Weinheim Pipe Organ Samples

Key features

• The real pipe organ
  • the 1950 Steinmeyer pipe organ of the St. Laurentius Church in Weinheim, Germany
  • 43 stops, 3 manuals (with 56 keys) and pedal (with 30 keys)
  • 2 tremulants (tremolos)
• The recording
  • All stops were sampled chromatically
  • Advanced Pipe Organ Measurements (APM)
• The sample set
  • 48 kHz / 32-bit format, 2-channel stereo samples
  • Natural sound image — the samples authentically preserve all spatial information
  • Multiple loops and releases per sample/key stroke
  • Hybrid Tremulants
  • One-click assignable keyboards to divisions supporting your console configuration
  • Optional organ engine sounds and noises
  • Touch sensitive keyboard noises
  • Multiple pages and touchscreen-optimized for 4:3 landscape displays
    • Portrait graphical interface included for 16:9 displays in Hauptwerk 4.x
• Shipping
  • download

Details

Weinheim (WHS) Pipe Organ Samples is a fully playable, freely configurable, intuitively manageable and MIDI-controllable virtual pipe organ for the Hauptwerk™ virtual pipe organ software, for PC and Macintosh computers, delivering the sound of the 43-stop Steinmeyer symphonic pipe organ of the Saint Laurentius Church, Weinheim, Germany, to your computer.

The sample set

The real pipe organ has been entirely virtualized, including all sounds of all of its pipes, all functions including the original tracker sounds are provided, allowing realistically sounding repetitive notes. With the KeyboardMass functionality, the inertia of the mechanics of the key action is modeled. By providing the additional feature of adjustability the response speed of the pipe speech when a key is released can be changed to your taste. Thus you can make the keyboards feel very heavy by increasing the slider values, or extremely responsive by decreasing.

Sample format

The final sample set has been made available in 48 kHz / 32-bit 2-channel stereo. Multiple, lengthy loops were carefully selected for each sound sample.

Acoustics

The natural church acoustics representing the recording conditions are embedded in the samples with multiple release sample layers; the acoustics heard in the sample set corresponds to the sound heard in the church. The sample set is recorded in a way that it is also fully compatible with dry acoustic spaces and additional convolution reverberation.

Multiple release samples and multiple loops

Multiple loops and release samples are provided for each sample. Triggered to play back randomly, this elaborate looping results in sustained notes of unmatched realism. The loops were calculated in a well-planned way, yielding both shorter and longer loops for each sample. Multiple release samples provide realistic, note-off-triggered pre-recorded reverberation for different lengths of notes. For example, a short note, with sound not fully developed will produce a different reverberation than a long sustained note. This quality is preserved in the sample library by providing multiple release sample layers.

Hybrid tremulants

Stops with the tremulant engaged were recorded separately on this pipe organ. Some of these stops are included in the sample set as 'sampled tremulants', while others - using a proprietary analysis method - were included using LFO-based tremulants. This hybrid model supports using the minimum amount of additional RAM and polyphony while providing a rich tremulant sound.

Advanced Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The graphical interface of this organ was carefully modeled by employing hundreds of photographs and measurement in full 3D and the interface was implemented in a non-orthographical, perspective console view that is fully photo-realistic and operational at the same time. The keys move while you play, and every button responds appropriately to your actions. Both multiple- and single-screen operation is possible: the large number of stops can be operated conveniently from a wide choice of interface pages displayable on multiple touchscreens. Alternatively, convenient single screen operation is also provided.

Availability and shipping

Weinheim Pipe Organ Samples is available from 19 December 2014 in download and 5 January 2015 in retail box (physical) delivery.

Editions

Feature type	Feature	Trial Edition	Personal Edition
General features	Stops	32	43
	Keyboard compass (manual/pedal)	56/30	56/30
Acoustics	Multichannel format	stereo 2.0	stereo 2.0
	Available acoustics	original	original
Samples	Chromatically sampled
	Multiple loops
	Multiple releases
	Tremulants	sampled and LFO	sampled and LFO
	Engine noise optional
	Touch sensitive tracker noise
Graphics	Single touch screen support
	Multiple touch screen support
	Portrait screen support
	High resolution support (4K landscape, FHD portrait)
	Neutral view support
	All functions MIDI & GUI controllable
On-screen combination actions	General combinations
	General combination memory frames	99	99
	PerformanceSequencer™, a combination action for organ settings
	Remembering sliders
Advanced features and helpers	Single-click keyboard to division assignment
	Additive crescendo and EasyCrescendo™ programming
	Programmable crescendo banks	4	4
	Dynamic KeyboardMass™ feature
Swell	Swellboxes	1	1
	Swell pedals	1	1
	All divisions enclosed
Voicing	Advanced on-screen voicing
Size	Download size (GB)	11.2	16.5
Delivery	Product delivery options	Download	Download

Did you know? A time-limited, 2 manuals and pedal 32-stop Trial Edition is also available as a free download, just click on the Try icon above.

The organ and the church

The St. Laurentius Church is in the center of the old town, on the marketplace of Weinheim. The roots of today’s town church date back to the 8th century, when the chapel “Maria in the fields” was built in the same place. In 1293 Hedwig von Swende donated a new church, dedicated to the Mother of God. Evidence of this can be found on a grave stone and a memorial stone inside the present church. Around 1700 AD, the church was consecrated to St. Laurentius. Late 17th and early 18th century the church was rebuilt and a steeple was built in 1848.

The old church was always facing east, so the choir was directed to the marketplace. Between 1911 and 1913 a new church was built with rotated orientation, according to the plans of Ludwig Maier. Only the tower was retained from the old building, now standing in the new choir edge. In 1964-65 the church was renovated in the style of that time. Until 1994, many changes have been undone and the church was restored.

