the recirding in situ and the Hauotwerk version? I seriously doubt it. As for the immersive aspect, it can be done via software I suppose. I always thought Bach would have loved the computer.

Very interesting question! There is surely a difference in the way the sound is captured and hence perceived. On the one hand, you have several hundred pipes sounding simultaneously together in combinations assembled by the player, and, on the other, the sound of those same pipes sampled individually and then 're-assembled' and made available to the player on demand via Hauptwerk. The software is obviously very clever, as this process of 'summation' of individually sampled sound (and ambience) can be pretty convincing. For the passive listener - assuming he/she has decent equipment - the 'immersion', the difference, however subjective, might not be all that great. For the player, however, the 'immersion experience' is totally difference. For a start there is the tactile difference at the console between a real mechanical action and plastic, back-sprung keys, not to mention all the subtleties of attack and release etc. The aural experience, also, is totally different. I have the Hereford sound set with a 4 manual console with beefy speakers and umpteen watts etc, but the playing experience (in my dining room, too) is nothing like sitting at the cathedral console itself. [In this respect, the Hereford organ, spread all over the place in the building, is an awkward beast to play]. The obvious conclusion, surely, is that in both listening experiences - CD and Hauptwerk - the sound has been re-balanced or doctored to achieve what is thought to provide the best experience for the listener. In some case this means hoisting the microphones 30 or 40 feet into the air where no human ear ever experiences them. As long as we are satisfied with the musical immersion, as you call it, it doesn't really matter, I suppose.

There is sometimes some magic in real spaces versus the convolution reverb engines in audio engines like Hauptwerks' one, but on the other hand, you rarely end up with coughing or someone dropping a hymnal and having the racket ricochet off the walls around you, in a hauptwerk recording. Capturing those real spaces is hard, and having expensive microphones being all done for you in Hauptwerk, it seems to me, that Hauptwerk recordings should be a wonderful experience. However, for some reason I have emotional attachment to the recording of the real place. It sounds like you haven't spent much time with mixing and mastering and audio plugins in a DAW? I would imagine they do a bit of EQ, a tiny bit of compression, to solve problems like It sounding too dead, or tinny, then go into a mastering limiter. If I could ask for a feature in Hauptwerk it would be the ability to host your own chosen VST plugins within Hauptwerk, to add your own early reflection models, comb filtering, and other elements of custom reverb processing, that would allow you to generate a more realistic impression of being in a place.

I enjoy your hymns every week. I am a member of St Lukes Episcopal Church in Orlando, Fl. This church has weekly u tube services each week. The organ heard in the church has "presence" That is lost on U tube. Presence is the best word to describe the most pleasing sound. I believe your organ has "presence" but its a different Presence. Its manufactured for the lack of a better word. Thanks Richard, Regards Dave

My take: They are both recordings, so it is really down to the difference between the Hauptwerk recording engineers and the Priory Records recording engineers; and the conditions in the building on the day of recording - temperature, moisture, atmospheric air pressure, all the other things that impact the way the sound travels from the organ pipes to the microphone. One isn't going to be automatically better or worse than the other.

You have three recording options to compare with. Vinyl, CD, and KZfaq. I would prefer the music in that order. If you are talking about Hauptwerk sound directly from a PC, then THAT wins (on a very high-end pc and sound system, that is, with all the maximum realism settings on).

From the title I though I would be hearing first the church organ and then the electric version straight after. The same piece being played of course! I think only pros or people who are very knowledgeable would know which one they preferred otherwise!

Of course there is nothing better than being there present with the sound echoing all about you in some cases the choir in front or in back and other sets of pipes and various locations in the church however in terms of recording your direct input from your keyboard through the hot work gives you a much higher quality sound on over my speaker system it’s quite noticeable I also noticed another recording so I have complete box sets on CDs and DVDsAnd there is nothing better than your recordings coming over because it is not filtered through the mic video and it’s limitations so I believe it’s a very very good thing that you’re doing and what they have done with these sound from the organs it’s a very real very direct.

I have only just come across this You Tube discussion. Surely the answer is that it depends on the quality of the sound reproduction equipment in both the instrument, AND the hi-fi system through which the CD is played. If they are both equally good, there should be little or no difference.

