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I just love the pipe organ and my goal is to buy someday a true organ with pedalboard and everything and learn how to play it. Someday...

By now I'm curious about which dp has in your opinion the best organs.
Bach's sinfonias sound terrific even on my casio cdp when i go pipe, but I'm pretty sure there're better options.

I don't want an organ. I want a dp with hamner action ,or whatever the name is, to properly study piano, that also has excellent pipe sounds.

Besides, what type of speakers or monitors would be best suited for pipe organ sounds?, within a budget.
No headphones, i like the feel of the music through air and space

I've not heard a piano that has excellent pipe sounds built-in.
They're good enough for me, a non-organist. But if you want "excellent" I'd suggest using virtual instrument software.
Hauptwerk (spelling?) makes some very fine organ software.

Yeah I agree with MacMacMac, from what I understand, sampled organs are way better and more advanced products than sampled pianos, because of how simple the sound production is (I mean, you press a key and get exactly one velocity, that's it). If you hear decent organ VSTs your mind will be blown, the organs I tried on DPs (admittedly a long time ago) didn't hold a candle. No clue about speakers, I would always recommend headphones but YMMV

The Yamaha Genos engine is in the new CVP-800 series. It should have some decent organ sounds, but I haven't heard them first hand.

It would help if you specified what the budget was.

The problem is that pipe organs (once your feet hit the pedalboard) can produce a _lot_ of low bass -- more low bass than you get out of a piano. Reproducing those frequencies, at "live sound" levels, is quite expensive.

Something like a good pair of studio monitor speakers, with 10" drivers, might work -- Mackie SRM350v3 or Yamaha HS10 or (to cut the price somewhat) Behringer B210D.

An alternative would be a pair of smaller speakers, and a subwoofer.

I agree with the post above, suggesting Hauptwerk. It's easy to get "pre-packaged" organ sounds on a DP. It's a lot harder to find something that behaves like a real pipe organ, and lets you add sound stop-by-stop, to get exactly the effect you want.

I know hauptwerk. They talk a lot about it in the organ community and I've listened to it and it is really good. But i prefer to use the build in sounds of a dp. Just plug and play. No computer, wires etc. I have pianoteq and it is absolutely wonderful but i never use it, for the same reason.

Maybe in the future when I'll be able to get a permanent place to put it, software will be practical to me. But for now the more all-in-one the better.

When i talk about a monitor's budget I mean something in the few hundreds region. I assume that will bring me a few hundreds sound. Good enough for me. I'd be happy with the internal speakers of my casio if just the base was a little more clear.

I've checked the yamaha pipe sounds and they are great. Maybe i get one of those boards

A Nord Electro 6D 61 might be something to consider for a pipe organ. Two separate models, drawbars, effects. Not too bad, if you are into organs - Obviously it is not a DP, but it has excellent piano sounds as well

Sure, a self-contained unit is convenient.

The problem could be that there are very few church organ sounds in typical digital pianos, maybe just "big" and "bigger" or if you are lucky then "small" and "bigger". ("Small" as is one or a few stops and "big" having many stops pulled out.)

So you might be stuck with just two.

Usually digital pianos are not expandable. There are of course "workstations" like Korg Kronos and whatnot that may allow adding more sounds. And Clavia's products like Nord Piano are expandable with their own sound packs.

Dexibell's products can be expanded by their own sound packs and also SoundFonts which is an open and common format, so you might find plenty of church organ sounds. But the quality will vary.

They have a sound sample of their "big" church organ sound as the last one here: https://www.dexibell.com/prodotto/vivo-h1-2/?lang=en#1525703248983-77482673-9c13

It was actually sampled in a church and has some of the natural ambiance included.

I think typically Kawai US/North America has demoed organ sounds on their YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/PianosByKawai/videos

I remember hearing a smaller and a bigger church organ sounds in Kawais. And their various websites also have sound samples. Probably extra sounds like these are shared between all models and might not have changed in several years, so it probably doesn't matter which Kawai you listen to(?)

