Sampled Sound Technology in our hybrid and digital organs records a sound and stores that information on a hard drive. Each time you press a key, you are essentially performing the same function of hitting ‘play’ on a tape deck. When you depress that key, you are hitting ‘stop’. For as long as you own an instrument using sampled sound technology, the recording the manufacturer stored inside will always be the same recording you will always hear. Ask any pipe organist, and they will tell you that much of the beauty of the instrument comes from its continuously changing sound, tuning, nuances.
Our Physis® Technology
No note ever plays exactly the same way twice. Sympathetic resonance from other neighboring pipes, slight variations in air pressure, and the relationship of pipes playing in ensemble are all characteristics that Physis® Technology tackles. It’s not just about how a pipe organ sounds, but also how one acts that is reflected in our digital organs.
How it Works
Physis® Technology uses no recording to produce it’s sounds. Instead, the engineers at Viscount successfully created a series of complex algorithms (computer code) that build each individual pipe from ground up in real time immediately, faster than the human mind can recognize any delay. With the introduction of Physis® Technology, Viscount has succeeded in reproducing sound waves just as they would emanate from a windblown pipe organ—each with its own autonomy, individuality and unique characteristics.
Viscount’s UNICO, SONUS, and OUVERTURE instrument, using Physis®, produces a reproduction of each note’s sound wave in our digital organs just as it sounded in the original organ. Since there are no “breaks” or “split-points”, as found in many sampled sound technologies, the progression of sound across the keyboard is accurate, smooth, and natural. However, the shapes of Physis® sound waves are open, thus, making it possible to edit, modify and extend their structure. They produce a tri-dimensional sound. Physis® speaks, not just with “Left-to-Right” motion, as currently done with older technologies, but also with “Front-to-Back” and “Up and Down” motion as they do in real windblown pipes.
Physis® and It’s Quality and Adjustability
Currently, there are 72 separate parameters with that number continuing to grow with each update; the parameters make up the sound of each individual pipe of each rank. These parameters include temperature of room, humidity, diameter of the bore of the pipe, size of the pipe opening, age of the pipes, etc. After the sound is built, we can ‘remove’ or ‘adjust’ those one by one to achieve the best and most realistic pipe organ sound in the world. So, just like a real pipe organ builder, we can build and manipulate the physical characteristics of each individual rank of pipes to your exacting specifications in our digital organs. With Physis® Technology, you have a digital organ that is 100% yours, and voiced exactly the way it should be for your individual player or congregations needs.
And if your needs ever change, Physis® Technology driven organs can easily be adjusted by the user, without the need to pay a dealer to do it for you.