The Johannus LiVE marks the definitive dawn of a new era in organs. Never before have the classical pipe organ and the advanced digital organ converged so closely. From now on, you’ll be playing directly on the authentic organs standing in dozens of famous international churches and cathedrals. Fly in a heartbeat from Paris through Utrecht to Dresden from the comfort of your own living room. With the Johannus LiVE.
Send an email to Johannus.
Playing a full church organ is every organist’s dream... but not every organist has 24/7 access to a pipe organ. The Johannus LiVE builds a historic bridge between the musical experience of the classic pipe organ and your own home.
What is the Johannus LiVE, exactly, and what makes that connection between technology and romance so unique?
The Johannus LiVE is a high-quality digital organ that comes with sample sets, allowing you to play on dozens of international pipe organs. The sample sets are uploaded into the digital organ via USB drive. Each thumb drive contains the authentic, professional recordings of a specific international pipe organ.
The highest standards for digital audio are used to play the sampled sounds. This audio experience allows the Johannus LiVE to give you the feeling of playing a true-to-life, actual pipe organ.
For each sample, that authentic, high-quality sound can be played from four different positions within the church. The first position places you in the organist’s seat. The direct transmission of sound dominates the experience, while the spatial acoustics are secondary. The second position sets you in the audience, close to the front of the organ.
The reverb is already coming into play, but the direct sound is still the primary focus. In the third position, you are placed right in the middle of the church, where sound and reverb meld as if you were in a CD recording. The fourth position places you in the back of the church, beyond the scope of the reverb.
One of the unique features of the Johannus LiVE is the fact that you, the organist, are right at the heart of the experience. The sound of the speakers is angled directly towards your ears. The organ sounds are crafted to blend with the space in which the original pipe organ is situated.
It’s hardly a leap of the imagination to envision yourself at the keys of historic pipe organs in famous cathedrals... because as far as your ears can tell, that’s exactly where you are.
Every register on the Johannus LiVE comes with a small dynamic display that allows you to switch effortlessly between the stoplists of various pipe organs. To illustrate: the register that indicates a Principal 4’ on the Cavaillé-Coll organ in the Église Notre-Dame d'Auteuil in Paris is a Gemshorn 4’ on the Bätz-organ in the Dom cathedral in Utrecht.
The displays show the appropriate stoplist depending on which organ is currently being played. The registers are arranged by operating the wooden drawknobs, approximating the same experience as playing the selected authentic pipe organ.
The combination of a physical stoplist with actual drawknobs and an authentic, superb sound make the Johannus LiVE a fully fledged organ. A unique sound experience that meets the highest standards for digital audio and the option,
of playing dozens of actual pipe organs add the finishing touches to your experience. Play the world’s most beautiful organs from your own living room.
Johannus has represented a reliable product since 1969, conceived and designed by Johannus themselves. For decades, Johannus has been widely acclaimed for its phenomenal sound. Even connoisseurs can’t distinguish the
pipe organ sound from the sounds of our digital organs. The Johannus LiVE is fully in line with that tradition. In fact, it even adds to it. Not only can you enjoy the sounds of true-to-life pipe organs, you can now play them LiVE.
Audio professionals from Johannus used sophisticated equipment and our own completely unique method to make true-to-life, faithful recordings of dozens of pipe organs. You have the option to store five different pipe organs in your Johannus LiVE. Switch quickly and effortlessly from one organ to the next with the push of a button. If you’d like to play more than
five pipe organs, that’s an option. Contact your dealer for even more historic pipe organs, which you can upload to your organ using a USB drive. You’ll never tire of the Johannus LiVE! Feel like playing on a different instrument than the Bätz organ at the Domkerk in Utrecht? Then just switch to the Hofkirche in Dresden, or the Église Notre-Dame d'Auteuil in Paris!
Sitting at an organ, you want to feel like an organist. To maximize that experience, the three-manual Johannus LiVE is equipped with wooden drawknobs. A display over each drawknob shows the dynamic stoplist. That makes the Johannus LiVE the first and only organ where drawknob
names can switch while remaining easy to read, thanks to a combination of beautiful design and smart technology. The drawknob names can still be read when the organ is switched off. How much more authentic could it get?
How a pipe organ sounds depends largely on where you are within the church. The organ sounds different seated at the manuals than it does from the back of the church. Especially for the Johannus LiVE, the reverb has been sampled from four different positions in the church.
