Southern Comfort wrote:Apart from the acoustic arguments, there are the financial ones. Yes, restoring a sizeable pipe organ for £200,000 is expensive. A new digital equivalent will cost the parish £30-35,000 — every fifteen to twenty years if not rather more frequently
I'm curious as to where this bizarre factoid comes from. My church has a ten-year-old digital instrument. Are you telling me we'll have to buy a new one in another ten years? Also, what are the timescale and costs for regular restoration of a pipe organ, and how do they compare?
Suppositions about longevity, replacement and future availability of spare part technology long since superseded - versus - pipe organ maintenance, tuning and overhaul costs are legion. I know of a thirty-plus year old large Copeman Hart that is now very troublesome and a similar aged Bradford that does not always do what the organist wishes and plays. Yet another Bradford in the diocese, of similar age, functions still as if it were new. The twenty-one year old Viscount here has developed a small mechanical fault on one key - new spring needed - and there's an easily fixed loose connection on one of the sound-channel jack sockets. Otherwise, it's fine. Yet the sad heap of an unplayable analogue that the (second hand) Viscount replaced reached the age of only about sixteen before matters moribund were in the ascendent. We just don't know. Pipe organs are unpredictable too. I can think of one, new, large, mechanical instrument that became unplayable in only a few years and needed major work on the action. We just don't know.
Well, that's not much of a helpful comment..........
IF in ten years, mcb, you have a circuit board fail, would a replacement be available?
Any opinions expressed are my own, not those of the Archdiocese of Birmingham Liturgy Commission, Church Music Committee. Website
quaeritor wrote:I'm a bit bemused by Hare's post - one thing I do know about about software is it doesn't "wear out". If a digital organ is deteriorating presumably it must be the electronics - ?
Q
Apologies - I obviously don't know what I am talking about.
I just thought I had read somewhere that it is possible to upgrade whatever gizmo produces the sound - and I would have thought that electronic bits could be replaced if they go wrong, and better speakers installed, etc.......................?
Southern Comfort wrote:The flaw in Nick's argument about electronics is that he thinks the sound is identical. Actually it isn't.
Sorry SC, but I think this is completely fanciful. A good digital organ sounds like a good pipe organ, to all but a miniscule proportion of self-styled connoisseurs. But I think they're kidding themselves. And in practice the argument is completely specious: what actually matters is that a good digital organ produces a sound of appropriate beauty, dignity and so forth to accompany the liturgy in the manner it deserves. End of story. Any further argument by the purists is extravagant self-indulgence, using other people's money. [Different argument: a pipe organ with heritage significance is a an asset to be protected and cherished. I'm talking about whether it's justified to buy a new pipe organ on the basis of quasi-mystical views about whether digital sound is inferior to the sound of pipes, even if they (as near as dammit) sound the same.]
Southern Comfort wrote:A few loudspeakers, or even a battery of them as Copeman Hart used to use, can still not reproduce what happens physically with pipes. ... There is no way that the electronic can begin to move as much air as the pipe organ
What does move as much air mean? I don't know what you mean by this in physical terms. Sound waves move through the air, they don't move it (except backwards and forwards in tiny vibrations). All the air around the organ 'moves', in that sense, regardless of whether the organ has pipes or speakers. If you want to move more air, get a bigger church.
Southern Comfort wrote:The fact is that many electronic instruments have inadequate loudspeakers ... That, of course, increases the price more than somewhat.
Yes yes, and many pipe organs are out of tune and suffer from leaky blowers... That's a red herring. Let's compare a good quality, properly functioning digital instrument with a ditto pipe instrument.
Southern Comfort wrote:Apart from the acoustic arguments, there are the financial ones. Yes, restoring a sizeable pipe organ for £200,000 is expensive. A new digital equivalent will cost the parish £30-35,000 — every fifteen to twenty years if not rather more frequently
I'm curious as to where this bizarre factoid comes from. My church has a ten-year-old digital instrument. Are you telling me we'll have to buy a new one in another ten years? Also, what are the timescale and costs for regular restoration of a pipe organ, and how do they compare?
Southern Comfort wrote:Finally, there is an ecclesial argument. In 1938 the Congregation for Rites was asked to approve for liturgical use artificial tone generation instruments (Hammond organs). It declined to give approval, pending further investigation, and then along came World War II which put paid to that. As far as I am aware, that refusal to approve has not yet been superseded.
Peter Jones wrote:If in ten years, mcb, you have a circuit board fail, would a replacement be available?
