Organteq is a physically modelled pipe organ which you can install on your computer (PC/Mac). It can be used both in standalone mode and as a 64-bit instrument plug-in in VST and AudioUnits hosts.
By utilizing the physical model of Modartt’s award-winning virtual instrument Pianoteq, the playability and complex behaviours of real acoustic instruments are simulated. By omitting usage of samples, the file size is just a tiny fraction of that offered by other virtual organs, perfect for use on any modern laptop.
The sound is generated in real time from scratch, reproducing the typical and variable pipe attack transients “chiff” as well as the 3D configuration, where pipes are located in space according to their keyboards. Even the action noises from keys, stops and couplers are modelled. All this makes the instrument livelier than sample based variants, bringing more realistic variability in attack and sustain.
Interesting… I never thought of a pipe organ as all that complex a sound really, at least when compared to a violin or piano. This would still beat a huge sample library. I wonder what the CPU hit turns out to be when you’re modelling 40 ranks plus reverb in real time though.
So assume a “tracker” (organ jargon for mechanical) instrument. This is velocity sensitive, controlling how quickly the pipe speaks. Higher pitched pipes speak more quickly than lower; flue pipes speak more quickly than reeds.
Voicing is also an issue, so pipes voiced for pure tones speak more quickly than those voiced for more complex tones.
There’s also an acoustic coupling that occurs between multiple pipes mounted on a single wind chest, as in a mechanical instrument, that makes the sound of any given combination different than a simple summation of the two (or more) pipes waveforms.
Getting into unification and other matters adds complexity.
It’s more like the complexity of an orchestra than the complexity of a violin. The individual pipes are less complex, but the ways they interact becomes a knotty problem.
Whether or not that’s important to you depends on whether you’re playing “Also Sprach Zarathrustra” (frankly playable on an Arp Omni…) or a Widor symphony
I picked up the full version, and it is a bit overwhelming (mostly in a good way). By no means am I an experienced Pipe Organ player but I was favorably impressed by sound variation, control, and ambiance controls.
I’m still trying to understand in my mind who the target is. I think the audience is mostly real pipe players, as there are midi mapping targets for 4 manuals and a row of pedals, as well as all of the pipe variations (stops, etc.).
I was able to mess around and map pedals to lower octaves on my main midi-controller, but playing like a real organist probably requires either switching to different manuals via midi channel, or using multiple controllers.
I was impressed by the sound and controls, but I also get the impression Modartt are only giving a taste for the future. I could envision that (like they did with their Piano modelling) once the pipe organ models sufficiently mature, they will start tweaking those to produce signature instruments.
I had a play with the demo, and the CPU load is good if you don’t have many stops pulled out. But each extra stop adds another voice, and so if you dial in quite a big sound you can end up running 70-80 voices simultaneously without any effort, which does start to hit the CPU…
I saw some serious guys on YouTube using Hauptwerk. If I got this well, it is a pure sample player, where organs samples are huge.
Modartt uses a model synthesis, much more efficient.
Cannot tell who is better, just reporting what majority of organ players are showing.
