Cathedrals are almost preternaturally quiet havens where even the softest whispers, shuffling in the pews, or footsteps across marble floors can seem blasphemously loud. Definitive Technology products might be the exact opposite: The company's monolithic tower speakers are known for producing rock-concert levels of sound and have long been lauded by audio and home-theater enthusiasts alike.
So when I heard that a church had turned to Def Tech for an audio system, I assumed that a few monitors had been discreetly placed to amplify the choir or the minister. But then I heard that the system contained a total of 82 audio channels — including 76 Def Tech bipolar towers powered by over 16,000 watts of amplification. And as if that wasn't enough, company president Sandy Gross told me the church was "totally overdriving" its SuperCube Reference subwoofers — so Def Tech responded by creating a new breed of subwoofer, capable of phenomenal output: more than 128 dB at 20 Hz and 116 dB at 16 Hz. And the sub bears the church's name. (See "Subwoofer of the Gods".)
I knew this was a story that had to be told.
Churchgoers whose services are accompanied by a pipe organ are fortunate indeed. Of all the musical instruments, pipe organs dig the deepest, plumbing the lowest depths of the frequency range to produce truly subsonic sound. Trinity Church in lower Manhattan featured such an organ. Built by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in 1970, it was one of the largest in New York City, with (yes) 9,000 pipes that ranged from 2-inch tubes to mammoth 32-footers capable of producing 16-Hz notes!
But everything changed at Trinity on September 11, 2001. The church is located just 600 feet from Ground Zero, and the collapse of the World Trade Center caused the sanctuary to become filled with a noxious cloud of smoke, dust, and debris. While the structure itself suffered little damage, the organ was ruined. The dust and grime were heavy with jet fuel and other corrosive materials, creating a substance that some have compared to Drano. It permeated the organ, clogging pipes, leather gussets, and valves. The substance proved extraordinarily resistant to cleaning and ultimately destroyed many of the organ parts.
Replacing the instrument wouldn't have been easy, since organs on this scale cost $3 to $5 million. More important, a new organ would have taken years to commission and build.
Trinity's organist and director of music, Dr. Owen Burdick, needed something much sooner — but not just any organ would do. In his research, Dr. Burdick discovered Marshall & Ogletree and learned that it was working on a "virtual" pipe organ that would be nothing short of revolutionary.
When he went to Boston to hear the prototype system, he was impressed. "It was incredible — unlike any other digital organ I'd ever experienced," Dr. Burdick told me. "I knew the first time I played the prototype, I wanted Trinity Church to be the first to have this technology."
Whereas a traditional organ generates sound by passing air through pipes of different lengths and tunings, a digital organ reproduces a pipe organ's sound through recordings of notes taken from pipe organs. "The Marshall & Ogletree organ represents a departure from traditional digital-organ design because our focus is solely on how perfect we can make the results," said David Ogletree.
Trinity's new organ would be built from the ground up with the best materials and with the ultimate in sound reproduction in mind, regardless of the cost. The result is called Opus 1, The Epiphany, and it was installed in time for a 9/11 memorial in 2003. The organ is a technological marvel — easily the most ambitious digital organ currently in use anywhere. It runs on the Linux operating system and has 11 computers dedicated to tone generation and three handling the console controls.
Marshall & Ogletree uses a process it calls "PipeSourcing" to capture the sounds for its organs. Traditional digital organs take one pitch sample, loop it, and use computer processing to alter the single note to produce as much as an octave of notes. The resulting library of samples is extremely limited, usually lasting no more than several minutes. For PipeSourcing, a 15- to 20-second recording, taken from the finest pipe organs available, is made for each note. Ogletree explained that the company uses "multiple ruler-flat microphones to capture the sound of every pipe from several vantage points simultaneously." As a result, Trinity's digital organ features nearly 30 gigabytes of sample data that would take 33 hours to play in its entirety.
Another unique touch employed by the Opus 1 is called "Chamber Sounds." These embellishments help complete the illusion of an actual pipe organ by faithfully reproducing the sounds of an organ's leather bellows filling with air, the swell box opening and closing, the mechanical noises of draw-knob mechanisms, and other sounds inherent to whatever style of organ is being simulated. In fact, two tower speakers at either end of the church are dedicated to nothing but wind-noise and chamber sounds.
Filling any large space with music takes a lot of sound, and pipe organs aren't bashful when it comes to bellowing out the notes. Reproducing that same output level — and creating an organ with highs capable of reaching to the very heavens and bass that mines the very depths of you know where — required the right speaker system. Douglas Marshall and David Ogletree auditioned many models, but they ultimately selected Definitive Technology.
Ogletree explained, "Real organ pipes don't just radiate forward. They fill the chamber in all directions and turn the space around them into part of the instrument. To reproduce that spatial depth at Trinity, the speakers would have to do the same. It was very important that the Definitive speakers were bipolar, since they radiate both forward and to the rear."
Marshall added, "These bipolar speakers are very true to the way pipes interact with walls around them. Plus they have a very neutral sound with a nice wide range, capable of handling a large amount of volume without sounding harsh. In our comparative listening tests, they were the easy winner."
Opus 1 employs a total of 76 Def Tech speakers. The 170-plus organ stops are produced by a combination of sixty BP 10B and eight BP 30 towers, along with eight StudioMonitor 450s dedicated to a trumpet stop so powerful that a single note can be clearly heard over the full organ. Called the Trompette des Tours (Trumpet of the Towers), this commanding stop commemorates the fallen World Trade Center.
