@@hmidithe only churches I've seen for parties in the Netherlands are converted to event spaces and they've installed new PA systems, they don't use the PA that was already installed... Not saying that it doesn't exist, just that the churches here generally don't have this kind of banger soundsystem.
Are you ready to ride the rail for the second coming of Christ with 80000 watts of BONE CRUSHING bass? Tickets on sale now. You’ll buy the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge! Sunday Sunday Sunday, SUNDAY SUPERMASS!!!!!
@@usernametaken3098 no, Christ is a character in a book that has been used to control most European and American children for about 1500 years now. Bass is one of the substitutes for actual evidence used by churches for almost as long to convey a feeling of power and awe. This is why some church organs go down to 16hz...
@@usernametaken3098 no. It's a character in a book. Bass has long been used to convey power in order to gain control over people, especially in religious settings.
I didn't see a grill on the subwoofer port so nobody crawls inside? That'd be a good idea! When I was a kid, my dad was an organist, so it was fairly common for me to be running around the church unsupervised while he practiced, had choir rehearsal, etc.
Given that the church was built prior to the Second Vatican council, it would not surprise me if a smaller pipe organ had existed prior to renovations made to the church post-1962, it was likely removed like many others (not a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena, so who knows though). Many churches where I am from were sacked by the post-1962 movement, which is why you see grand architecture like with this church, but they lack certain elements you might expect (like an organ, or a high altar, etc.)
The reality is that pipes are constantly buzzing themselves out of tune. Dust also causes detuning. And the old pneumatic controllers are expensive to maintain and fix. An old organ not properly maintained can easily become a financial burden to a church with dwindling funds.
A real pipe organ for filling a sanctuary that large would cost well over a million dollars for a quality instrument. My church put in a high quality organ and it was well over a million and a half installed. Thankfully, the bill was fronted by a single donation from a decades-old member of the congregation who rose to be CEO of a company a few years ago so the whole project was done without even a donation drive.
I used to sing in the choir in a British 17th century cathedral where the organ pipes were on either side of the choir. It was awesome, we felt like we were part of the music. There was a small door next to the organist that had stairs going up and around the pipes.. This is the kind of equipment that will reproduce that awe.
I think one of the few commercial solutions I've seen is Funktion One who make a 32" horn loaded subwoofer. I think it is over 15000 watts by itself. Designed specifically for low frequencies like this. You will still need a whole array though if you want to emulate a 64' stop. At that point you may want to try a fan subwoofer as those will likely be a better fit. Nice project though. I've built just a few of these myself :)
@@brianwelch1579 Does that system have any low frequency mutation stops? As if you play certain intervals you can get resultant frequencies far below the fundemental frequency of a 32' stop. Does it have a high pass filter network to protect the subwoofer against those?
@@josealfredfernandes normally this might be a problem, but these frequencies are so low and the wavelengths are so long and the subs are so close together, it doesn't matter that much. But also, the Nexo sub and the infrasub are frequency range segregated (crossed over) between each other, and they are both so much louder than the other two subs, it also doesn't really matter.
@@devinlsheets_alphasound sounds great. Enjoy. May the church be blessed by professional sound engineering and may you be blessed by God's blessings and grace.
I have been subscribed for awhile now and I just want to say how much respect and admiration I have for the work that you and your company do. It's really great to see so much enthusiasm for the process, backed by a truly comprehensive understanding of the science. Keep it up!
@@Engineer9736 Maybe but if you're going to do it you may as well go all out. I'd be happy with a nice mostly linear response down to 16 Hz and enough power to successfully represent large wide open pipes.
Absolutely amazing what this sub can do. I think if you would add more the rattling could reduce without loss of low end in the room. Nice to see you arced the normal speakers. Good choice for such a high and narrow room imo
Dam you could have done a longer video on that. I'm really keen on how you got it to work. My old neigbou got me into the extreme hifi world taught me how to experiance a 16 hert note with Passive Radiators. I use them myself on my home hifi. When you set them right you definatly feel your guts move. Nice work on the install.
I got a friend also that has extreme knowledge and built some crazy setups. He used 3x 15 inch long throw subwoofers sealed in his home theater room. Without ported or passive radiator the box can be half the size and he has strong performance to 13hz that gives my body a strange feeling with such a low shake. Sealed/closed box design has less output compared to ported or passive radiator but with something so large and subs that have good specs to be in a sealed box its pretty crazy shaking and nothing audible other than the walls, my clothing and things in the room shaking.
