REAL VERSUS VIRTUAL PIPE ORGANS ? A FALSE PROBLEM !
French

MY STATEMENT :

Many organbuilders are a little bit afraid by these new software and hardware products which seem to compete against them and their noble "ART DU FACTEUR D'ORGUE" (OrganBuilder technical skill)
But I think it's a false problem, because :

• Virtual organs are extending the Pipe Organ market, to people who don't know what is really a Pipe Organ, as organs are mainly visible in churches.
• Many organists are keen to get a very good sound quality for home training, because most of them can't purchase a real pipe organ.
• Moreover, virtual Pipe Organ technology (say : midi boards) can help classic organbuilding techniques.
• For medium size organs, virtual sounds are welcome : As, for example for 16' 32' 64' real pipes replacement.
• Hybrid organs are also very impressive, mixing real and virtual sounds. Ears may think that all the sounds are generated by real pipes.
• In all the cases, the most prominent VPO can't reach the outstanding sound quality and complexity of real pipe organs. (see : electronic versus pipe sounds)
  
• I built for concerts, apart from my real pipe organ, a 3 stops module with real pipes, which can be controlled simultneously with the VPO software. The 2 programs can run on the same PC.
• Virtual and REAL Pipe organs are complementary : Explanation :
• For home training, VPO are a good choice, or for a first contact to the fascinating Organ world.
• For very small churches, and for beginners, a simple VPO console is very cheap and can be later extended to Real Pipe organ, thanks to 7 or 8 stops. Moreover, the console and the boards can be re-used for the real Pipe organ control. (Look at my boards)
• For medium or large size churches, VPO is not at all a good choice, considering the long term : for example, what about such systems after 20 or 30 years ! At the contrary, real pipes constitute a potential which can survive during seculars. (Remember also that a simple storm overvoltage can destroy the best high quality VPO !). Even if some (rare) VPO supplier seems to guarantee long term maintenance. But at what huge cost !!!).
• And consider also that the hardware electronic parts cost in a real pipe organ is a very little part of the total cost. (Look at my power boards). Quite different from VPO where the total cost is in the hardware parts + speakers !
• All these parts will be completely obsolete after 20 or 30 years.
• From most Organbuilder point of view, VPO technology is completely hermetic. They are prisoners of this technology. Most of them are loving, and prefer a real control of their work. As they control voicing, they want to control VPO. But for most of them, it's impossible. In the case of algorithmic based VPO, it's worse. At the end, they have only to buy the VPO, install it, and plug the power supply.
• From the audience point of view, real pipe are incredibly LIVING : Breathe and Spirit as human beeings. (Important from the Priests point of view). I always observe the emotion of my visitors discovering my organ ! It would be completely different with a VPO !
• VPO are dead organ music...
• THE EUROPEAN and AMERICAN buildings : As sometimes remarked, : “the building is often the finest stop of an organ”.
• Consequently, situation is fundamentally different in the USA and in Europe. Because the major part of our buildings are made of  stone, without painting, without carpets, which are by nature "Organ friendly". Moreover, classic XVII and XVIIIth century organ music is particularly adapted to such buildings. Of course ! Composers wrote specially for these organs in these buildings. 
• In case of bad acoustics, carpets, one can easily add reverb to a real pipe organ by using the own reverbed sounds of the real pipes.
  
• I parallel, some unwised organists introduced VPO in churches. They are of course largely criticized. In one church in south of France, 70000€were spent for a VPO. With such an amount of money, a nice Pipe Organ could have been built !
• It's funny to observe the huge victory cry of the VPO supplier which installed his model in Vatican ! Of course, the Vatican case is different from all other churches. But distributed real pipes would have lead to a largely better result. And with a duration for centuries... I bet that other VPOs in other large churches will not appear in Europe. Even in the US !
• Even if the present trends in worship service is Gospel oriented in the USA, in Europe the situation is different. Even a return to Gregorian music is observed for some parts of the worship. And the low quality by 1970's years church music (following Vatican II conclave) is progressively replaced by better quality composers. A similar move could possibly occurs in the USA after 20-30 years.