Of course, a true organist wants the real thing. This intrinsic love of the sound that drew us to it (the organ) is now available to us in many technological ways. For churches this means - particularly with the massive investment needed for the “real thing” - they can get a great sound not to replace but represent the authentic sound. This in itself is a vast difference from the sound of “electronic” organs from the past. They were indeed replacement sounds. You, Sir, are showing us the exquisite ability to live, experience and immerse ourselves - and play - the great organs in the world. Thank you for championing and bringing to those of us whose lives will forever be within and of the,King of Instruments, our hearts’ and souls’ desire.

A quick first thought regards technique. The organist reacts to the organ - in a live recording, that is the real organ, the real space, the real reverb and decay time, and the idiosyncrasies of the real organ controls and key responses. The greatest organists I have heard playing in concert clearly respond to all of these. I have heard a handful of organists of great virtuosity who play in response to the pipe speech, tremulant, and celestes of the organ at hand. And when you hear that done, it adds a level of virtuosity usually unrealized. This is less likely in modern cathedral instruments where the chambers may be a city block away from the organist. To summarize, the listener with the most imposing response to an instrument and its surroundings is the performer. -Just one man's view.

You can give a different performance of the same work each time you play it on Hauptwek. A CD is the same performance every time. So the music is more "alive" on Hauptwerk.

Perhaps my ear is not as sensitive as others - to me the sounds are equally pleasing and any recording will depend to a large extent on the quality of your speakers. What influences me is my sense of imagination whilst listening to the acoustics and the power of visualisation . Being able to close my eyes, transport myself into an ancient cathedral , breathe the rarified chilled air which seems to exist in them, sense the ancient stonework and architecture and the atmosphere in the building all Influences my response to the sounds I'm hearing. . So how strongly do mood, imagination and visualisation affect our perception of the music we hear, rather than just the quality of the acoustics?. Because listening to music is such a sensory experience activating many parts of our brains, including our emotions, I'm not sure how we evaluate authenticity. Interesting debate !

In the recording at beginning of your video, listening through high quality headphones, there was more bass when you came in than in the Scott Whiteley track. Richard, you have a unique combination of skills as both a musician and and a technocrat (not trying to be negative with that term). I do enjoy listening to and watching your KZfaq offerings. I would say that the question you posed explores what we increasingly are asking: is the real thing (and a recording of it) equal to a performance on a Hauptwerk "organ"? From a practical perspective, I would say there is no difference. From a philosophical perspective that may cause some concern. I tried to actually record some of your videos on a PCM recorder at a high bit rate and then transferred it to a CD. Listening carefully to the resulting CD on a high end audio system with sub-woofers, I observed that the overall quality is good but lacking some loss of clarity or separation of the individual voices. Obviously this is likely the limitations imposed by KZfaq. I am not sure what bit rate they are limiting you to but I am sure that results in some loss of clarity. Then there are many CD's of organs where the sound is pretty bad and a few that are really great. I would say that your Hauptwerk setup is wonderful and I enjoy it very much. I have been to many live organ concerts and of course they vary considerably but your performances and results are top notch and I enjoy them about as much as most any live concert I have been to. Hopefully KZfaq will allow broader channel width or bit rates in the future (if those are the correct terms) .

With my setup I really can't hear any difference. Both have the room acoustics. I have listened to Hauptwerk music on you tube that seemed to have clicks and sounds when stops were changed.

Can the resonance of the church be also recorded, in theory both sound the same with regard the organ itself, but the resonance of the church will decide the speed at which you play it in theory, unless you can record the resonance as well

I am not sure how much difference I would hear between a "live" Hauptwerk performance and a "live" replay of a CD recording through the same or similar quality audio equipment as was used for the Hauptwerk performance, but by the time both of them have been uploaded to KZfaq and played back through a sound system of only moderate quality I really can't tell the difference.

The main difference is that in real recording the harmonics of multiple notes/voices being played in reverb as it fills the space is captured. The modern digitalization beautifully captures the timbre and reverb of each "individual" note (pipe) but not the harmonics of the combination.

