Over the past 2 years I worked with Gernot Wurst from PROSPECTUM to develop tools and techniques that take Hauptwerk realism to a new level. The first instrument where these techniques have been applied is the iconic Baumeister organ from 1737 located at the Klosterkirche in Maihingen, Germany.

The Baumeister organ (1737) of Maria Immaculata Maihingen is an amazing and uniquely well preserved instrument. The sample set is now available for HW 5+ at an introductory minimum donation of 149 EUR (plus VAT). At the end of 2022 the price will increase to 199 EUR (plus VAT).
Please have a look at https://prospectum.com/index.php?lang=en&id1=2&id2=202201 for details and sound demos.

If the name and location of this organ sounds familiar, there might be a good reason: when Gernot called Maihingen to arrange a recording date, he learned that two weeks earlier Reiner Suikat of Pipeloops had already recorded the organ. We have now the unique situation of having two Hauptwerk sample sets of the same instrument: one from Pipeloops, which you should definitely check out at https://www.pipeloops.com, and now the new one from PROSPECTUM (link above).

The new Maihingen sample set introduces several innovations to the world of virtual pipe organs:

• High end sound through lossless processing: 100% sound details preserved The processing toolchain eliminates the need for denoising and therefore completely preserves all recorded sound details!
• High quality reverb using hundreds (!!!) of carefully recorded and optimized IRs of the Klosterkirche, all rendered into the samples (the HW convolution engine is NOT required) using a specially developed rendering engine for noiseless, complex reverb!
• Up to 7 release samples per pipe. The number of releases and their corresponding tone lengths were determined individually for each pipe depending on its speech by a dedicated AI algorithm to minimize the well-known problems of the multi release approach. For a more natural sound closer to a real dry+IR set!

The new Maihingen sample set offers the following features:

• One of the best-preserved baroque organs in the world!
• Size: Two manuals, pedal, 22 stops
• Keyboard compass extended to 56 / 30 keys
• Wet sample set with 6 channel sound (direct, indirect, church) for extensive adjustment possibilities (listening position and overall sound) and 4 programmable presets.
• High end 100 % lossless sound quality – nothing lost during processing, all details are preserved!
• Up to 7 release samples per pipe: More natural sound, playing artifacts substantially reduced compared to conventional wet sets.
• Sample resolution: 24bit/48kHz stereo
• Action noises (keys, stops etc.) and blower noise (can be switched on/off) included
• Carefully designed wind model of the Baumeister organ
• Single / dual portrait / landscape jambs to fit all consoles
• Two temperaments: The original Maihingen temperament obtained by analysis of the samples and the official temperament of the organ as published by Hopfenzitz 1990