Loudspeakers and organ music by Henk Kooiker

Henk Kooiker Loudspeakers and organ music
Het ORGEL 97 (2001), nr. 1, 13-17 [summary]

Many organists have reached a high level because electronic organ imitationsenabled them to study intensively. Furthermore, many organists make cd’s. To whatextent are loudspeakers fit to reproduce organ sound?

It is clear that electronic organ-imitations are quite different from real organs withrespect to aspects like the balance between stops, background noises, the way the stopsinteract, and the distribution of the volume in the room. Moreover, the sound-producing‘surface’ of a set of speakers is much smaller than that of an organ.

A speaker that is required to reproduce organ recordings should have range of at least32 to 18,000 Hz; the distortion should be very little (0,1 % is already audible, but mostspeakers are not able to reach values below 1 %); transitions between a midrange speakerand a tweeter in the critical frequency range of 1.500-4.500 Hz have a negative influence.Diffuseness and differences in height are hard to reproduce with speakers. The acousticcircumstances in the listening room affect the sound reproduction as well.

Sound reproduction by speakers is still in its infancy. Listeners who realize this canenjoy it indeed, but will not easily be seduced to accept the sound quality ofloudspeakers as a standard for judging live music.