Could we hear more side by side comparisons of a CD recording v the Hauptwerk version? As we will all be listening to these A-B comparisons through KZfaq's processing and the limitations of our own sound systems, it would be a fair comparison. I am assuming that we will be listening directly to the output of the Hauptwerk, and not a recording of its output being played over your local speakers

Hi Richard: I've deleted my previous waffle as it did not really address your 'actual' question (I went off on a tangent as usual). My tuppence-worth on trying to answer, somehow, your interesting question would be that it all depends on too many factors (CD vs HW), for example: Organists, non-organists (at varying levels of competence); those who've visited, worked, sung in the church/cathedral and heard the instrument and those who haven't; those with brilliant Sound systems (top-end pre-amps, amplifiers, speakers, really, really good headphones (the latter is where immersion is truly possible) and those with basic sound systems; those listening to HW in Surround Sound and those aren't; those with good hearing, those (like me) who have had serious medical 'ear' issues (and drastic surgery as in my case) or just simply the hard of hearing. I'm sure there's more comparisons that can and will be offered to help 'inform the decision' as to which is best (CD or HW). Given that no electronic system has the capability (yet?) of 'moving the air' (surely the cherry on top of the cake when actually being there - in the space), CD's are fine for 'frozen in time' performances and performers 'at that moment' musical interpretation, and, I suspect, are often tweaked to enhance and remove certain so-called blemishes, whereas HW is 100% true no matter who plays it and what pieces are being played. By true, I mean that it is down to EACH pipe being sampled (clunks, hisses, burps, squeaks, farts, groans all left in-situ for ever) and that's what no CD can probably bring to the table. So, my conclusion: HW wins hands down. It's authentic. It's VERY VERY difficult to tell the difference between a CD recording and a good HW performance - your comparison video (JSW vs your good self) was a brilliant way of demonstrating this - a brilliantly crafted and seamless transition from JSW (CD) to you (HW). Differences (whilst I admit there have to be a few)? Practically indistinguishable. HW, however, will continue to improve, improve, improve. Immersion? Ambience important, light those candles, and don those hi-end set of headphones. Pure magic. PS: Love Nala's little appearances. Now immerse her with those treats! Love to you, Caroline, Nala and Bobby. Tx

Richard, this has been exercising me for a while too. Perhaps more aural immersion through the use of more spatial recording with play back through 6 or 8 speakers in a more truly "surround sound" than was possible when tried a good few years ago. Ideally it would need to include vertical elements too, together with the kind of sound quality some of us still expect, not the mush from the video systems 6 way etc stuff. I suspect that the technology on which they are based may have what we need to offer and should prove useful, at least for experimental purposes; but the channel separation, balance controls, amplification and, particularly, decent speakers would be necessary; the current foolishness of listeners to expect our brains to be fooled by crude processing pumped through Alexa et al will cut not the mustard!

How about providing some excerpts of both (CD and HW) and see if folk can guess which is which. For me, the question of "immersion" in either case comes down to the level of the listener's "willing suspension of disbelief" aided by the quality of both the playback system and the room it is in. It would be interesting to hear a system that used ambisonics to create an immersive sound field. IMO, the most important thing that HW provides is the opportunity to play instruments that most of us will never get near.

While I'd certainly prefer to actually "be" in the church hearing the organ live, amidst the architecture, being able to move about and turn my head this way and that to hear different perspectives. But you asked about comparing traditional recordings made on site to recordings made with Hauptwerk -- and those are harder to distinguish. In both cases you are limited to hearing the organ with the perspective captured and preserved by the person who made the recording -- you can't move around the room or even turn your head. In that respect, the two types of recording are identical. I certainly enjoy the Hauptwerk recordings posted on Contrebombarde (for example), and with headphones I "feel" totally immersed in the acoustic of the church, just as surely as I would hearing a traditional recording. But one thing I definitely prefer (I think) about the Hauptwerk rendition is that it is devoid of extraneous noises -- traffic and sirens as well as mechanical noises that are not musical (as well as the screaming children and coughing seniors). In other words, I only hear the MUSIC and not the undesirable artifacts and accessory sounds. That is a plus for the Hauptwerk recordings, IMHO. Another advantage the Hauptwerk holds is that tuning and regulation are fixed. No surprises in the way of the odd sour note to intrude into the music. For some that might be a negative, but I'd rather hear the music, as above, without the non-musical intrusions of bad pipes.

