Preliminary tonal impressions of Organteq

For many years I tried to excite people about organ music and put together eventually a 5 manual beast based on a commercial 3 manual instrument that had served Londonderry Cathedral for a dozen years. The princpal 8ft Diapason and the Voix Celeste wasn't good enough and so this led me on a quest for the right sound, honing speakers to the right character of each stop and using a collection of extension units. The effect was . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_eJ60PmtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nrvPmirH7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi2pdYou-Rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1YcEjz8Xro and various organists gave some really enjoyable performances.

But that instrument died, progressively forgetting its memories . . .

Focus shifted to harpsichord
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMHvl1yH1pw

So recently the widow of a friend has very kindly donated a four manual Hauptwerk system to the house and we hope to reinstate organ concerts. Having an organ setup easily available has enabled me to install Organteq and have an overview.

After a few minutes working out soundcard options and then assigning keyboards to channels it was possible to start using the touch screen and examine sounds.

It would be rather good to have an alternative conventional stop layout available which one could transfer onto banks of stops rather than authenticism with the terraced registration . . So the sort of quiet 8fts at the bottom, 8ft principals and flutes, 4ft, Nazard, 2ft, mixtures etc ascending then to reeds. This would take the mental energy out of stop layout allocation. But for the moment operating through the touch screen was effective enough.

Obviously a mature view can't be taken until one has allocated stop knobs to the console but on a preliminary basis the sounds achieved by them are impressive and well demonstrate the soundness of the Modartt approach. Some control over attack and chiff would be welcome but certainly it's a usable organ straight out of the box.

Best wishes

David P