acoustic problem (or "how to fake a church")

Last year I bought a second hand choir organ and put it in my appartment. Nothing special but a real pipe organ to replace an old electronic ersatz. Now it is set up, most obvious problems rectified (those that I could take care of) and ready to receive some attention like tuning and regulating. But I have 2 issues that are down to acoustics and I would like to know what options I have before doing drastic things.

1: the room is bone dry. This is both a benefit and a curse. It is fine for practise as you hear very well what you play but on the other hand it is boring when you want to have fun.  Can this be helped electronically? I have been thinking about setting up a pc, one or more mics inside or in front of the organ and then a convolving room simulation feeding the wet output to some speakers. Worthwhile path to go down? Or do the experts advise not to spend any time let alone money on it. I have a vague feeling it will be going down a path of endless tweaking, upgrading and a general nagging feeling that "it isn't there but close, the next upgrade will fix it".

2: as the organ was intended for a church and not for a (rather small) room the 2' and mixture and earsplitting loud. I have no doubt that a competent intonation can remedy this but that will be a large undertaking and if it turns out to be dissapointing for one reason or another a just as large undertaking to reverse if that even works. Would providing more absorption for that frequency range help?

1: the room is bone dry. This is both a benefit and a curse. It is fine for practise as you hear very well what you play but on the other hand it is boring when you want to have fun.  Can this be helped electronically? I have been thinking about setting up a pc, one or more mics inside or in front of the organ and then a convolving room simulation feeding the wet output to some speakers. Worthwhile path to go down? Or do the experts advise not to spend any time let alone money on it. I have a vague feeling it will be going down a path of endless tweaking, upgrading and a general nagging feeling that "it isn't there but close, the next upgrade will fix it".

I'll be the first to admit that I've never tried this, but because you really don't need any of the direct sound in the results, it might work quite well. If you were really going to do it properly, you'd really need to 'fake' the room, not the organ. So you get the source mics as close as sensible to the pipes, but feed the result to speakers well away from the instrument, preferably around the room. You'd probably need to experiment with the first reflections quite a bit, because you'd be adding some more distant ones to the real local ones you've already got - and that would probably be the most interesting variable to play with. In your circumstances, I think I'd give this a go, though - sounds interesting.

2: as the organ was intended for a church and not for a (rather small) room the 2' and mixture and earsplitting loud. I have no doubt that a competent intonation can remedy this but that will be a large undertaking and if it turns out to be disappointing for one reason or another a just as large undertaking to reverse if that even works. Would providing more absorption for that frequency range help?

If the room's already dry, then there's a very real limit to what you could do acoustically to the room that would make any significant difference at all - you have to bear in mind that the main perception of loudness in this context is the direct sound, not what's coming back from the room, and absorption in the room won't alter that. If you don't want the expense of employing a voicer to fix this, then I'd be inclined to find a way to limit the direct radiated sound somewhat. Even a perspex screen in front of (or box around) the ranks concerned limiting the amount of direct sound coming towards you is going to make a difference - and if that's not enough, then lining the perspex with felt (if it's an open-topped box) is going to limit the direct sound quite a bit more without doing strange stuff to the room. That will work because you are trapping the sound within the box, rather than being in the box yourself, if you see what I mean.

Obviously you don't have to use Perspex - it's just that if this worked, it would look okay if any of the pipework is on display - you haven't said. If it isn't, wood would be fine. If the foregoing still isn't enough and you get really desperate, then hanging a piece of deadsheet in front of and behind the ranks is about as far as you could go with this. The 'good' stuff will easily cut about 35-40dB of direct transmission at MF! The one thing to avoid if you can is putting anything immediately over the tops of the pipes, although having a slightly raised 'roof' to a box, with felt lining it, and slots around the sides for the remaining sound and air to escape from would probably work okay. Will all of this definitely work? Of course it will - swell boxes work, don't they?

Thanks Steve. ( tought this would be up your alley  ) I'll give the reverb a try. Got a few things around. Speakers will be the limit right now. You say as far away from the instrument so that will have to be the opposite wall then. Am I right in thinking to use directional mics that don't pick up the reverb? Any sugestions for software?

If you don't want the expense of employing a voicer to fix this,

The voicer/organbuilder is coming anyway as this organ has been without maintenance since 1984 and a few things got bumped during transport, I only did the simple stuff like replacing bend pieces of the action, replacing the electric wiring, adding light etc but didn't touch the pipes. But voicing means you loose the original. And if I don't like the result then what? I'd like to know what options are there before he comes.

Organ is a box with a roof that can be opened and supported by a pole. Front has the lowest octave of the 2' in it and a very open lattice work. You can see right in depending on the light. No swell.

The mixture might be treated like you suggest as it is completely inside. I could try it on that one and see if it works as wanted. The 2' will be a problem as the lowest octave and a bit are on the front itself. Then they would have to move inside and a faux front made. Could be done more more work than the organ is worth I fear.

You say as far away from the instrument so that will have to be the opposite wall then. Am I right in thinking to use directional mics that don't pick up the reverb? Any sugestions for software?

You'd probably want some directionality in the mics, but I wouldn't be making too much of a fuss about that - it's the relative distance between the source of the sound and the speakers that are important, because that's what determines the rejection ratio in this case. Software? Dunno. Almost anything that runs in real time will do for experimenting (including Audition 2 onwards), and you don't need to worry about latency, because none of the direct sound will be in the output anyway, and that's the only thing that latency would influence.

And if I don't like the result then what? I'd like to know what options are there before he comes.