Very interesting hauptwerk is a higher quality recording of the pipes it's the bit in the middle that lets it all down I.e playing back through computer speakers! Or through hi end ordio equipment along side you tube settings , the same applies to the cd . A very interesting way to receive this. Would be in a midi file recorded in Hauptwerk and the end user playing it back through hi end two or three stereo pairs of speakers Interesting also the sound from hauptwerk is direct with out any clashes of seats and howling children just the odd meowing😂😀

I hear a difference between the John Scott Whitely performance and your own. I'm not sure what I attribute it to - perhaps the space itself adds a dimension - or perhaps the sound engineers added a special touch. When you cut to your recording, the tone was a bit thinner. I do think that Hauptwerk is wonderful. I wish I had one. I suppose that if I were making a purchasing decision, I would choose the recording made on the actual instrument.

Well, if you play back a KZfaq video (vs. download), then the output (whether cell phone, tablet, or speakers) would need to be the same in both cases for comparison. . .

Dear Richard I hope my response to your challenge isn't too late. I have been giving it a lot of thought. In one way your question is like the discussion when vinyl/analogue recordings were replaced by CD/digital recordings. Many years ago I somewhat bought into the analogue snobbery and the claims about different recordings. A claim of immediacy and "presence" was made for companies such as Nimbus. I was never wealthy enough to pursue all of that though a good friend still extols the virtue of analogue over digital. I think we can all accept that a live performance has subtle dimensions that for good or ill mark out the liveness (and that's notwithstanding rattly casework and noisy heating systems and a 50hz hum on the sound system}. But as soon as we are comparing a "live" recording of church organ with a digital set Hauptwerk recording I find myself wanting to step back. A while back I was in a piano showroom and the salesman chalenged me to tell the difference between two digital and two mechanical pianos. I couldn't and that may well be because my hearing is not sensitive enough and my listening is not attentive/educated enough or it may be that there is no perceptible difference. I've reached an age, and live in a remote place where opportunities to hear top notch organ recitals are few and far between. What people like you have done for me is put this music on my desk. It is the music that matters. A year or two ago I stopped worrying and started enjoying the music again. I do not think about the line of transmisssion from pipe to my ears. A century ago a recording of a recital would be hardly camparable with the original by modern standards. Therefore it is appropriate for us to develop technology. But it's the music that matters and it's for the music that I thank you, Richard. Keep it coming because it's a great blessing and I am grateful for it. Neil Combe

It only works because the sum of the individual sounds (pipes) is the same or indistinguishable, whether they are added inside the real church or digitally. You'd perhaps think that the reverberant component might not add so neatly, but either it does or the small difference doesn't matter to the ear.

For what it is worth, I feel that comparing a digital recording with another digital recording is a test of the sound engineers. Does that make sense? Some years ago, I found a sampled organ, Sct Nicolai, Aabenraa, a 1956 Marcussen. I knew this organ well but the sound I was hearing just wasn't what I knew. I contacted the company that had produced the sample. They responded "How do you know this is not accurate?" I told them that I was the organist at that church (now retired). Since then, I can find no reference to this sample anywhere. I also have recordings of M-C Alain and Lionel Rogg playing this wonderful organ. The recordings do not sound one tiny bit the same as the real thing despite the playing being sublime! My audio gear is quite good! This brings me back to the suggestion that it all depends on the quality of the sound engineers. In just a few short weeks, my Hauptwerk will be delivered. Then, I can make a more qualified judgement. Thank you for all your videos, they are most encouraging

I guess what has not been really discussed is that when you play a real organ the complex matrix interactions of all the sound waves is happening in the church room. Whereas HW pipes are recorded isolated tone by tone, pipe by pipe. I would assume there is no way to fully reproduce the original complex sound using HW.

Dear Richard. You are posing a very interesting question. If you are speaking about 'real' I think listening or recording in the church where the organ is cannot be more 'real' than anything else. If I understood correctly all pipes are recorded individually and combined in the Hauptwerk software. I am aware that the acoustic of the church is integrated in the sound by the use of a number of (surround) microphones. I do see one difference between recording the organ playing a piece of music compared to playing the same piece where all the sounds are combined in the Hauptwerk software. What sampling cannot capture is the the mechanical influences by pipes being played at the same time. So if you play a low frequency with an 16 foot pipe this might also resonance in the organ with other pipes playing. I don't think Hauptwerk is able to synthesize the resonance portion of the sound produced by different sounds/stops with one another. Please apologize language. English is not my native language (I'm from the Netherlands, born in Haarlem, 200 yards from the St. Bavo).

