Our Systems
Harnessing OrganPower™ and ForeSight™
There's no doubt that the Marshall & Ogletree organ is celebrated for its elegant and efficient console design and its superior craftsmanship and physical qualities. Yet, it's the software and hardware systems we have engineered to be able to produce our signature sound and playing experience which truly set an M&O Opus apart from anything else in the digital organ world.
We start by making complex multi-spatial recordings of real organ pipes, in situ, recording each pipe with multiple audio channels and at multiple distances. We use extraordinary calibrated, lab-level reference microphones - both omni and cardioid - to obtain these sound samples in the chamber. We have spent years developing highly sophisticated and proprietary processes for converting these raw recordings into usable waveforms for use in the instruments. Using some of the most powerful professional audio tools in the world, each pipe's sonic essence is digitized and then prepared for a long second life in our instruments! We have been privileged to sample some of the most famous and best known instruments in the nation, though we never reveal the source instruments we have documented. In total, we have sampled more than 45 complete instruments, ranging from 10 ranks to over 150 ranks, resulting in thousands of individual stops being added to our ever-growing library of magnificent sounds. Considering it can take months to convert an instrument's sounds into usable waveforms, this represents a nearly incalculable investment of time by our staff over 25 years of dedicated sampling and processing work.
Our tone generation system, which we call the OrganPower Generator™, is a proprietary Linux-based system using high-power, dedicated PC servers and high-end digital-to-analog converters to generate the unequaled sounds of the Marshall & Ogletree organ. A single OrganPower Generator™ is capable of recreating a 200-stop instrument in spectacular detail, utilizing up to 128 independent audio channels to do so! And of course, multiple systems can be daisy-chained together for even more horsepower, if ever called upon.
Controlling our consoles, and thus our primary customer interface, is our unique ForeSight™ control system, using custom engineered hardware we build right here in our shop in Needham, MA. With ForeSight™, every stop control and coupler in the instrument is controlled by its own individual microprocessor, allowing for absolute precision of switch detection and control movement. And, ForeSight™ provides an individual VFD graphic display showing each division's Alternate Stop setting so that every stop pull is known in advance - no blind features to confuse the musician with a Marshall & Ogletree organ! A list of some of the available features which ForeSight™ offers is on our Opus page.
Of principal concern with everything we do at M&O is an overarching commitment to create instruments which replicate the experience of the great pipe organ as closely as can be achieved, without regard to the cost, complexity and effort required. This applies to both the playing experience and the listening experience. Our motto regarding sound is right in line with Hippocrates: "First, do no harm." This means producing pure, straight-wire sound, unfiltered, from the original recordings to the final in-venue performances. It's not an easy nor inexpensive thing to pull off, but the results are so incredibly rewarding for all of our clients.