Wow, you basically built a Powersoft Cinesub! Those driver and amp systems are amazing, whether for church or pretty much any other application. Not cheap, but amazing.
my home church has a restored 1933 Austin that had some digital stops added when it was restored back in early 2000s. the two subs that are there for some of the digital 32' stops shakes the entire damn church as if they were real. compares to the 32' Tuba Profunda pipes that are in there
I love infra sonics. I only have a single 12 inch subwoofer in my theater but it plays down to 15hz at full volume... the sound of the church shaking is similar to my room shaking lol
I remember crawling into, and climbing the ladder within the sounding chamber of the organ in the church I grew up in. That was the only way to access the attic space above the sanctuary. I was never inside that chamber when the organ was playing. And if you forgot to close the access panel or the hatch that lead to the attic, the organist (andaybe a few others) would certainly know.
Somehow I feel the need to write that Paul Klipsch would have enjoyed this set up. And Lord knows maybe he does from the heavens above 🙂 I very much enjoyed the video images and your explanation, you truly love designing, engineering, installing and configurating to the best of your abilities, I find that hesrt warming.
Our pipe organ company maintains a few pipe organs with WALKER 32' pedal stop additions. The cabinets are tuned for 16 Hz. bottom CCCC for both Bombard, Bourdon and Open Diapason. Just two 15" long through woofers in a cabinet 7' tall with a large rectangular port and a 200 watt Carver amp for each FILLS a huge space. The low end is NOT overly loud, yet voiced for the room and sounds natural. You should NOT have sympathetic vibrations which are heard here. UNLESS you a 32' reed engaged and that is what we are listening to in this presentation?
Walker Technical equipment is indeed amazing. I would encourage the creator of this video to move the speakers so that they all point toward the centerline of the nave, but do not point down the nave. That's what Walker always has us do. Having some speakers point sideways, and others up/down also improves the effect.
@@davidgrandall2783 If the organ would have been custom built by WALKER (which is far superior) , the church would not have to go through all of this extra woofer business. The organ that is installed in the church shown in this video is subpar, but that builder of these juicers knows how to sell. I work for a pipe organ servicing, tuning and maintenance company. We have clients with WALKER-pipe combinations, and and the company in this video. With WALKER it is almost impossible to tell the difference between what is real and what is WALKER. The builder in this video and pipe combinations that we also service is very discernible from what is real and what is fake. But when a potential customer is ignorant it is an easy sell.
A friend of mine got married in a church in Alexandria VA, and asked me to do his wedding video. The church had a small pipe organ with not enough room for pipes large enough for the lowest bass notes. The used several subwoofers to make up for the missing pipes. It sounded just OK, but nothing like what's in this video!
The Allen SR-5s which have been around at least 30 years start to nose dive in output around 40 Hz. If you look at the spectrum analysis graph you can see one of these loudspeakers is about 87dB at about 30Hz. The enclosures are terribly small, and you cannot shake a building effectively with a 15" loudspeaker driver. Laws of physics and placement also makes a big difference. The Allen SR-1 cabinets might have been better, but I doubt by much. The McCauley 6174 18" driver with a 4" voice coil in a 6ft³ (169.9L) 11 ply Finland Birch enclosure has a full range sensitivity of 94dB. Freq. Response (-3dB) 15Hz - 800Hz. A full power handling (AES) of 800 watts. Max Peak SPL Full Range 129dB. Max Continuous SPL Full Range 123.031dB.
Deep bass is something you feel. As Virgil Fox would say "You should feel it where you sit". Since 16Hz is not something that can be recorded, I believe most digital organ manufacturers synthesize the fundamental frequency from the first recordable harmonic . From the harmonics of that pedal voice, it sounds like a Contra Trombone or Contra Bombarde which at times has short resonators, which makes it sound like a machine gun. If you really want to shake heaven and earth a 32' Contra Violone is a nice "thick" heavy "sub-bass" pedal voice. A great old-skool pedal loudspeaker was the EV/University 30W (30"). Two of those mounted in a door way of a concrete walled basement would shake the church and several buildings around the property. It was rated at 60 watts. Unfortunately the cones were heavy and tended to sag if they were not turned regularly.
