Program works well, like how it sounds. Two enhancements would be nice:
1. Allow renaming of template after it is created.
2. When template calls for random play from a playlist, keep track of which songs were played, and do not repeat a song until entire playlist has been played. Should take just a few lines of code.
Also, would be interested in additional hymn collections to be made available at no or low cost.
Our goal was to once again hear chimes from our towns clock tower. After getting pricing from a company to replace our old unit at a $11,000. Price tag, it was out of the question. By using ECarrollin we were able to get our chimes back and running for only $400. The set up process was easy to download and now our towns people are happy.
Software does what it is supposed to. Easy to set up. Would recommend to anyone who is looking for a cost-effective carillon.
I wouldn’t call it the most user-friendly application in the world, but after you click around enough, you can figure it out. It works – that is what was important to me. Using the application on a computer was also important. The computer automatically adjusts for daylight savings time and resyncs the time with the internet every day. It’s nice having the bells ring precisely at the correct time. I do like the feature to randomly pick a song to play. I used that feature to have it close the day at 7:00 pm by randomly picking one song to play from a list of about 25. I also have it switching to randomly pick a Christmas song from the day after Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. I would actually give it a 4.5 star rating, however that was not an option.
I purchased the eCarillon package a few years ago to revive my church's obsolete chime system. It works extremely well and we've had nothing but Rave reviews of it.
Now, another local church contacted us and inquired about getting something similar for their church. So, I advised them to get the package from eCarillon, and they couldn't be more pleased with their new chime system.
I just purchased this software as a donation to our church and have been using it for almost a week. It installed to an older (2016 model) Windows computer very easily and since we weren't using that computer for anything else, we were able to dedicate that computer for the chimes system. However, the computer can still be used for other things while running the chimes system if desired. The system is extremely easy to use. You can make any type of schedule you want. You can create a schedule from scratch or build off of an already existing schedule template and save it under any name you desire. We have both song packages (the 50 hymns and also the Christmas carols). It is also easy to import other mp3 music files and play whatever you want through the outdoor speakers. Since we have a school here at South Aiken Baptist in SC, we have the bells set not only to chime on the hour but to play a few songs at noon, at 3:15pm (when school lets out), and at 6pm. We also have them set to play music on Sundays during the 15 minutes of time we have between Sunday School and morning worship as people are going from one building to the other and they also play at 12:10pm as church is letting out and people are going to their vehicles. They also play at 6pm on Sundays. If church lets out early, there is the quick play option where we can simply go to the computer and play a song from the library or any other playlist right away. They sound quality is extremely good. Since I am an Apple guy, I hope to see Apple compatible software for this product one day. However, it has ran flawlessly for us even though it is on a Windows computer. If any new products for this system are developed, I plan to be the first in line to purchase them. This budget friendly system (which is worth way more than it costs), has brought back to life, our outdoor speaker system that had not been used in over 20 years before now. I can't thank eCarillon enough for their amazing product.
I am happy with this software, it works exactly as I need it to. It is easy to install and it is easy to use. Customer service is excellent and immediately. I recommend eCarillon to my friends.
Program works well.
I think I will also get the backup program if it is still available option. Thanks sean
eCarillon is absolutely great and the few times we had to contact them for help, the reply was helpful and came to us within an hour or so one time and another was almost instant. What is surprising is a relatively inexpensive software program was able to replace a carillon that if purchased today would be in the neighborhood of ten to twelve thousand dollars. In our case we were able to transfer the original 6 cassette tapes of hymns into the new program. As a result, we only needed to purchase the basic program software. I think it is important to know that what we did with the transfer of the original hymns, cleaning up noise in the tapes etc. needed someone who was well versed in computers. I'm not saying the eCarillon is too complicated for most people, just that depending on what you are attempting to do with it can become somewhat complicated. The versatility of the program is great. In our case we had one tape with Lent/Easter hymns and another tape for Christmas. The software made it possible to have each of that specific music start and stop on specific dates. For example the Christmas hymns are schedule to play from the end of November to December 31 then automatically return to the other regular hymns. All in all eCarillon is the only way to go! Fred Wynne Lansdale, Pa.
Our 1960's vintage Verdin system became obsolete when tapes wore out and timer malfunctioned. Cost of new systems were prohibitive, and a digital system seemed very attractive. It was determined that eCarillon scheduler software/starter pack was the most cost-effective upgrade, running on an HP laptop. An inexpensive pre-amp was used to drive the Verdin amps, which were still viable. Purchased music was rather limited and would like to see better music selections in future, but I converted personal carillon files to mp3 format for our use, works well. Support from eCarillon folks is great!
The interface is a bit dated and could use some improvements, but overall it’s a great tool to run your church bells. Compared to the alternatives, no one can beat this in price/features/value. Assuming you have your amp and speakers, all you need to add is a basic Windows PC to run the software.
I like the software the sounds of the Westminster time chimes could be more full sounding. Like those of Big Ben other than that it’s a great value.
Installed it to revitalize a very old Verdin system. Set up very easy. No problems.
I had to write a manual on how to use this. I could not find a PDF manual to download. It is not as Unser intuitive as I would like. There are no context sensitive "Mouse Right-Clicks" . Once you get used to the User interface, its okay
Have downloaded the information but have not yet tried to set it up. Still need some equipment to put it all together.
Now that we have it up and running correctly, we are very pleased with this system. However, not being a computer guru, I needed assistance to program the schedule we wanted. The tutorials helped somewhat, but our screen did not match everything on the tutorial. Looking forward to finding new music to download.
After checking out two Carillon companies that wanted thousands for the head unit using our own amp and speakers I tried Ecarillon trial program. The Church liked the sound of the bells so they spent 397.00 for the top package. The online videos for programing the bells made it easy, and the comments from the our pastor and church members are that they all love having their bell back.
The church we installed your software in immediately fell in love. Easy to setup and use. Look forward to years of service
We had some difficulty with the demo install and found that it's best to use just the defaults on the demo. When we installed the full version all went well.
We love the interface and especially the tone and quality of the sound. We had a previous solid-state installation that was difficult to use and did not have the ability to program hymns in with the hourly chimes. The tone of the eCarillon music is much better and clear.
Thank you
Overall I’m very happy with the final product and the sound we get. The schedule works well, we get a good sound and I get many comments. I graded it 3 stars and not 5 for two major reasons
1. I was very disappointed with how cumbersome and hard the programing and set up is.. it should be a lot easier, to use, navigate and understand.
2. It’s not clear how to incorporate music that we record in church (organ, hand bells, piano etc) into a library that the software can access. This would be less of an issue if your library was bigger, but since we have limited music from you, we will have to make our own and figure out how to set ups library for the program will access it
Our system is working on schedule but I would like some printed instructions to go with the purchase. I am not yet able to get the scheduler to play random songs on the hour using the hourly 8am-6pm schedule template.