Here are "Church Organ", "Diapason" and "Full Ensemble" in a discontinued model: https://www.kawai.co.uk/products/archive/cn42/

(Maybe the CN-39 has those sounds(?))

I'd look at Dexibells and models from other brands with hundreds of sounds. Many (Kawais and Rolands) implement the General Midi Level 2 sound bank which dictates these sounds to be included:
- Church Organ 1
- Church Organ 2
- Church Organ 3
- Reed Organ
- Puff Organ

But they might not be that great. And it might be difficult to find sound samples online, so you'll need to go the music store.

And there are of course alternatives to the massive Hauptwerk:
http://www.virtualorgancompany.com/vstvirtualpipeorganfreetrials.asp
https://www.modartt.com/organteq

I saw yesterday that the Kawai CA 78 has several pipe organ sounds, sorted by volume (soft, medium, loud, full). I think the mere fact that somebody thought about including different registrations in ascending order instead of just one soft and one full ranks registration indicates that somebody took the pipe organ in this DP at least a bit seriously.

https://www.kawai.de/products/digitalpianos/caserie/ca78/. (in German, but you can listen to the sounds here (under „Klangbeispiele“ in red)

This is probably the best I have seen so far. I would not rely on sounds from the General Midi Level2 implementation.

Something not mentioned is that Pianoteq has a Alpha-release organ modeller called "Organteq", which is free for now. It was due to be officially released this year - don't know if that has changed. From the Internet, I believe this was someone's PhD dissertation project. Organteq is quite fun to play with and you should be able to use it with any digital piano, regardless of what onboard sounds that piano has.

A diversion from the thread ( sorry) Just checked the link out - can anybody tell me the name of the pieces played in the Shigeru Kawai SK5 & Upright Piano tones? The first I should know, the 2nd just sounds entertaining.

I have never mentioned this here (maybe many years ago) but I am a church musician.

Although I am not a "real organist", I am able to accompany choral and congregational singing on the organ, play metric hymns semi-tastefully, etc.

I have not been impressed with the organ sounds from any digital piano (and I have played them all). The two exceptions are:
1) The Physis organ samples
2) I am excited by the 800 series of Yamaha CVP's. Those sounds are all from the Genos engine now and they are very respectable.

Using a sub-woofer - or better, a small powered pa. with a sub-woofer would do a lot to make this an acceptable set up in a small church without the budget for a high line digital or pipe organ along with a piano, etc.



I had no idea. I will google and check it out Tyrone. Thank you.





Hauptwerk is very cool. Here is my issue - this system is designed to give the organist the feeling of being in a great cathedral as they are sitting at the bench, so for us "organist wannabes" it can be a very cool experience. But when I am working with a church to give them a real "pipe organ" experience with a high end digital organ the goal is different. I am attempting to digitally "build" an organ within their space. All pipe organs are custom chosen and placed to take advantage of the acoustics within a given space - or to attempt to overcome them.

Custom digital organs do this in a way that can be truly musical and satisfying, but they are not cheap. A digital organ console along with the tremendous audio needed and installation is always over 50k USD and could be much much more than that. (However a tradition wind blown pipe organ can easily exceed 1 million USD.

My 2 cents,

Click on my link above takes you to the free downloads. You can try it out on your PC without hooking up your DP to it just to see how it sounds.