That's amazing I love it I do believe that I ended up here because of look mum no computerchannel and his rebuild of an organ into a digital MIDI controled organ XD but I ain't complaining I love seeing stuff like this really makes my doom scrolling much more less doom scrolling
Real nice - impressed most by you being able to manhandle that cabinet ! 50= years ago Virgil Fox came to HuntingtonWV with the Rodgers Touring Organ and a Light Show. I did not get a good look as I was in the balcony and speakers on the main floor but there appeared to be many speakers - (perhaps "40" ???) - some looked like exponential horns pointing straight up at the ceiling. (I think one can be seen in a picture of Liberace and Virgil). Is there any description of the speaker compliment to that touring organ and amplifiers used ? I remember a lot of harmonic content on the pedals.(some clipping?) As Don Keele Jr. illustrated long ago , reflex can be king at LF bulk for bulk vs horn. (fwiw I would use Karlson enclosures plus tap horn for small organ setups) Best, Freddy
@@Dingleberry1856 I would have to agree with you there. Nothing will sound as good as real pipes. It would take some serious speaker arrays and power amplifier stacks to get close to the sound of a fully piped organ. Think rock concert sound system, and even then I am not sure they could achieve the lower register frequencies.
With a digital pipe organ, i wonder if you still get that latency effect between hitting the note and it sounding like a mechanical one. Thats what makes a talented traditional pipe organist shine, is that they are actually playing ahead to adjust for latency
Wow, I would like to have an infrasabwoofer! I love frequencies below 20 Hertz) But I'm just a 16-year-old simple guy with almost no money) But I do have infra-headphones.
Go watch Anna Lapwood playing along with Bonobo at the Royal Albert Hall. The Bonobo guys have literally several metric tons of amplifiers and speakers hanging from the ceiling and they are pretty loud. Then when they get to the bit where Anna plays along that organ just... well it doesn't care, it overpowers the amplification. The common joke in the comments is: Q: "How many watts do we need for that concert with the organ? A: "Yes" Actual organs, done right, are nearly impossible to replicate electronically due to the sheer volume of air that they move. At the St.Bavo church in Haarlem Netherlands it's not just the handrail that shakes, it's half the church. Think of it this way: an electronic system has a handful of amplifiers driving a handful of speakers and is limited by how much air the speakers can move. An organ has a separate amplifier and speaker for every pipe and in most cases it will use several pipes from different registers at once for a single note. In a "pull out all the stops" scenario you can be listening to two chords on the hands and two notes on the feet, all playing four, five, fix registers = more pipes than speakers in the setup of this video. Extremes, sure, but that's what organs are all about.
Quite right and some very good points there. Technically it would be possible to replicate a church organ using speakers, and the way I would do it is with horns. A couple of bass horns, one in each corner using the corner of the walls for loading and the rest of it with an array of horns for mid and tops. It keeps the power requirements down.
Would it not make way more sense to have two larger speakers instead of lots of smaller speakers for the mids and highs? I would expect there to be major phase issues with speakers in a line like this.
We have an Allen R-270 at one of my churches and I had tried to turn up the low frequency amps to try and amplify them a bit, but all it did was make the speakers chatter violently like they were being overdriven. Sad times :( and it's a beautiful instrument. it has 2 32' stops, a contra violone and a contra posaune. I've been able to replicate the instrument via sampling in Hauptwerk and I've tweaked it to get the lows right in the software at home, but don't have the physical speakers needed to really make it sound how it should in the proper space.
This is so cool! i saw you installing this on your instagram a few weeks ago but i never knew you built it yourself! I do have to ask, does it just use a regular (30 inches is huge) driver in a box tuned very low, or are there infra drivers that have different charachteristics?
Looks very impressive. However, the demonstration note you played at the end was, I believe, a 32' reed stop like a 32' Bombarde or 32' Posaune. Unfortunately, reed stops have very little fundamental. They are mostly upper harmonics. I'd like to hear something like a 32' Subbass or 32' Contrabourdon. They are basically all fundamental and would really shake the roof. Of course, those us listening on RU-vid would probably not hear anything because our speakers couldn't handle it.
No I don’t that was Bombarde or Posaune. I don’t think that was a reed stop at all. Too soft. Oh wait, nevermind. This is a Allen organ so that very well could have been one of their “reed” stops.