I think that the speakers will make a huge difference! I have a pair of MartinLogan electrostatics that are so clear that, on a good recording, I can place individual voices in a chorus. Those, I think, would be exemplary listening to an organ recording. On the other hand, with Hauptwerk, I think that lesser quality speakers could work as the room acoustics would add complexity to the sound. My guess is that although the two would be technically different, the sensations would be so close as to be almost indistinguishable... almost. And I don't know what the super high quality speakers would do to Hauptwerk -- it's conceivable that they might not work was well as just plain old, really good speakers, depending on where the speakers were placed, where the listener was, how the room acoustics interact with the Hauptwerk sound, etc. BTW, our church uses Hauptwerk, with individual pipes voiced to the room.

I think an important point is that with the commercial recording, you hear the organ from one perspective only, and the balance between the direct sound and bounced sound is fixed because of the positioning of the microphones. This means that if you closed your eyes and listened to the CD, it might well sound very very close to the live performance, but only if you are seated at the same position as the microphones (or the position the microphones were intended to capture). No doubt the engineers spend time experimenting, looking for the 'best' acoustic position to get the best sound. With the Hauptwerk, generally you have a choice of which microphone positions to use, and also, presumably, a choice of acoustic (if the convolution reverb for this church is available). This means for the Hauptwerk performance , you don't have a static recording. In theory then, this gives you the chance to have a better experience - either as a member of the audience /congregation or as the organist. Some more recent audio recordings include dolby surround/atmos or whatever, and can give you some control over the sound. I see that being better than Hauptwerk, but it generally isn't available yet. The example you gave in the KZfaq video shows that the difference is negligible (I didn't listen using my studio system). Of course neither the CD nor Hauptwerk are authentic. The live performance will always have subtleties that cannot be captured in a recoding and /or reproduced by speaker systems, but they do get ever so close. 👌

If I were buying a recording made of the original organ in its building, it would get preference over a recording made on a Hauptwerk. But would I be able to tell the difference when listening to, and comparing, the two recordings? No. Both come to my ear, as you point out, via a whole lot of electronic processing that pretty much erases the differences. At least to my ears.

I think that we can all agree that there is nothing like being at a live performance with a real pipe organ, or playing the real instrument. An electronic replica, be it a CD recording, a Hauptwerk virtual organ or a modern electronic organ no matter how good do not provide the the dynamic range, nor the psycho-acoustic presence that the real instrument provides. All three electronic methods provide good representations, but are limited to the quality of the audio system's quality. As a organist myself (but with not 1% near your skill or expertise) I hate playing with headphones rather than with the full immersion of playing at full volume and expression of the instrument. The feel of the sound is just as important as the sound itself.

The medium is the message.

When you are listening to a recording of organ music, you are doing just that, passively listening to someone else playing the music. With the Hauptwerk, you are actively expressing yourself musically through your own instrument. They are totally different experiences. There is no comparison, even if the recording was made on the same organ that provided the samples for your Hauptwerk, your setup is a musical instrument in its own right.

This is very similar to the music hi fidelity quest that occurred in the last 50 years. I think the vpo quest is more readily achievable due to the technology leap of the last 20 years. It is a modern marvel that you can play this organ in your home and achieve such realism. In general, computer tech has disappointed so many times, but vpo organs are perfect meeting of old world and modern tech.

Realistically speaking, it depends on what sort of speakers are you using to playback. If you're listening on the same speakers on both situations, hauptwerk will be better, because it records individual pipes from multiple locations, which adds to the immersion that you mentioned, in a surround environment. A recording done with 1 microphone in 1 location, can't even be considered true stereo. Obviously it will still sound great, but hauptwerk will, due to its wet/surround component, sound better.