The three-aisled basilica was the last executed construction of architect Ludwig Maier. The architecture follows its environment. The terrain is heavily sloped from the direction of the choir in the west to the front facade at the marketplace in the east. Therefore, the choir is increased and the porch in the west has two large staircases. At the corners of the porch, statues of Apostles Peter and Paul are placed. The golden figure of Patron St. Laurentius stands in the center.

After the currency reform, the community of St. Laurentius Church decided to build a new organ. The main part of the old organ was built in 1870, so the wood had become worm-eaten and the air pressure was no longer sufficient for playing. In addition, the sound of the instrument was too weak for the large church.

A completely new organ was built by Steinmeyer, Oettingen. The company was known for their pipe organs designed with meticulous care and their masterful voicer Hans Roettger. The instrument was one of the first major new organs in the post-war West Germany, with a fine tonal adjustment to the acoustic properties of the church. The pipe organ was played for the first time on Palm Sunday, 1950. In 1982, the organ was extended and renovated.

The pipe organ has 43 registers with nearly 3000 pipes, on three manuals and a pedalboard. Speaking lengths of the smallest pipes are only a few millimeters long, the largest one is almost five meters. The physical organ’s tonal output is capable of challenging the limits of human hearing perception.

Specification of the Steinmeyer organ at St. Laurentius Church, Weinheim

System requirements and recommendations

It is intended (and required) that the Weinheim Pipe Organ Samples be operated within Hauptwerk, a virtual pipe organ host software application (purchased separately). The Weinheim Pipe Organ Samples work with Hauptwerk V and later, and a valid license for Hauptwerk is required to load the organ.

The Trial Edition requires the presence of a Hauptwerk USB key with a valid license for Hauptwerk.

For further information, please refer to Hauptwerk's detailed requirements on Hauptwerk's website.

Detailed RAM and polyphony guidelines

Hauptwerk loads all samples in the computer's RAM, with several loading options available according to your computer's specification. For wet sample sets offering built-in long reverberation, most of the RAM usage is due to the release samples. If you have convolution or other reverberation technology available, less RAM and polyphony will allow you to load and play the full organ. If you have more RAM, you can load the full organ with the release samples and enjoy the original sound. We recommend using Hauptwerk's built-in lossless memory compression to reduce the loading size. Below we have summarised the RAM requirements with their corresponding quality options.

RAM requirements for the Weinheim organ
Edition	Loading setup	Bits	Loops	Acoustics	Releases	Required RAM	Computer RAM*
Personal Edition
	Full organ, 43 stops	24	all	original	all	19.45 GB	24 GB
					single	9.98 GB	16 GB
					250 ms (all)	6.81 GB	12 GB
Recommended	Full organ, 43 stops	16	all	original	all	10.21 GB	16 GB
					single	5.38 GB	12 GB
For convolution reverb					120 ms (single)	3.57 GB	8 GB
Trial Edition
	All 32 stops	16	all	original	all	7.04 GB	12 GB

*The Required RAM column above is the memory requirement that also includes Hauptwerk™'s own memory consumption, so this represents the RAM the sample set and Hauptwerk™ together will use, but some additional RAM may be required for the operating system itself, (not included in these figures). The measures were obtained on a Windows-based computer. The Computer RAM column shows a recommendation on the amount of RAM your computer should have as a minimum for a given loading setup assuming that some additional RAM is used by the operating system. This value might be different for each case so we recommend the maximum possible amount of RAM installable in your computer for this sample set, except if you are working with external reverberation or in a dry acoustic environment. Also note that on the Mac you may require more RAM in the computer than the value indicated above, due to the Mac OSX RAM allocation behaviour. Also note that Windows is capable of loading more content than your available RAM, loading (paging) the additional sample data to your hard drive, reading it once the sound is needed (played). In some cases, this will cause glitches in the sound when played in real time since the hard drive is slower to access than the computer's RAM, but makes the full library usable in offline music composition and recording even if you do not have the required amount of RAM.

Licensing

Hauptwerk V platform

• iLok account and license is required for the operation of the sample set
• Internet connection required for license activation (one-time only)
• Activation Code issued by Inspired Acoustics upon your purchase to redeem and activate the sample set license via the PACE iLok License Manager software
• Downloading and installing the latest licensing package file from Milan Digital Audio

This sample set comes in an encrypted format compatible with Hauptwerk v5 and later and requires a PACE iLok license for the operation of the sample set.

For download delivery products, Inspired Acoustics will automatically and instantly set up the download access to your product after your purchase, and assign you a unique Activation Code that you can locate under My Products. Enter this Activation Code to the PACE iLok License Manager to redeem your license.

For retail box deliveries Inspired Acoustics will provide you with a unique Activation Code allowing you to access the downloads and updates to this product. The Activation Code can be found in the box in a printed form. This Activation Code is a unique license voucher for your product identifying your purchase and legitimate use, so please store it in a secure location.

Read more about the license update procedure for Hauptwerk v5 sample sets.

For migrations from previous Hauptwerk versions a one-time sample set migration procedure needs to be done once the previous version of Hauptwerk is upgraded to Hauptwerk V. An Activation Code is not required in this case since the license will automatically be downloaded to your iLok account during the migration process.

Modifications and customization

If you are planning a custom or commercial application that requires a different setup what this sample set offers out-of-the-box, please contact us for making a customized version for you. 

Modification or disassembling the contents of this sample set through the CODM interface of Hauptwerk is not supported since the variety of functions and the availability of the sample set's certain special features already offers most of the functions the CODM interface may offer. The complexity of the Organ Definition File shipping with this sample set is uniquely high and building custom variants requires a certain amount of special expertise. Legally, the end-user license of this sample set is permitting using the samples as a whole, as they ship.

Weinheim Personal Edition