BTW, at that link are also some sample recordings made with the Organteq alpha-release:

• Rameau - Menuet in A minor - Klaus Birkner
• Schubert - Wohin soll ich mich wenden - Klaus Birkner
• Franck - Prelude, Variation and Fugue op 18 - D. Siu
• Bach - Brandenburg Concerto #3 - J. Felice
• Klaus Birkner - Improvisation on a jazz standard - Klaus Birkner

Do you think a couple of Yamaha hs5 will be a great improvement over casio cdp130 speakers?
I know if i want strong bass i need more. But I'm afraid about over powering my room. Besides that, is it possible to plug a couple of monitors to the cdp? It hasn't line out, just headphones

a) Yes, they'll be a considerable improvement. Both better bass, and clearer midrange. And loud enough for most anyone, playing most anything.

b) You can always turn the volume down, if the sound is too loud.

c) You should be able to run the monitors from the headphone jack. It needs an adapter cable -- a "stereo splitter cable"

. . . from 1/4" stereo plug ("TRS") (CDP headphone jack output)

. . . to two 1/4" mono plugs ("TS") (HS5 speaker input).

Not all monitor speakers use the same input jacks, so decide on the speakers, before you get the adapter cable.

Have fun --

The Nord Piano and Pipe Organ sounds are available with hammer actions. The only 88 meeting the spec would be the Nord Stage 3 88, but if that's out of budget, there's also the 73-key Nord Electro 6HP (and a 76-key Nord Stage 3 HP76), but the NS3-88 has the better feeling action.

Regarding 8" vs 5" monitors, 8" have better bass, but do they need to work at higher volume to make their bass advantage show? Sorry the silly question. Im not hifi expert.

Putting it in another way: when someone chooses 8 instead of 5, it is because of better bass, or because of higher volume?

So if i buy 8" and set them low I'll still get the bass advantage? Or I'll get better bass with a 5" at medium volume?

Looking at the specs of several 5" they have so much power i doubt that i ever need to set them at more than 1/3 volume.

@Rich:

Off topic note:

This is to let you know that my most recent acquisition has been the Yamaha P-515 as it has great Yamaha "CFX" / "Bosendorfer" Imperial concert grand samples. Now going forward with the P-515 along with the excellent AvantGrand N2 (possibly the very best hybrid piano now available) and also the older Yamaha Clavinova CLP-990 which dates from 2001. The other Baldwin SF-10 grand that I purchased from Greg Kottmann (at Piano Pros in West Chester, OH) had to be sold due to stability problems with the legs and also old original bass strings that were very "tubby" sounding and need replacing, etc. These issues were enough to sell the SF-10 and move on -- as the current digital pianos are obviously far better than the Baldwin SF-10 -- in every respect!

Extra note:

I previously owned the Physis Piano and while I do not remember playing the organ sounds on it I can say it had somewhat better piano sounds as compared with the Roland V-Piano that I also have previously owned. It appears that MODELED sounds still have a long way to go before they come close to replicating an authentic acoustic grand piano sound and this was the reason I traded in both the Physis Piano / Roland V-Piano for other digital(s) -- the V-Piano also had problems with the "Ivory Feel" key surfaces that continued to flake off even after I was given a new set of replacement keys under warranty. Cannot recommend the V-Piano and note that all other Roland keyboards still have this issue TODAY in 2019 as it has never been completely resolved as of yet.

(1 + 2) The answer isn't simple.

If you _measure_ the bass response, you'll find that the 8" woofer gives you an extra half-octave (or so) of fairly flat bass response.

If you _listen_ to the bass response, you'll find that it seems to go deeper, as you play both loudspeakers louder. That's because of something called the "Fletcher-Munson curve" (it'll be in Wikipedia).

So, if you want to get something that sounds like a grand piano, or a church organ, you need both low-bass response from the loudspeaker, _and_ enough power to get decent sound-pressure levels, at those low-bass frequencies.

What's not obvious is that the amount of air that a loudspeaker driver can move, at low frequencies, varies as the _cube_ of the driver diameter. So the difference between 8" and 5" is significant.

(3) I think you're right:

-- in a small room (or with the loudspeakers fairly close to your head), 5" powered studio monitors have more power than you need, for everything but the lowest octave (or so) of a DP.

This seems interesting from Johannus here in the Netherlands ...

Johannus One