In other words, the Johannus LiVE offers you four different reverb positions per sample set: on the organ bench, about ten meters from the organ front, in the middle of the church, and at the back of the church. Choose your own reverb experience, and enjoy!
The Johannus LiVE is a Johannus instrument. What does that mean? For instance, when you push a button to switch it on, the organ actually turns on. Every time. That’s characteristic
Johannus quality. The integrated hardware is aligned to work in perfect harmony... And it does. Every time. We can’t emphasize that enough.
The organ uses sophisticated equipment and systems. That cuts the start-up time of the Johannus LiVE to the bare minimum. Press a
button and you’re in the Église Notre-Dame d'Auteuil in Paris... As far as your ears can tell, anyway!
Thanks to Direct Streaming technology, you can switch between different sample sets very quickly. That’s because the organ uses solid
state technology, sophisticated processors and massive working memory.
So what’s new about the Johannus LiVE organ? The answer is simple: everything. All the key hardware is new. The motherboard and the
smaller computer boards have all been redeveloped to optimize speeds and options.
The software needed to operate this new hardware is also new. Our R&D department worked hard for years to develop the new software, and the result is a resounding success. The sound engine at the heart of the organ and
the LIVEreverb system have been completely revamped. The Johannus LiVE also uses new operating software and an updated digital audio mix. And our familiar intonation software has been reprogrammed too.
The Johannus LiVE is based on very large samples for each key. The samples were recorded using high-quality equipment.
Each sample lasts for several seconds, making the tone exceptionally pure and authentic.
Creating a digital organ presents all sorts of challenges. Because an organ makes so many different sounds at once, the instrument requires massive calculating capacity and high-speed processors. Polyphony is a key characteristic of an organ. The Johannus LiVE is capable of
supporting high-polyphony play (pressing lots of keys at once while lots of registers are open) without delays or glitches. This lets you maintain contact with the organ even when you’re coaxing the most from its capabilities.
What makes a pipe organ so exceptional? Could it be the imperfections in its tuning? The fact that some tones aren’t quite tuned to perfect pitch. As a pipe organ aficionado, you know exactly what we mean. That’s why we incorporated the characteristic qualities of the pipe organ into the
Johannus LiVE. You can hear the exact tuning as it was when the recording was made. If you’d prefer to hear perfect pitch, you can adjust the tuning to that setting, or select one of the other default tunings that the Johannus LiVE offers.
Since the early days of Johannus, we have led the market in the unparalleled quality of our audio. We are proud to include the Johannus LiVE in this tradition. Based on a completely new audio concept, the Johannus LiVE still provides the same superb quality. We use a near-field
stereo audio system combined with a surround-sound reverb system. What does that mean for your playing experience? That you hear all the details as if you’re sitting in that sweet spot where the sound is ideal, while still enjoying the rich reverb as if you’re sitting in the church.
At Johannus, the organist is always at the heart of it all. With the Johannus LiVE, we emphasize that core principle. Everything in the organ is
crafted to make you the undisputed center of the experience. The near-field sound is part of what creates that superb experience.
When you’re racing through a toccata up and down the three manuals of the Johannus LiVE, you don’t have time to be figuring out complicated displays. Stoplists and all the other elements involved in operating the organ
need to be designed as simply as possible. From the moment you switch on the organ to the time it turns off, you should be able to operate it intuitively. That’s the guiding principle behind the Johannus LiVE.
Thanks to the countless combinations of stops and the meticulous detail of the high-quality samples, you’ll never get tired of listening to the
Johannus LiVE. The organ invites you to keep playing, constantly seeking out new sounds. The Johannus LiVE inspires and challenges.
The Johannus LiVE has been conceived and produced by Johannus. If there is anything in your organ that falls short of your expectations, you can always contact Johannus. You can rely
on an international service network and our long years of experience. Obviously, we offer you the same warranty for the Johannus LiVE as we provide for our other organs.
Of course the entire Johannus LiVE sounds fantastic, but one aspect deserves extra attention: the separate bass chamber in the
organ. Designed to create a beautiful, balanced bass tone, it fills the room with a lovely, sonorous bass without becoming oppressive.
A great deal of thought went into the Johannus LiVE console. It’s a perfect width, features ergonomic design, and has everything exactly where it should be. The positive console offers
an excellent overview of all the dynamic stoplist displays, so the names are very easy to read. The lovely wooden drawknobs add the finishing touch.
