# Pipe / church organ library recommendations?



## tmm (Jun 13, 2013)

As the title suggests - any recommendations? The only 2 I'm currently aware of that sounded any good to me were Hauptwerk (a number of options) and Sonokinetic's Toccata. I plan on buying one in short order, and I'm leaning heavily toward Toccata, because of the massive price differential between the two, without an accompanying differential in tone quality (at least from what I hear in the demos). Plus, I have other things to buy, so I need to keep the budget in-check. I don't foresee this being a staple of my compositions, but I loves me some PoTA, and if nothing else, will have a ton of fun playing it.


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## George Caplan (Jun 13, 2013)

i wound up getting sonnokinetic toccata and had some fun doing a track with omnispere choirs.


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## Taisto (Jun 13, 2013)

Another vote for Toccata. For the price it sounds ridiculously good.
I find that turning its own reverb off and adding a quality reverb (I prefer QL Spaces church presets) really makes it sing.


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## MrCambiata (Jun 13, 2013)

I have the Lakeside Pipe Organ from Soundiron. Great sound, decent price too.


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## RasmusFors (Jun 13, 2013)

I have the ProjectSam Mystique Organ and I love it. It's one of the best recorded organs I've ever played


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## mark812 (Jun 13, 2013)

http://samples.wavesfactory.com/1850-pipe-organ/


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 13, 2013)

I'm not up on all the organs - leave that alone - but two to include in your investigation are VSL's (which sounds amazing in the demos) and the Notre Dame de Budapest library (an old Giga library, updated for Kontakt, that still floors me every time I play it).

And I see they have several more organs now:

http://orgona.org/en/products/virtual-pipe-organs


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## dadek (Jun 13, 2013)

the VSL organ used with MIR will make your jaw drop.


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## RasmusFors (Jun 13, 2013)

A sample company that only samples pipe organs ? Never heard of them, but their products sound great


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## tmm (Jun 13, 2013)

RasmusFors @ Thu Jun 13 said:


> A sample company that only samples pipe organs ? Never heard of them, but their products sound great



No kidding, right? They sound unbelievably good, but I suppose they ought to, considering it's all they do. A little expensive, but I guess if you need a really great pipe organ...

Anyway, thanks everyone for all the great suggestions! I'd forgotten SoundIron had one. I'm a huge fan (& owner) of their choirs. I'll check out the Notre Dame & VSL offerings, too.

As for MIR, it sounds interesting, but I already have Valhalla Room, AD EOS, and that Bricasti IR library (can't remember the maker atm, an I'm not at my laptop). Does MIR really offer anything beyond what I could get with one of those 3 reverbs?


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## Adrian Myers (Jun 13, 2013)

Years ago, I remember being impressed by demos of the Notre Dame de Budapest library project. It appears to have some siblings now:

http://www.orgona.org/en/products/virtual-pipe-organs

Might be of interest

P.S. Beaten to it :(


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jun 13, 2013)

If you want selection of instruments and quality, you want Hauptwerk. It is outstanding. It is a sample player of great sophistication and allows mapping out an entire virtual organ console. You may or may not care about that, but there are dozens of libraries of the most significant instruments in Europe in many diffferent styles from local parish instruments to the largest Romantic instruments made. If you want authenticity, you can even choose libraries that have the hall ambience of up to 9 seconds built in, or libraries that are completely dry. If you want real pipe organ, you can't do better.


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## Casiquire (Jun 14, 2013)

Can't get enough of the sound of VSL's organ. Comes with a really good selection of stops. And I don't look at MIR as a reverb plugin, it's an all-around positioning plugin where everything just sounds right without any tweaking. Then you start tweaking and the results are unbelievable. But if most of your libraries are a bit on the wet side I wouldn't touch MIR, it's designed for libraries like VSL and Samplemodeling. Even LASS needs some "dry" mixed in to not sound too washed.


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## TGV (Jun 14, 2013)

I quite like Sampletekk's PMI Baroque Organ. They regularly have 50% discount offers, which makes it very cheap.

There is also GrandOrgue, a kind of open source Hauptwerk. There are quite a few decent sample sets available for it, but the interface is cumbersome.


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## Dietz (Jun 14, 2013)

dadek @ Fri Jun 14 said:


> the VSL organ used with MIR will make your jaw drop.



Thanks for this friendly recommendation! 

... but as the guy who invented MIR and recorded (and edited) Vienna Konzerthaus Organ I think that I'm allowed to remark that the former isn't really _necessary_ to enjoy the sound of the latter. MIR will just broaden the organs sonic possibilities.

Kind regards,

/Dietz



.


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## yellowstudio (Jun 14, 2013)

Not entirely relevant to the OP, but I saw these guys at Musikmesse this year, if you have a room to spare and couple hundred large lying around (intro price was quoted at around 160 k€) you might want to take a look at http://www.vporgans.com/

They will essentially build you a replica of the organ you want, acting as a huge ass midi controller for Hauptwerk. The idea seemed endearingly silly to me, when I first saw it, but then the realization hit me that there must obviously be a market for something like this. That fills me with an inexplicable sense of joy, although I'm not an organist and would never be able to appreciate something like that even if I could afford it.

so long
Andreas


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## Time+Space (Jun 14, 2013)

We've had some particularly good customer and press feedback about Garritan's Classic Pipe Organ Collection:

http://www.timespace.com/product/CP...an_classic_pipe_organs_(serial_download).html


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## dadek (Jun 14, 2013)

Dietz @ Fri Jun 14 said:


> dadek @ Fri Jun 14 said:
> 
> 
> > the VSL organ used with MIR will make your jaw drop.
> ...



yes, it's more the combo, with the MIR presets for organ and the churches, the realism is stunning. it's what sold me on MIR.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jun 14, 2013)

yellowstudio @ Fri Jun 14 said:


> The idea seemed endearingly silly to me, when I first saw it, but then the realization hit me that there must obviously be a market for something like this. That fills me with an inexplicable sense of joy, although I'm not an organist and would never be able to appreciate something like that even if I could afford it.



There is indeed a market for this. Everyone who plays organ. The old electronic organs never sound right at home, and pipe instruments are simply incompatible with all but the largest homes and budgets (pretty much all those inhabited by 99.99% of organists). If you go to the Hauptwerk forums, there is a global community of folk building consoles, rigging up MIDI keyboards, and converting old pedal-boards for MIDI use. Even if you could afford $50k+ for a real pipe instrument, few have the room or the patience for tuning/maintenance issues. For that $$ you can get a custom console built that enables you to play dozens of world-class instruments - all in perfect tune (and in headphones late at night). It completely solves the problem of access to church instruments. Imagine if you had to drive across town at 10pm -2am every night to practice when no one was around or using the building.... Something like this becomes very compelling. 

If you look up Contrabombare, you can find a virtual concert hall where organists post their work on virtual pipe instruments... 

It may be even more of a niche market than orchestral samples in the broader musical community!


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## Adrian Myers (Jun 14, 2013)

Hi Niversen,

Yes, of course there is a market for the virtual instrument, but the magnificence of the dedicated controller is not common. After all, 88-key keyboards don't cost a significant fraction of a real piano or involve such a grand housing. You can control an organ from a few keyboard and Roland pedals. The fact that a company and some dedicated buyers are putting so much effort into reproducing more of the full experience in a virtual context is what is surprising and interesting.

Cheers


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## Casiquire (Jun 15, 2013)

Organs have a much more particular touch that most 88-key keyboards out there just can't emulate. I definitely get the obsessive attention to detail with organ fans.


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