Six massive, custom-designed subwoofers handle all frequencies from 16 to 50 Hz. One Crest Audio amplifier and 38 Carver Pro amps power the system, delivering a total of 16,200 watts. The computers, sound cards, and amps are installed in professional rack systems in an environmentally controlled room.
As any home theater enthusiast knows, placing six speakers can be a challenge. How about finding the right locations for 82?! Still, with the removal of all 9,000 damaged pipes from Trinity's old organ, space was available in the now empty chambers on the chancel end, near the altar, with additional rows of tower speakers placed on three levels in the large rear gallery chamber behind the choir loft.
| SPEAKERS (60) Definitive Technology BP 10B bipolar towers (8) Definitive Technology BP 30 bipolar towers (8) Definitive Technology StudioMonitor 450 (6) Custom-made subwoofers (to be replaced with Definitive Technology SuperCube Trinity Signature subs) AMPLIFIERS (30) Carver Pro ZR500 (8) Carver Pro ZR1000 Crest Audio CM 2208 |
During my visit, I was treated to a mini-concert by the brilliantly gifted Cameron Carpenter, who didn't so much play the organ as become one with it. When I stood "onstage" next to the organ console, the effect was overwhelming. As Carpenter's hands and feet flew maniacally over keys, drawknobs, and pedals, sounds erupted in response from all around — especially the ultra-powerful Trompette des Tours, which heralds unmistakably from the rear balcony. When I moved several pews back into the church, the sounds from the front and rear blended beautifully, cocooning me in a wonderful, warm glow of music. What I heard, with all the speakers singing at once, was perhaps the truest definition of surround sound.
Both Marshall and Ogletree know a little something about surround sound at home, too, where they enjoy their own Definitive Technology systems. Marshall's setup includes five BP10 speakers and one SuperCube Trinity Signature sub, which he uses mostly for listening to — what else? — organ music. Ogletree, who actually sold stereo gear when he was in high school and spent his earnings to buy high-end equipment, uses Mythos speakers and a SuperCube II sub.
Quipped Marshall, "Dave's young boys are aficionados of The Polar Express. You would swear his furnace was exploding or something when that train pulls in!"
As wowed as everyone at Trinity has been by the Opus 1, it was originally intended as merely an interim solution until another pipe organ could be commissioned. But now that the Trinity vestry has lived with the organ for 4 years, they've voted to make it a permanent feature of the church — a decision Dr. Burdick couldn't be more pleased with. "I am more than happy to keep the Opus 1 and continue developing it," he says. "It is so close to perfect. It is a real musical instrument."
Producing prodigious bass in a space the size of Trinity Church means moving some serious air. In previous installations, Marshall & Ogletree used subwoofers that resembled refrigerators more than speakers. Standing 8 x 4 x 3 feet, the large cabinets housed twin 15-inch drivers powered by 100-watt amplifiers. While these speakers could reproduce an organ's 16-Hz notes, they took up so much space that installation proved challenging.
Douglas Marshall explained that he and David Ogletree prefer to use "a multiplicity of subs, both for power and for individual note separation. So, space can become a real problem. Those huge subs weren't practical to use this way in most rooms."
At a recent Marshall & Ogletree installation in Charlotte, North Carolina, "we barely would've had room for one of them in the organ chambers," said Marshall, "and you would've had to remove some of the pipe organ to get it in." With the Trinity installation, the organ designers turned to Definitive Technology for a solution.
Def Tech's Sandy Gross elaborated: "Marshall & Ogletree wanted a relatively small powered sub that could produce large amounts of energy below 16 Hz. Reliability was also important. The church was just totally overdriving our SuperCube Reference subs — which was understandable, since the Reference had been designed for use in homes, and producing that same sound-pressure level in a large public space is entirely different. You're dealing with possibly 100 times or more the air volume.
"Creating the Trinity sub was really an engineering exercise for us," Gross continued. "We came up with a concept that would appear to be a double version of the SuperCube Reference. Basically it is, in terms of driver complements, but when you increase the size of the box and put those drivers into it, you have a whole new entity in how you can tune it.
"We also developed a new tuning algorithm to optimize this sub, and it really helped produce the results we're getting out of it. Another design challenge was how to get accurate measurements below 20 Hz in an anechoic chamber, so we developed a new, proprietary process for chamber calibration. We also had to make sure the sub would stay together, so we developed a new protection circuit, a high-temperature high-strength adhesive, and a new voice coil, different from those used in the SuperCube Reference subs. We also designed it to perform equally well standing up or sitting down."
The result is the SuperCube Trinity Signature, which is 313/4 inches high, 18 inches wide, and 18 inches deep, tipping the scales at 175 pounds. The sub includes two 14-inch long-throw drivers coupled to four 14-inch infrasonic radiators. Powered by a 2,000-watt digital amplifier, it can produce in excess of 128 dB at 20 Hz and 116 dB at 16 Hz in a normal-sized room. In essence, the Trinity sub delivers bass powerful enough to move the mind, body, and soul.
To experience Trinity's Opus 1 organ, stop by the church. If you can't make it to New York City, go to marshallogletree.com and click on the Experience tab. There you can listen to and watch several performances. (To hear Cameron Carpenter and Douglas Marshall play the Opus 1 in surround, order the Pictures at an Exhibition and Opus 1 DualDisc recordings through the Marshall & Ogletree site.) Also, all services and many concerts at Trinity Church are Webcast at trinitywallstreet.org. Be warned: Your computer speakers are going to get a workout!
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