Good question, and as you say, we don't know for sure. But I'd be optimistic. We have an annual maintenance/repair contract, which costs about the same as we'd be paying for care and tuning of a pipe organ, and this so far has covered all the minor work that's been needed. (There was also a major disaster when the builders working on restoration of the spire left a leak in the roof and the rain got into the console, but this was covered by insurance.) As far as I'm aware this arrangement can continue indefinitely, and incremental repairs will continue to be taken care of.
So how do people account for the perception that an electronic organ has gone out of tune? I played one such for a funeral a couple of weeks ago - it wasn't just that there was a discrepancy between voices that prevented them being used together, the problem seemed to have been within individual voices too.
mcb wrote:Good question, and as you say, we don't know for sure. But I'd be optimistic.
In my albeit limited experience within the diocese, with digitals, it's mechanical bits that seem to wear out before the circuit boards and it's often external amplifiers and speakers that fail, rather than the organ itself. With all instruments (including pipe organs) components will wear in some sort of proportion to the amount the instrument is used (but I would hesitate to attempt to have a stab at drawing a graph - no empirical data).Water, of course, is the enemy of both pipe and digital organs. Poor mcb.
The digitals in the local crematoria here seem to be holding up well - and they're in use for several hours, five days a week.
Any opinions expressed are my own, not those of the Archdiocese of Birmingham Liturgy Commission, Church Music Committee. Website
musicus wrote:Could it be that a tuning schema other than equal temperament was (inadvertently?) selected?
The different temperaments can be quite startling! However, I don't THINK that different temperaments were available on anologue instruments - which were indeed prone to going out of tune. I used to play when there on holiday, an elderly 3 manual analogue Johannus in L'Eglise St.Sauveur, Rochechouart, Haute Vienne, France. The resident organist used to have to spend some time each week inside the console adjusting the potentiometers (POTS) which suffered from hot weather, causing severe out-of-tuneness.
The old Compton system of "tonewheels" with their moving parts caused their own problems.
The excellent 4-year-old Viscount in my church has selectable temperaments. I once played a piece by Titelouze during Communion, using the "Chaumont" temperament but forgot to reset it to Equal temperament for the Recessional hymn. can't remember what the hymn was, but it was in a key unusable in any sort of mean-tone tuning!
I am ignoring some of the comments further up the thread which simply serve to demonstrate that some people have different hearing from others. That, at least, is not a disputable fact. I also don't think listening to organs on YouTube has any relevance: you are still hearing something coming through the medium of loudspeakers, when what is required is hearing something live in a building as others have pointed out.
As far as out-of-tuneness in digital instruments is concerned, this is something that is common with Allen, Wyvern and Viscount — e.g. two manuals being slightly out of tune with each other, or in some cases one or two stops on one manual being out of tune with everything elsel. This can be caused by a number of factors already mentioned, but they usually fall into two categories: humidity (often excessive dampness, but sometimes excessive heat), and the gradual deterioration of parts in the instrument itself. I first encountered the tuning problem with Allen back in the mid-1980s. They vigorously denied that it was possible, until scientific evidence was able to prove it (and it was down to humidity back then). These days, I think all electronic organ manufacturers admit that there can be tuning problems with their instruments.
Sometimes the problem can be sorted out with a screwdriver if you know where to wield it, but in the case of older digitals the manufacturer will tell you that there is nothing further that can be done. (Analogues, by contrast, can be fixed.) I have recently played two Viscounts both well under 15 years old that have received such a condemnation, and additionally a much younger Wyvern and three Allens of recent vintage that started to give trouble within months of their installation.
There's no written source for this, obviously, but if you talk to the manufacturers....
And they come along and fix the tuning problems when they are fixable, a tacit admission of their existence; and when those problems are no longer fixable they will tell you that deterioriation in various circuitry components means that no further adjustments can usefully be made. That also seems to me to be a clear admission of tuning issues.
I don't think any of the current promotional literature from electronic organ manufacturers claims any longer either that their instruments never go out of tune, nor that no further tuning or maintenance after installation will ever be required (I'll be happy, if you see what I mean, to hear if any still do). At one time, both those claims were commonplace, but now they can be proved to be untrue by people's experiences.
Southern Comfort wrote:There's no written source for this, obviously...
But SC, you said scientific evidence was able to prove it. Were these particular scientists illiterate, or devotees of the oral tradition?
Anyway, you seem to be right about the absence of written sources: a Google search on the terms digital organ tuning problems does rather seem to back you up. Surely somebody somewhere must have noticed the same problem and reported it?
