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Not so hard, but probably not so profitable either, given the limited demand for such an instrument.

Churches that need a digital piano will buy a digital piano, churches that need a digital organ will buy a digital organ.

Kind regards,
James
x

Seems like buying 2 devices is the proper route. I assume that with less competition, digital organs are more expensive so with a $5000 budget, allocate $1500 for the piano, $3500 for the organ.

Not exactly what he's looking for, but this nifty thing popped up on another forum the other day.

http://www.midiconcepts.com/

If you really couldn´t go for two instruments (going for two instruments is what I recommend you!), then keep in mind that switching forth and back between piano and organ sounds, or even between preselected sound settings of any kind, should be a simple thing. Be aware, that for some user interfaces you need a master mind degree in remembering sequences of key buttons to become pressed, or you would at least need quite some patience and attention until the 15 presses are done for ending up where you want to end up. On others this is less a hassle. Therefore you might want to compare the YAMAHA and CASIO instruments, they are in my experience the most easy and logically straight forward to use, if it comes to such simple tasks like swithing between sounds, and their piano and organ sound qualities are quite nice as well. Others always give me headaches when having to switch between piano and organ sounds.

You folks offer a wealth of information. I thank all of you for your input.

I guess I will suggest that my friend buy a good digital piano. Do you know which make and model has the best pipe organ settings.

He is used to the Yamaha CLP series. Have they improved the organ samples over the past ten years? How do the Kawai, Roland and Casio organ sounds compare?

There is rarely a "best" anything. There are lots of different pipe organ sounds. So in part, the question is, which pipe organ sound(s) are you looking for, and do those particular sounds exist in a given DP. Though by looking at the sound lists, you could at least tell which models have a greater quantity of different pipe organ sounds.

Come on guys, help him out. Which good digital pianos have the best pipe organ sounds?

The ones on the Yamaha CP4 are pretty generic. Meaning not that they sound bad, but it's just a couple canned mixes of stops ("church organ," "pipe organ" - that kind of stuff). Ok for hymn playing, probably, but the congregation might notice the lack of variety after a while. I like his idea of adding some stops later with a MIDI box.

There's only like a skazillion smaller churches that can only afford one. Pipes must be exceedingly easy to sample / synthesize, why isn't there some kind of organ stop thing going on in every mid to high end DP? Isn't it almost free to throw something like that in at this point? And if it is almost free, isn't demand rather moot?

Why do you think pipe organ emulation with stops would be so much easier/cheaper than tonewheel organ emulation with drawbars?


Almost any budget can get you one pricey board or two cheaper boards. ;-)

The nord C2 Line has modeled tone wheel and transistor organs, but includes a pipe organ that is sampled. One presumes that modeling a pipe organ is not an easy task.

In this case I would let your pianist select the piano. Then let your organist select a VST. You would have to care to get the proper laptop or tablet PC and MIDI configuration done, in order to well connect the VST to the piano. This means, that you might have to discuss the piano choice with your pianist concerning the digital piano´s MIDI functionality and MIDI.

Check "VST pipe organ" on Google to get an idea about what this is all about.

More details will then better be discussed and solved with your local dealer. The local dealer might not be as cheap as an online dealer, but for the extra price you will have the professional consultance. You need this, so go for it and accept the local dealer´s higher price for it!

Can you suggest a good MIDI box with good pipe organ sounds?

My friend is not too technical so things like Hauptwerk running through a computer are out of the question.

Actually, if tonewheel emulation in present (layered voices with mixing) adding a stopped pipe organ implementation would probably be trivial.


Cheaper boards (and indeed many of the more expensive ones) tend to have bad piano sound. And no board I know of, cheap or expensive, outside of a dedicated pipe organ replacement, does a stopped pipe organ with stops you can adjust.


I've found that the addition of a MIDI box is outside the technical envelope of many players. It's a clunky solution that isn't tightly integrated and simple to use. MIDI DIN connections are disappearing along with stand-alone MIDI voice units so this is becoming less of an avenue to explore anyway.

