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Pipewave™ Music Products. Last update 13 August 2011.
The Pipewave™ line of music instrument products is the most recent venture of Zarex Corporation, and its costliest undertaking to date. Frederick Hohman, in cooperation with a dedicated team of three experienced, U.S.-based electronics engineers, funded under auspices of Zarex, are in an intermediate stage of development for a new organ switching system. It is hoped that this shall culminate in two primary musical products with applications in the organ-building trade, to become known as the Pipewave™ Switch and the Pipewave™ Console. Details follow below:
The Pipewave™ Switch - Updated to 13 August 2011.
The Pipewave™ Switch is intended for conventional pipe organs of electro-pneumatic or other electro-mechanical design, as well as some hybrid digital-pipe organs. The Pipewave™ Switch is designed in a way that invites use in new pipe organs. In addition, it may be used as a switching upgrade for existing pipe organs when they are rebuilt with new consoles.
The Pipewave™ Switch promises to take pipe organ switching to an unprecedented level of reliability and flexibility. The electronic switching system is the central nervous system of the pipe organ, connecting all of its moving parts to the console. The Pipewave™ Switch is based upon the latest multi-core computer processing architecture with an effective master processor speed approaching 10 GHz. This incredible speed is coupled with a data-lean program and operating system, custom-written to operate without the need for the switch to access hard drive data storage devices. Its central processor shall be "cold-running," and it is designed to draw less than 55 watts of energy. The chassis dimension (excluding power supply) of 2 inches in height, 17 inches in length, and 10 inches in depth allows the Pipewave™ Switch to be installed virtually anywhere, even within the organ console.
The Pipewave™ Switch will control any pipe organ having up to 512 stops (including duplexed and unit stops, assigned over a maximum of 12 divisions), 10 expression pedals (swells), two 120-stage, programmable crescendos, and up to 30,155 pipes. The Pipewave™ Switch has all piston and sequence memory built-in to the core program. Pistons and stop changes are to be implemented through synchronous co-processors, allowing the Pipewave™ Switch to process information for up to 100 general pistons, 60 divisional pistons, and 20 reversibles or special function pistons, on each of 1024 levels of available memory, with no degradation of switching efficiency. The Pipewave™ Switch shall be comprehensive, offering full console data recording capability through a proprietary data recording system that scans and documents all console and switching activity, with over 4,000 total console "views" per second. The latency of the Pipewave™ Switch never varies, as its efficiency is not load-dependent, with a specification (subject to improvement prior to production) set for a total input to output latency of 4.35 milliseconds. Although it does not employ MIDI technology, the Pipewave™ Switch shall have ports allowing it to drive, through an integrated low-latency keying translator, devices that use MIDI and other obsolete interfaces.
In order to maintain its speed and latency, the Pipewave™ Switch core processor will be mated with corresponding "collector" units, mounted throughout the console which will synch to the switch's master clock to collect scans from all keyed areas of the console. On the output side, the Pipewave™ Switch core processor will distribute keying voltages through compatible "emitter" units, again using an end-to-end, clocked, synchronous method. The Pipewave™ Switch specification and its core processor hardware package used for each installation is identical, regardless of the size of the instrument where it is used. This allows the Pipewave™ Switch to be manufactured in quantities that make it affordable enough to be used even in new installations or rebuilds of modest size.
While it is a valid argument to question whether the speed of the Pipewave™ Switch is necessary, it is the view of the desginers that the greatest processing speed possible is essential in a switch, even if we do not yet see the need for the speed at this time. The excessive speed capability will allow the functionality of the organ console to evolve to the next level.
The Pipewave™ Console
The Pipewave™ Console is a natural outgrowth of the Pipewave™ Switch. The Pipewave™ Console promises to be to the organ-building trade what a "Concept Car" is to the automobile industry, because so many of its features will indicate a radical departure from organ-building tradition. The Pipewave™ Console acknowledges centuries of tradition from which the pipe organ has evolved so far, yet its many forward-looking features eventually lead to a new level of musical expression for the organist, that is, if the organist wishes to pursue it!
Updates will be emailed to those expressing interest in the forthcoming line of Pipewave™ products. Beta testing is expected to begin in mid-2012. Please email Frederick Hohman, care of fred@zarex.com to express your interest.
Pipewave is a trademark of Zarex Corporation.
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