This section analyzes the virtual/digital and the actual/acoustic instrument’s materiality and interprets findings in terms of boundary shifting. The most striking similarity is that in both cases pipe organ sound is inextricably bound to the symbiosis of instrument and room. It is only through this union that a pipe organ sounds so unique and powerful.
Real pipe organs are designed and voiced for the acoustical space in which they're installed. Reverberant or 'wet' virtual instruments capture and reproduce the natural acoustic and spatial characteristics of the original organ's room, from each pipe's position separately. It's not just sampled acoustics, it's the real acoustics! (Hauptwerk).
Similarly, for Peter Puschner it is the generation of sound in a real instrument and its consequent propagation through the room that brings the organ to life. This emphasis on reconstructing the symbiosis of instrument and room acoustics as crucial part of sound fidelity can be understood as being paramount to so called audiophiles. These “mostly white, mostly male, mostly affluent and educated consumers” of ‘specialty’ audio equipment, also known as the ‘high end’, invest a lot of resources to satisfy their demands towards music (Perlmann 2004, p.783f.). What they are usually after when playing or listening to music on their sophisticated and often customized audio equipment is a strong emotional response. What is tried to be reproduced is thus something natural, dynamic, and lively. Recreating the pipe organ at home is the quest for an instrument that is imperfect, “a living-breathing entity that you can interact with and even fall in love with” (Pinch & Trocco 2002, p.319).
Fundamentally important to audiophiles is the most accurate sound reproduction humanly and technologically possible to preserve the ‘unconditional sonic truth’. This, in turn, is understood as “the sound of live acoustic music being played in real space” (Perlmann 2004, p.789). How, then, can acoustic idiosyncrasies of pipe organs be recreated at home? With the virtual pipe organ actually many different organs can be played in their original environment. This is made possible through wet and chromatic sampling – multiple recordings of single pipes that take room acoustics into account. Hauptwerk also allows modifying certain sound parameters, enabling the organist to adapt his instrument to his taste and the respective setting in which Hauptwerk is used. Peter Puschner’s organ, on the contrary, is a single acoustic instrument to which the organist has to adapt. Nevertheless, the electronically adjustable reverberation time allows recreating a variety of locations.
Such transformations can be seen as being triggered by the boundary shifting of engaged audiophiles. Peter Puschner combined his extensive professional know-how about electrical and mechanical engineering with his interest in acoustics and his passion for music. Similarly, Brett Milan, the director of Milan digital Audio and owner of Hauptwerk, linked his know-how as professional musician with his knowledge about sound engineering to make Hauptwerk into the most successful virtual pipe organ on the market. And Jiri Zurek, the man behind the biggest producer of sound samples, Sonus Paradisi, is affiliated with the Institute for Classical Studies at the Czech Academy of Sciences. However, only in Peter’s case enough gathered information supports this claim. With the virtual organ a different shift is apparent. Here, crossing the boundaries between the real and the virtual has actually led to the emergence of a whole new instrument that is much more versatile and adaptable to the organist’s individual situation. But however sophisticated the sampling is, signals corresponding to the singular pipes are already mixed electronically and reach the organist’s ear as one sound event emitted from the speakers. With an acoustic instrument sound waves come from different directions and only come together on the eardrum to produce a musical experience.
References
- Perlman, M. (2004). Golden Ears and Meter Readers: The Contest for Epistemic Authority in Audiophilia. Social Studies of Science 34 (5): 783-807.
- Pinch, T., & Trocco, F. (2002) Analog Days. The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press).
- Do you want to read about the virtual pipe organ or the home pipe organ?
- Or would you prefer to read about collaborative innovation of the piano?
- Or look into anothter example of the interconnection between instruments and space?