Most voicing adjustments can be remade, although it probably won't be cheap having either the work done in the first place, or redone afterwards. If you get a voicer worth his salt, then you will probably end up with the best result possible anyway - or at least a good discussion about why what you want isn't possible. Although I have to say that this would be almost entirely down to pipe scaling and pressure. One option here (although it would be a lot of work, and probably introduce a few other problems) would be to reduce the wind pressure, and re-voice the whole instrument accordingly. But that's not going to be cheap, however you look at it. My personal take on this FWIW is that I'd rather have the instrument stops balanced with each other, and then arrange some sort of an overall swell for it. And if that means a few relatively cheap mechanical bodges to get the balance right, then that's what I'd go for!

The mixture might be treated like you suggest as it is completely inside. I could try it on that one and see if it works as wanted. The 2' will be a problem as the lowest octave and a bit are on the front itself. Then they would have to move inside and a faux front made. Could be done more more work than the organ is worth I fear.

It's very hard to judge the worth/value of an organ... although these days second-hand ones don't seem to have anything like the value that they used to. Really, what it's worth is what it's worth to you, I think.

Okay, I got a better idea about the reverb thing now.

It's about 40 years too late to change anything about the scaling now  Wind is already low at 55mm, not much fiddle space there. It is rather balanced as a whole, only not in the room it is in. When I heard it in the church it sounded well balanced, a bit small for the church it was in. But the 2' and mixture are too much in this room. A common problem when fitting church organs in a living room.

As for worth, that is indeed very subjective. It isn't an organ of historical value, neither is it artistic of any importance. The only claim it has is that it is one of the first organs from that builder that got a mechanical tracture after they build nothing but pneumatical ones for 2 generations. It was cheap and lower than the ceiling. On one hand I don't value it as it is just a practise instrument, on the other hand I'm kind of reluctant to put the saw in it and rebuild it. Whatever it is, I feel it should be kept as original as possible even with the faults it has. IF I would have my way I'd remove the Mixture, rebuild the chest and add another 8'. But somehow I feel it would be more honest (but not affordable) to just get another organ.

Second hand church organs are "cheap" compared to second hand home organs. Issue is size: a small home organ is easier to sell and more in demand. If you can fit a 4m high organ in your house you have a wealth of options. I could even get one for free if I removed it from the chappel. It was only 4m x 4m x 6m... That one ended on the container.

It's about 40 years too late to change anything about the scaling now  Wind is already low at 55mm, not much fiddle space there. It is rather balanced as a whole, only not in the room it is in. When I heard it in the church it sounded well balanced, a bit small for the church it was in. But the 2' and mixture are too much in this room. A common problem when fitting church organs in a living room.

In that case definitely look at the internal quieting option. And I agree about the wind - what we'd call 2" is about as low as you'd ever want to go, and still have pipes that behave consistently. But in the same breath, I'd have to say that low pressure flue stops usually have a beauty all of their own - not to be discarded lightly.

Thanks Steve. I'll see what the guy says when he comes.

[idiot]

This whole 'what does it sound like where' issue has caused problems in the past, especially with organs that have been moved. Had a lovely example of this a couple of years ago in a church which has had another organ transplanted into it, but they didn't finish the job properly when it came to remaking the casing surrounding the console.

The end result is that because they didn't replace the part directly over the organist's head with something to screen out the Great, and also waft all the sound out higher up, it's way too loud at the playing position, and very 'screechy' for the player - who promptly ends up playing it more quietly, with less stops and certainly no mixture.

And then, people at the back of the church complain that the organ simply isn't loud enough!

You'd think that the correct solution to this was pretty obvious, wouldn't you? So did I, and that's what went in the acoustics report. I reckoned without the idiot vicar, though. He seemed to think that the answer was to invest in some high-tech PA to solve the problem. He wanted a microphone over the organ, and to relay the sound around the church "because we've spent enough on the organ already". So, he wants to spend a fortune amplifying an instrument that's already adequately loud (I tested this out pretty thoroughly, I might add) instead of paying for the relatively cheap bit of woodwork that would have prevented the problem completely. I strongly suspect an ulterior motive at work here, but regardless, the man's a fool to himself. For obvious reasons I'm not saying where this is, but it's a church that in the past has had Royal patronage (no, not Brenda herself, but closely related), and I don't think that the aforementioned idiot has really got over it yet.

Politics dictates that I can't actually say anything directly about this to them (although it's very tempting), so the whole process has been somewhat exasperating for me (and the person who invited me to come up with a sensible solution), to say the very least.

The real problem though, was the firm that reinstalled the organ in the first place. They made two major mistakes when they did it, the first of which was to put it nearly a metre too far back in the available chamber, and the second was the aforementioned lack of front finishing. The cost of moving the whole instrument forward would, I think, be quite prohibitive; it's not exactly small, and would necessitate a front-facing rebuild anyway. What I was proposing would maybe have cost a few hundred quid/euros, and we were quite prepared to do it ourselves, if it came down to it.

Good point, I haven't put the roof on yet. As it has to be moved away from the wall to work on it. I'll try that next weekend to see if it makes a difference.

This whole 'what does it sound like where' issue has caused problems in the past, especially with organs that have been moved.

Well it is something typical for organs as they are voiced in the room they stand in. Don't know other instruments they do that with.

Good point, I haven't put the roof on yet. As it has to be moved away from the wall to work on it. I'll try that next weekend to see if it makes a difference.

Well, if any good comes of that tale at all it will be something, because no good has come of it so far!