Is it possible to play the organ live?

[BlueFire]

I just bought the Konzerthaus Orgel, and the samples are totally gorgeous. The best organ samples that have ever delighted my ear. There doesn't appear to be any interface for actually using the samples, and I can't figure out how to load the .cab thingies into Halion or EXS24. The individual samples don't appear to exist anywhere on my computer. I tried loading separate instances for each stop, but the CPU bogs down before even one full manual is loaded. The ensemble is so breathtakingly beautiful it makes me want to cry that apparently there's no practical way to play it live. I sure hope I'm wrong about this! Have I just very stupidly purchased an organ that can't be played? Of course it's great for MIDI scores if you're into that, but I'm a performing musician and need a way to actually play my instruments. You know, stops, pistons, and stuff...

[veetguitar]

 You have to download Vienna Software to use the samples.

[Dietz]

Welcome BlueFire,

thanks for the friendly comments - always good to hear that our work is appreciated :-)

Sorry that you seem to run into problems, though. Of course the Konzerthaus Organ is meant to be played live, too. Would you please post more details about your system (OS, CPU, RAM, host etc.) to give our support team enough clues where to start? - And I'm sure you know that our samples rely on their own player software, the Vienna Instrument, so the samples won't load into generic players like Halion or EXS.

One more thing: Combining your own registrations from single stops is beautiful, but be aware that this can put quite some load on your computer. A registration made from 10 single stops, playing 6-voice harmonies, needs 120 single voices - a number which can double or even quadruple when you play fast changes and have the releases turned on, for this blooming reverb. -- Maybe you missed the fact that there are quite a few "ready made" registrations available within the Vienna Konzerthaus Organ - with the goal in mind to keep the system load for a "full blown" setup as low as possible ...? These pre-built registrations always need just two voices (read: one stereo-voice) per key.

Here's a link to the list:

-> [URL]http://vsl.co.at/en/211/442/478/450/663/406.htm[/URL] (... mind the distinction between stops and registrations).

Kind regards,

[BlueFire]

Thanks for the quick reply, Dietz. It's a little heretical, but actually I'm fiddling with the voicing, bringing the nazard down a little, scaling the bourdon so the upper and lower ranges are more even in level, etc, adjustments that would of course be impossible on a wind organ. My feelings are that it's not a fake wind organ, it's a real software organ, based on wind samples. (There are probably many widely different strong opinions about this LOL...) But yes, it would make sense to work more with the included registrations. Anyway, if there were GUI with stops, then there wouldn't be any need for loading 38+ instances. All the stops would still be easily available, and I could MIDI some pistons. Is there such a thing? I wouldn't mind paying extra for it. Thank you for your beautiful work, btw.

[Mark Schmieder]

I just spent a good deal of time with this library this week (and today) to get a feel for what was added by the wonderful holiday gift that VSL added to this library for free recently (practically doubling its size).

Shortly before this library came out, I had pegged Notre Dame de Budapest as the must-have organ library. As fate would have it, VSL introduced theirs right before the former became available for Kontakt (it was a Gigasampler library before).

I also compared to several organ libraries I had bought earlier from Post Musical Instruments and Sampletekk. No comparison; those have now all been deleted from my hard drive.

So this all leads up to real-time playing, where Vienna's library beats all the competition hands-down. It does require a bit of horsepower though. But as this library was recorded wet vs. dry, there at least is no need to add reverb, which also helps a bit with real-time performance.

The Notre Dame de Budapest library is probably the closest to the VSL library, and covers a similar Rieger organ design (though it also includes a smaller organ from another designer -- however, I didn't care much for that one, based on the audio demos and the free "taster" demos you can download to load into Kontakt).

Although a newcomer may at first think it's going to be a challenge to find usable live performances, the Vienna Instruments interface provides a considerable number of real-world usage setups, and I'm sure more could be custom-made by the end-user as needed. 

In real use as a live sound source, I find VSL's organ by far the most organic -- far moreso than Notre Dame de Budapest, its leading competitor. This is the only organ library I have owned and/or tried that makes me feel like I'm sitting down at a real organ. Possibly due to good legato programming? 

[Dietz]

@mhschmieder: Thanks for the positive feedback! :-)

@BlueFire: May I ask you again to give us the technical details of your system, so we can make at least an educated guess if you are running into the "natural" limits, or if there would be room for improvement ...?

Kind regards,

[BlueFire]

Please forgive a panicking newbie... I was a church organist for 20 years before getting into computers, and for me this is the first time sampling software has truly lived up to its promise. It's exciting.

On calming down a bit, it does seem likely that my machine's natural limits are being pushed pretty hard by myriad instances. However, thank you for asking about the setup:

Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 14 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM, 3 x 500 GB eSATA internal drives @ 7200, one of which is dedicated to data. 2 88-key MIDI controllers + Roland PK-5A 13-key pedal.

I'm learning how to register with patches and matrices, and have noticed that individual stop levels can be set from the cells.

Thanks for paying attention to this! and enjoy the holidays,

Will

[Dietz]

... no need to be sorry, Will. Actually it's nice to hear that our instruments can cause such excitement. :-) You're very welcome.

Your computer is most certainly not the real problem - it's pretty fast and offers lots of RAM. You don't write what audio-hardware you use, though. Maybe you push it to far latency-wise ...? It needs a lot of CPU to play at latencies of 128 samples or lower. And: Are you using the Vienna Instruments inside a host (like Logic or ProTools) or stand alone (within our Vienna Ensemble)? Some hosts are known to be less forgiving than others.

But in any case ... enjoy! :-)