The very first thought I had is - which of the two versions of the same music you presented to us here in your brief video is THE MORE LEGITIMATE, the more AUTHENTIC, one? - A), the stereophonic recording Priory Records made of John Scott Whitely's playing THE REAL ORGAN on its own keyboards and pedal board IN THE ACTUAL ACOUSTICAL SPACE in which THE ORGAN IS LOCATED - and IN REAL TIME? Or, B), the ENTIRELY DIFFERENT APPROACH to your question of LEGITIMACY and AUTHENTICITY which Hauptwerk has made possible - whereby EACH and EVERY SINGLE pipe (in the very same organ on which Whitely played and was recorded) is individually played and the sound emanating from it painstakingly captured as accurately as possible in the same acoustical space and stored in the Hauptwerk software for later retrieval. Allowing you, Richard, to "play" this organ on your own private organ "console" in the privacy of your own home, using highly sophisticated computers, software and high-quality full-resolution loudspeakers so that, in effect, you can "play" and "hear" the "actual organ" without your having to be physically present in the church where it is located. Which of the two approaches is the better, or the more legitimate, one? One's efforts to judge the two side-by-side are like comparing apples to oranges. The ORGAN and ITS ACOUSTICAL SPACE are the common UNIFYING ELEMENT present in both approaches. Scott Whitely's playing will forever BE his, and ONLY his, playing style - of the pieces he recorded for his Priory Records Compact Disk. It's a "one-of-a-kind" recording, never to be repeated. ON THE OTHER HAND, when you, Richard, sit down to play these very same pieces on your Hauptwerk-based setup, what we will inevitably hear is YOUR (as it happens, very good) interpretive playing style, AFTER it has been processed and made audible via your very highly sophisticated system of sound-retrieval and playback. SO MANY ASPECTS of these two approaches are so different from one another that they compel the "apples versus oranges" comparison. For one thing, Hauptwerk may have positioned their microphones very differently from where Priory Records placed theirs - and so on. Therefore it is impossible to say which of the two is "BETTER," or more "LEGITIMATE," or more "FAITHFUL" to the original. In the end, it comes down to individual preference. The Hauptwerk option offers people like yourself, Richard, enormous personal opportunities that simply sitting down and listening to a CD can never let you do, yet this fact takes nothing away from John Scott Whitely's superb playing - nor from yours, for that matter.

In my sensation i feel the difference in the sense of the room but not in the sound of the organ itself, it seems identical

Another 2 cents... You'd have to compare like with like, which I could never have done with my old virtual organ - even if I had Hauptwerk, which I didn't. I have John Scott Whiteley's recording - purchased on a cathedral choir trip to Haarlem no less. I play this through a Cyrus CD player, vintage Technics amp, and huge Tannoy Definition D700 speakers. My organ was always a work in progress and played through a cast-off amplifier and a spare set of speakers. The recording was always going to sound better. So how "hifi" is your organ? My choice as a very poor organist (I don't pretend!) was to get rid of the organ I had built, and use the funds to upgrade the hifi in order to enjoy accomplished organists playing in with greater clarity and realism. Whatever experiments you try will only be valid if you compare on the same amp/speaker arrangement. :) I'm interested too to see the outcome of this. As a small addition... the day to day variances in the sound of the real thing add to the realism. Maybe the tuning of a reed slipped slightly during the recording session for the CD - those little nuances and deviations from perfection are what makes the organ sound real to me. Also, how the CD recording was produced makes a huge difference. I have two versions of Vierne's organ works on the Cavaille-Coll at St Ouen. One (by Marco den Toom) is awesome, has real depth of sound and real 'presence'. The other - same works, same organ, different organist, different record label - is so much a disappointment that I have played it but once. The organists technique on the second is masterful, but the position of the mics makes the recording clinical, dry and 'narrow'. The more I think about this, the less likely I think you can come to being able to compare. Nice idea though

The virtual organs are virtually indistinguishable from the originals. In today's recording, it would save on tuning and cleaning the pipes. It would also make it a lot easier for, say, a pop, or heavy metal band that wishes for the actual sound to be there without the need for traversing to Europe.

Some time ago I left a comment under this video and it wasn't offensive towards anyone or anyone's work. I only wrote about my scepticism towards this kind of comparisons, since the two recordings have deep differences. I'm not really surprised it got deleted.