@@mannfan12 It was a reed stop. If you look carefully, and very fast, you will note that the stop knob pulled out is toward the top of the stop jam, indicating it is a reed. The non-reed stops are towards the bottom.
@@tspiggle1945 is that how Allen does it? Because that is not a standard across makes. But I’m not surprised its a reed because its an Allen. All of their 32’ reeds suck.
The microphone of whatever this video was recorded on would not be able to respond to such a low frequency, so what you are hearing are just harmonics and things resonating in sympathy. A frequency this low isn't actually "heard" by human ears, we tend to "feel" it more than anything.
How many watts do you have to pump into that infra-subwoofer beast? Multiple amps (highs, midrange, sub, infra-sub)? I'd guess for the infra-sub it would be a Class D amp for efficiency and bang-for-the-buck. And I expect this is all running mono, not stereo?
Was the instrument purchased used? I am quite familiar with these and cannot imagine an Allen dealer would have sold and installed it in the church in this configuration (not just the subwoofers, but also the full-range speakers).
In the 80s hardcore music lover (gabbers) fell a sleep in the original eartquake subs (not the little cerwin vega subs but the real 2.5 meter high folded horns)
I imagine that building that thing also cost less than other high output infra subs like Danley Sound Labs. Or is it more like most commercial subs just simply cant reproduce 16hz?
Could you elaborate on how many kW you need to in order to produce that amount of low end? That's crazy! Also awesome setup of the curved speakers, that directs and magnifies the sound to a point and shoves out out more the center
@@TimpBizkit Yes, I can imagine a 16 Hz horn being fairly sizeable. I watched a video showing some of the bass 'pipes' used in some of the larger church organs and they are very long.
I want ONE!!! I got 4 PBG-18" subs from ROCKVILLE with 2 RPA-16 amps powering them. They go down to 20Hz. no problem but. I'm thinking of getting a 3000-watt powered sub from ROCKVILLE It's a wing flap sub 1 18" speaker with a 120 OZ. magnet. This sub can go lower than 20Hz. Excellent sub DUDE. The room I have my subs in is 12' X 15' so a little difference actually living inside a speaker cab.. in your own home from a church space.. come over and listen sometime to my bass setup..
The space is there, but they might not have the budget to regularly tune and maintain an acoustic organ. The advantage of digital is that it requires very little upkeep post-installation.
A guy I worked with back in the 90s built some bass horns for his lounge. Like this speaker, they use the corners of the room for loading. Highly efficient. His stereo system sounded like we were at a rock concert yet the amp was only 15 watts per channel.
The acoustic shadow doesnt come into play for unidirectional low frequencies. The concrete pad in fact is an acoustic mirror, almost perfectly reflecting frequencies (concrete tends to notch out 1k) upwards whilst (KJV) the ceiling reflects the frequencies back, creating a resonant chamber for the sound to project from. Only the high frequencies will be in the acoustic shadow of the upper balcony, mainly because of the high freq speaker boxes being arranged visually instead of aurally. The horizontal parabolic array layout isn't necessary in what is basically a giant hallway with a limited throw pattern. 🤓
Now THIS is audio engineering! Unfortunately, most church / worship audio systems are a mess of expensive "brand name" stuff "designed" by architects and datasheet readers.
Sound design for a church is one of the most difficult jobs, in my opinion. There's this tiny little sweet spot between "Everything is muddy echoes and reflections" and "What do they think this is, a concert venue?" You have to get the sound as good as you can, but still have it naturally fade into the background of everyone's attention and not distract from the reason everyone is supposed to be there. I've been in a church where they went the 'concert venue' route, and it just laid bare the fact that church musicians and choirs are... enthusiastic amateurs.
@@talyrath It's not that hard. Most sound contractors know how to build a rack with a bunch of boxes and wire it together. Some know how to hang a cluster of speakers. But few know "Why"... so the sound is from underwhelming to barely listenable. The "Why" is the acoustic, electro acoustic and physics of sound. Devin knows "Why" and "How" it shows in his videos.
Noting that the bass didn’t sound very effective standing up on that platform… of course, lower freqs do not developed properly for at least 20 feet or more. Ever notice the boom car 3 lengths ahead of you?
At that frequency, it is more a movement of air than a note. All sorts of things will resonate so you'll never get a clean "sound", and the microphone of whatever he was recording this on wouldn't be able to deal with such low frequencies anyway.