Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards OrganTeq Alpha - from PianoTeq folks at Modartt

"ORGANTEQ Alpha is a new generation physically modelled pipe organ that reproduces the complex behaviour of the organ flue pipe.

It is a small organ with a keyboard range of 4 octaves (from F1 to F5) and with 2 stops: a Flute 8' and a Flute 4' (octave).

It is provided in standalone mode only and should be regarded as a foretaste of a more advanced commercial version in development, due to be released during 2018."


https://www.keyboardmag.com/news/modartt-introduces-organteq-alpha

https://www.modartt.com/organteq

This sounds very promising indeed. Exciting news, thank you!

Between modelling a piano, and modelling an organ, I'll bet the piano is the easier job.

One organ pipe is easy. But "pulling out all the stops" has a very literal meaning for an organist, and when he does that, pressing one key sounds _lots_ of pipes. And each one must be modelled . . . . .

You want to push polyphony limits? There's your chance!<G>

Very cool, I'll definitely keep observing that one.

Sounds very promising, especially for an early preview. I'll keep an ear to this project. Some of the stops are very realistic, already much better than the joke organ sounds in most digital pianos and keyboards. The challenge as already said is to be able to emulate tutti sound from a model, where each is made of multiple different pipes. But I bet there are workarounds and heuristics to it.

Hadn't thought about the implications of that! It will be interesting to see how they do sound as they begin to accumulate pipes. The flue and flute pipe sound very life like to me, although I only have a layman's idea of pipe organs apart from trying a third rate electronic that our church replaced the decrepit pipe organ with in 1971. Yuk.

I wonder how this Organteq compares with the serious existing digital organ systems, which, due to the specialised hardware, are extremely expensive, I suppose.

It is provided in standalone mode only

Does this mean it won't work as a plug-in? Pity....

This is pretty cool software. And I look forward to the audio discussion on how to build a sound system that can adequately compare to a full church organ

I've had the pleasure to be on the front row at a Cameron Carpenter's concert. That guy looks like a nut job but is a über good virtuoso organist! You can Google him, he's basically struggled with the varying quality of existing pipe organs around the world, as well as their different stops, the way to change them, etc., so a company made a special digital organ for him to replicate a large and very elaborate pipe organ. And it comes with a wall of speakers:

Well, that sound system will have to be a full-surround system; lots of church organs have ranks of pipes in the back of the church:

. . . You are sitting inside the instrument.

And it's loud enough to feel the lowest octave, as well as hear it.

The Modartt patent about Pianoteq is about an additive synthesis where some partial parameters are computed and afterward, samples are computed as a sum of sinus functions.

If the same thing is done with organteq, I suppose a lot of partial are sum up at the stop switch, and will not add too much computing at each sample.

Let’s see the actual product and look at the ressource manager.

I just tried it. I'm not impressed. The native church organ sound of my Clavinova is much better.

Their demo is only modeling two flute stops. Is that what the church organ sound on the Clavinova reproduces? If it's the same "church organ" sound as my CP4 I believe it's at least a diapason or two with a mixture on top. And they probably throw in a 16' stop to make it sound all deep and "churchy".

The demos sound great to me.
So this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I would rather have them work on the piano models more exclusively and ditch the other instruments which I feel require time and work that is better spent elsewhere. The pianos feel like they need a lot more work until the sound can convince me, they should focus on that and make the sound of Pianoteq competitive against sample based pianos as quickly as they can. They'd benefit and profit from that much more than making more instruments.
But I'm not complaining or anything, it's their software and their company, just my two cents.

That's awesome! So much potential here. Think of how how much pianoteq has improved over the past few iterations. I think this could work out to be a fantastic product. I wonder if they're also working on Tone Wheel or Electronic organ emulation.

I hope so!

According to pianoteq forum:



So there are no plans to do that, but maybe if there's enough interest that will change. Who knows? There were some people there asking for tone wheel / transistor organs.
I think it was somebody associated with PT that even gave some examples of great existing models:

I can't help but wonder how this will compete with Hauptwerk, which is already pretty dang amazing. I guess it'll be cheaper, so there's that.

Hauptwerk is a giant with a lot of sampled organs.
If Pianoteq achieves to make organs, there will be a limited number of models.
The advantages of Pianoteq will always be: a very light and efficient software cpu, RAM and HDD or SSD wise. Better resonances... compatible with the 3 operational systems.
The basic sound will always be more appealing on sampled instruments.

This company is great.
If they can make 2-3 good church organs and 2-3 good transistors/B3 like organs, and if we can live with their sound, this will be a good, pragmatic solution for people who don't need the expensive Hauptwerk.

Aside from hardware requirements and price, though, I don't see many advantages. Pipe organs differ considerably from pianos, in that there are no strings that resonate, and no velocity differences, making the production of a convincing sound and behaviour using samples much easier. I've yet to hear a single emulated piano, whether using samples, or modelling, or a combination of the two, that is completely convincing. Hauptwerk, though, to my ears, is often indistinguishable from recordings of real pipe organs. Heck, even the pipe organ variations available in my Clavinova are as playable as any sampled or modeled piano I've heard or tried, and aside from the audible looping in some circumstances, which is easily solveable with longer samples, with some judicious reverb they are fairly convincing. I mean, I love the playability of Pianoteq, but I don't think that will transfer to an instrument where each key is effectively a simple on/off switch. Heck, some real pipe organs even have considerable latency from pressing a key until the sound is produced, much worse than a half-decent ASIO setup. Which is why I think Organteq may be a tough sell, unless it is quite cheap. That's based on my requirements, though, which are realism first and foremost. I won't pretend I'm privy to other people's needs and wants, and may be way off the mark.

Edited to add: I might be seeing this more from the perspective of people who have the organ as a primary instrument, who have the appropriate keyboards (and pedalboards) to emulate a real pipe organ, and to whom the hardware necessary for Hauptwerk is a small price to pay for an awesome setup; or people who are doing production of soundtracks for games and movies and such, where realism is of the essence, and the price for Hauptwerk is a drop in the bucket compared to all the other sound libraries likely being used. Whereas most users are likely primarily piano players, who have different needs for gigs and personal enjoyment.

Hauptwerk is a lot of fun and sounds great. Really glad I tried this.

There is a free trial version with St. Anne's Moseley organ (Windows & OSX):

http://www.downloadhauptwerk.com/win

Installation takes 5 minutes with this easy guide. Trail requires no USB key or other :

https://www.hauptwerk.com/clientupl...de/HauptwerkInstallationAndUserGuide.pdf

If you want to add pedals, there are some botique makers like:

http://pedamidikit.org/
http://us.midiworks.ca/index.php/products?route=product/category&path=2