Many pipe organ voices are imitations of "real" instruments (strings, brass, etc.) so if you have some basic "pipe organ" mixes that are usually included (foundations and foundations with mixtures) you could probably fake it with layering other voices that most digital pianos include. Not that I would suggest that as a substitute for Hauptwerk or anything like that - just suggesting that there are more possibilities than might be evident with what comes built-in.

My point was that you said that adding pipe stops to a DP should be easy and cheap. Nobody makes decent tonewheel emulation that is cheap, so I wondered why you thought pipe would be so much easier, that it would add practically nothing to the cost of a DP. As you kind of point out here, the architecture is similar.

(Casio, obviously a value leader, has tonewheel emulation in the $500 XW-P1, but it's just okay, and the piano on the board is pretty bad. The next step up is the VR-09, and before that, you couldn't find any clonewheel for less than $1500-$2000.)

But I think you have a point that, once you start looking at higher end DPs that have some clonewheel function in them (RD800, MP7), meaning that a fundamentally similar architecture is already there, the incremental cost to add pipe organ functionality, would be smaller than in some other board that doesn't have that kind of infrastructure in place (in both sound processing and interface/controls). I don't know that it would be trivial or virtually cost-free, but it would be an interesting possible way to give those boards an appeal to another market. But I don't know, do churches really want pianos that can function like pipe organs (as opposed to buying organs)? Or is this OP an unusual case? Maybe people who are content with the "compromise" of getting pipe organ from their piano are also content with a handful of sampled pipe organs, which most of these boards already have anyway. If they really want all the functionality and control of, say, a Hammond XK1C or SK2, does that player necessarily want it to be in their piano? Is that a substantial market? It's an interesting question.

The higher end multi-funtion/workstation boards that include clonewheel--i.e. Kronos, Nord Stage 2, Kurzweils--don't include pipes either. Either it's not so easy, or they are overlooking a potential market, or they feel the market for that kind of function in that kind of board isn't really so great...?

There are some multi-function boards aimed, in part, at churches, that kind of meet the goal (albeit not the specifics) of the kind of board you're talking about... the Roland C200 and C230. I don't know how successful they are, but I can see where churches would prefer them, for their traditional looks, and for their simple operation, where basically anyone can sit down and play them without opening a manual.


Right. But when you say a lot of churches can afford only one (i.e. an organ or a piano, but not both), since both come in a wide range of prices, how much does that mean? i.e. a church that can afford a $3000 do-it-all keyboard can also afford a $1500 organ and a $1500 piano. But if you're saying that the equivalent of a $1500 organ can be added to a $1500 piano for practically nothing, well, I don't really see the basis for that. At any rate, in my limited experience, churches are either very poor and would find it hard to get even a $1000 board, or they are doing just fine and have no problem paying $5000. ;-)

and on a different topic, that's a scary prospect too. Who knows if USB will be common ten years from now? I fear that any USB-only keyboard will become obsolete outside of its own built-in functionalities. I think standard MIDI jacks are more future-proof. They adapted serial interfaces to MIDI, they adapted USB interfaces to MIDI, they will probably adapt whatever comes next (probably something wireless) to MIDI... but I feel less confident that any future non-USB computer will necessarily always be able to connect to a USB-only instrument. So I hope you're wrong about DIN connections disappearing on anything but bottom of the line gear. I hope the P105 is an aberration. ;-)

about midi and usb...there are plenty of serial port and parallel port and midi port to usb adapters. When USB is finally put to bed you'll find tons of usb to XXX adapters. They won't go away although at some point they would have to be mail ordered.

I saw someone criticising midi as being insufficient having only 0-127 sample levels. Considering sound files are sampled at 16 bits you might hope some newer standards might come out allowing those levels to be expanded to 4096 (12 bits) or more.

Even so, these adapters are not always compatible with everything.

Exactly. Try plugging one into something that isn't a PC.

IMO MIDI via 5 pin DIN is a dead man walking and USB converters are only keeping the host end on life support.