Great comments, everyone! One cannot replace the frequency response of a cathedral. No speaker / amp goes that low (5 Hz?). Or at least, ones that cost less than a car. I love the feeling in the gut. We haven't arrived at a sound reflection model of a cathedral. It will happen soon. It's really heavy AI and computational work. Then synthetics will sound better (no fake reverb, etc). Each building needs a custom acoustic model for this to work. Before they burn down. Maybe AI can reconstruct Notre Dame from past recordings? Although I love live experience, I also don't like the distractions from the melody from the audience, and to some extent, as a purist, the knocks and grinds are distracting too. But I am ADHD/GAD. Different organs have signature sounds. Also needs lots of data to be closer to reality. We have accepted vinyl and CD in the past. We are raising the bar in digital technologies and better recording. Listening on a phone is a last resort. Bleh. Just to parallel: video games from 2000 look horrible compared to recent movies with animation. It's slowly getting better. Hopefully we have the money (not just Paris) to keep, repair, and build new organs as they become rare and the building cost is astronomical.

Problem is that cone loudspeakers cause colouration in sound due to transient intermodulation distortion (TID) as a result of Doppler shift associated with cone movement and loudspeaker non-linearities. Thus, being in a building and hearing a real pipe organ does not suffer TID, whereas reproducing via Hauptwerk and loudspeakers results in additional TID colouration.

The problem is- either way on your video comparison is we are listening to sound reproduced artificially and electronically played through speakers and so here we are listening to a recording that youtube manipulated on the back end to reduce file size, and played through computer speakers, or in my case an AM/FM stereo amplifier connected to my Mac tower via USB audio output, and 2 wall speakers. None of this can move the air in the room the same as a real pipe organ. My 1930 Moller approx 12 rank pipe organ in my house will vibrate the bench in the other room without even playing pedals, and it will cause my iPhone mounted on a tripod more than one room away from the organ room to virabrate enough to distort the image at times. Electronic organs sound too "perfect" too "clean", it's like someone talking in a dull almost monotone v/s using a lot of inflection and the like in their voice

I've used Hauptwerk since version 1 circa 2003. Given a careful sampling of an instrument with high quality microphones in discerning placement I believe it has a slight edge because it enables the instrument's character to survive the instrument and venue, whereas a compact disc only captures the character of the registrations and performance on the playlist. I believe professional organ building and organists should insist upon Hauptwerk captures whenever an organ is going to be rebuilt, altered, or removed. It should be a boon to congregations and insurance carriers so if fire or natural disasters destroys a legacy instrument a reasonable facsimile can be referenced for a rebuild, and actually used while the replacement is being made.

The problem is we go about immersion all wrong; we don’t see the world from the outside in but from the inside out. We are as it were, computers ourselves; so whatever relevance anything has, it doesn’t happen before us but after receiving it. For example, and I tend to be graphic for practical purposes; if you’re not familiar with chocolate, and you saw a mangled chocolate bar on the ground, until you smell it, you’d probably believe it was waste. Ergo our perception can only work with whatever algorithm our mind is wired to produce the familiarity we need to understand circumstances. I feel like I’m there, would need familiarity to be able to relate. Now here’s the twist: Immersion may allow replication of certain elements but if it’s intent is to equal the matter, expectations can be on a balance. You might entertain the idea of buying the software, and having an elaborate setup, and when you finally visit the place, your setup was more pleasurable, more immersive as it were. So, immersion can only be measured versus reality but if the reality you experience firsthand is for whatever reason, more satisfying, then whatever “real” that is later experienced becomes more the mirror, not only of your truer experience but a mirage of your expectation!! 😇

Digital organs greatly reduce the cost of ownership and have helped many smaller churches be able to include the King of Instruments in their services. If an instrument isn't heard much by the public, it dies in the public conciseness. Digital sampling is good enough that its hard for me to tell the difference between a digital instrument and a well-maintained analog instrument. Cameron Carpenter's digital international touring organ may be the best example of high-resolution sampling. Each rank in the ITO represents terabytes of audio data. And then there's the hybrid organs. I remember practicing on the Rodeheaver Auditorium in college and it was a digital/analog system with both pipe ranks and digital ranks.

You should look at what Glenn Gould had to say about recording artists. You are are recording artist. Live performers are performing artists . Ever since the recording and playback of music started, musicians have had to figure out how much electronic - mechanical intermediaries were to exist between what they played and how audiences listened. Go to Glenn Gould on this subject. He really gave it thought.

In my humble opinion whether its JSW on CD or you in the dining room for me, it's tantamount to the same thing. Its recorded sound. At the end of the day, there is no comparison to being in the building that's an entirely different scenario. The air pressure of the pipework in a building doesn't compare to a CD however big your audio system is. Im often asked by friends to borrow CD's when they have been in a particular cathedral when the organ was being played and I have to tell them it won't be the same as being stood in the nave feeling the frequency of a 32'.