With the Johannus LiVE, you can rest assured that you’ll enjoy playing for years. You can choose from various sample sets when you pick your organ. The number of pipe organs available to your discerning ear will only grow in the years to come. Keep your different sample sets in
a beautiful storage case which comes with your organ when you buy it. The case can hold up to nine complete sample sets. Over time, you can assemble an impressive library of the most beautiful pipe organs.
Overview
System | DS-Core |
Manuals | 3 |
Stops | Max. 50 |
Lighted drawknobs with wooden stem | • |
Angled stop jambs | • |
Authentic pipe organs | Max. 5 immediately accessible |
USB port for uploading organs | • |
Unique listening positions | 4 |
Console
Height | 180 cm |
Width | 160 cm |
Depth (excluding pedal board) | 65 cm |
Depth (including pedal board) | 115 cm |
6 standard finishes on oak | • |
Other kind of wood or color | optional |
Integrated wooden music rack | • |
Synthetic keyboards with wooden core |
• |
Wooden keyboards (ebony/oak) with wooden core |
optional |
Wooden swell shoes | 2 |
Brass toe studs | optional |
32-note AGO pedal board with wengé sharps | • |
Design bench | • |
Adjustable bench | optional |
MIDI (IN, MOD-out, SEQ-out) | • |
Aux-in | • |
Aux-out | • |
Headphones | • |
Audio
Audio system | 8.1 |
Surround channels | 4 |
Audio control | DEA II™ |
Near Field Front Audio channels | 4 |
LIVEreverb II™ | • |
Sampled Listening Positions™ | • |
Full-range amplifiers (80 Watt) | 8 |
Bass amplifiers (170 Watt) | 1 |
Loudspeakers | 9 |
Headphones/ Aux-out | Johannus Pure Audio™ |
Functions
o (Recall/Cancel) | • |
MENU (Johannus Menu) | • |
TRANS. (Transposer) | • |
VOL. (Organ Volume) | • |
CF (Cantus Firmus) | • |
MB (Manual Bass) | • |
CR (Crescendo) | • |
HR+ (Hand Registration) | • |
HR (Hand Registration) | • |
S/S (General Swell) | • |
CONS. FRONT, CENTER, REAR (Listening Positions) | • |
RO (Reeds Off) | • |
Couplers / Sub and Super Couplers | • |
Tremulants | • |
Levels | 250 (50 x 5 organs) |
Memory locations per level | 8 |
Presets (PP-P-MF-F-FF-T+PL), programmable |
• |
Divisionals | • |
Reverb volume | • |
Pitch | • |
Temperaments | • |
Upload organ | • |
Organ settings | • |
System settings | • |
PEPC™ (programmable expression pedal configuration) |
• |
General Crescendo (through PEPC™) | • |
Bellows simulator | • |
Authentic Tuning™ | • |
LiveTune™ | • |
Dynamic chiff | • |
Virtual Pipe Positioning™ | • |
3D Division Positioning™ | • |
• = standard - = not possible
The Johannus LiVE is a fully fledged digital organ that uses sample sets. A sample set is a USB drive containing a professional, authentic set of recordings from an actual pipe organ.
The high-quality recordings were made by audio professionals from Johannus itself. Connect the USB drive to the Johannus LiVE to upload the stoplist for your selected pipe organ. As soon as
the complete file is uploaded, the pipe organ is ready to play immediately. The small display over each wooden drawknob shows the name of each individual stop.
The organ has enough capacity to store five complete pipe organs. Practically speaking, that means that you can copy five USB drives containing full recordings into the Johannus LiVE’s memory. The major advantage of storing a full recording is that you can switch effortlessly between your selected pipe organs: fly from Paris via Dresden to Utrecht with the wave of a hand.
If you have more than five sample sets, you can easily load a new one by overwriting one of your stored organ sets. If you’d like to go back to your original choice, just reload the organ that you overwrote. Each pipe organ recording are safely stored on the USB drive. This means that you can experience infinite variation with the Johannus LiVE!
When you switch between two stored sample sets in the Johannus LiVE, the stoplists shown on the displays above the drawknobs switch to match. This technology represents a breakthrough in the world of digital organs. The registers are set based on the specific pipe organ you select, displaying the name of each stop for
that register. As a result, the registers operate like the stoplist for the Domkerk in Utrecht one moment and the stoplist for the Hofkirche in Dresden the next. In other words, you can use the same drawknobs to operate the various stoplists for dozens of pipe organs.
When you purchase a Johannus LiVE, it comes with two sample sets. New pipe organ recordings can be ordered individually from your dealer.
The sets are protected by a unique code, so they can only be used on your own organ.