With the Hauptwerk system, only you can be in "immersion" if you have the appropriate audio output system and the all the needed speakers to get a surround effect. But if we compare the listening of a CD and listening to your recording via the computer, the difference is be very thin for me. The only huge difference, as you know, is the experiences of being surrounded by the organ music in a cathedral/church and the listening of an Hauptwerk perfomance, no matter the competence and sensitivity ot the organist. The surround effect of multiple speakers can't mimic the acoustics of a church, even if it's a very good alternative. I think it's the same difference as listening an organ from the cathedral aisles and having his body penetrated by the sound of the 32' bombarde when you're sitting at the organ loft or at the console. You're very lucky to have this Hauptwerk system. That's a dream for me but, as I live in a medium flat in the suburb of Paris, that's completely impossible. I keep that in my bucket list for the coming years. Keep going on. I love your videos :-).

Maybe I'm going a little off topic here. I don't know how Hauptwerk works when it comes to tracker action. Tracker organs give you more control over the air coming through the valve to the pipe unlike electro pnumatic where it's a straight on or off. I don't know if Hauptwerk does any emulation for tracker action. One thing that Hauptwerk does add to the sample set is expression. I don't believe that the organ at St. Bavo has any enclosed divisions. Of course there's no combination action either.

if the organ has a suspended mechanical action and the organist is a miniaturist of the articulation , let´s say a master of "attack-stationary sound -release"· of the note, then most probably that art could be shown in the CD recording but never reflected on any up to the present Hauptwerk system, just because you cannot do that work on the keyboard in Hauptwerk.......and this is probably the only important missing point to be considered.

I deliberately did not look at the other comments before writing this. What occurs to me is this: If we are to compare listening to a CD, a You Tube video, or any other means by which the real organ is heard via a loudspeaker system, I don't think it matters at all. Some reproductions will be 'better' (in the sense of 'more satisfying') than others, but that will be down to the way in which the sound was recorded and later reproduced. If I have to choose between listening to an excellent CD, or similar, on the best reproducing equipment, and hearing the same organist play the piece on a Hauptwerk (or other electronic) organ, I choose the Hauptwerk, because it is the *performance* I want to hear and appreciate, and the live performance is going to be better (in that you see the player, and appreciate the fact that he could make errors or deliberate, artistic, decisions, which cannot be rectified or edited, later.) If you ask me if the Hauptwerk organ sounds just like the real one (which is not the question, here) then, obviously, not. If you are listening to anything other than the real organ, you are listening to the sound of the speakers, not the pipes. An anecdote which may have a bearing on this: A friend of mine spent years, renovating a reproducing piano: I mean *seriously* renovating it. He used computer programmes and advanced mathematics to work out just what the mechanism was capable of at its best, and compared this to what a human player might be able to do, and the mechanism came off very well, in most cases. Then he had an opening 'recital' to which a number was invited. We listened to the piano reproduce one piece of repertoire after another, and it was faultless, even in the most demanding passages. So far, so expected. But at the end of every piece, nobody felt inclined to applaud, as they would have done with a human player. Curious, ins't it?

The more I stop and consider your question and try to give you a straight answer - the more difficult it is to give you a straight or considered answer. There are more variables than one immagines. Thus for my comments I am assuming that the recording is usning the very best setup that the recording team could do on the day and ditto for the organist on that day. The same applies for the Hauptwerk setup. Thinking more deeply, the real practical difference is that the recording is fixed in time and WYSWYG. With Hauptwerk YOU can choose which organ is used and play the piece as many time as you like (You don't have a producer leaning on you to complete the session in a given time). With the HW variant, the piece can bel played on as many instruments as you decide to buy, if you must - you can tweak the settings to suit yourself. You can't do that on the real instrument. (How often when working with a choir have you moved singers around to get the best blend / whatever - to some extent you can do that with HW...) Thus, before you fall asleap / throw my comments into the electronic bin, for me, HW gives you the best oportunities to fit the ' hardware' to the piece of music that you are performing. But then you don't get get the feel of the real instrument, it's console, its location - and that has an effect on you (well it does on English organs, many continental ones have the organist buried in the pipework (!) Enough.