Upgrade from HW4 to HW5: pitfalls?

I feel that I've been forced to quickly buy the upgrade from 4 to 5 on penalty of paying a hefty price later on. I do not appreciate this.

The person who made my HW-organ is now scaring me to death saying that the upgrade will be very complex for the audio settings and is asking a ridiculous price to perform the installation. Is this true? What would be the issue?

I understood that I have to re-install all my samples which will be a huge work in my case but I've enough experience to do that myself. What about the MIDI-settings and e.g. the assignments of my register knobs. Is there a guarantee that they will be kept?

Are there other nasty surprises coming with the upgrade?

Thanks for your reply,

Chris.

I had no difficulty upgrading from HW4-HW5. If you follow the instructions step by step, it is smooth. See Hauptwerk 5 user manual, or see some posts on this forum, an excellent summary of the proces is here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18013

It is always good idea to search the forum, because all problems you may have, somebody was solving before you. You can learn from his mistakes and adopt his solutions.

*******
For the mixer, it is a horribly convoluted structure and I am sure there will be an upgrade to Hauptwerk one day, giving us user friendly, intuitive and graphical mixer. But it is not impossible to make your way through the mixer now, I wrote a simple introduction to give the basic insight of the "audio flow" from the virtual ranks to the audio outputs.
http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/blog/und ... hw5-mixer/

For easy applications, such as 2-channel stereo (headphones), or 4-channel surround, you do not even need to understand the mixer, you will just use the pre-configured buses and routings. Hauptwerk manual is of a great help.

[mdyde]

Hello Chris,

Thanks very much for buying an upgrade.

The release notice covers the changes. Prerequisites and installation instructions are in the main Hauptwerk user guide: https://www.hauptwerk.com/documentation/ . Also, it's important to be aware that if (and only if) you're using a Mac, you need to un-install/delete your v4 installation before installing v5 (but you can still retain and migrate your settings/combinations/voicing): viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17850

Instructions for migrating your existing sample sets and their licences to v5 are here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17833&start=15#p134736

There's also a thread with links to various tutorials on, and details about, the new audio mixer/routing, as well as migrating your existing audio routing (in case you prefer to do that) here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17916

I understood that I have to re-install all my samples which will be a huge work in my case but I've enough experience to do that myself. What about the MIDI-settings and e.g. the assignments of my register knobs. Is there a guarantee that they will be kept?

If upgrading v4 to v5, your existing settings/organs/combinations will automatically be migrated to v5 (unless you specifically un-install/delete your existing Hauptwerk v4 installation prior to upgrading, which is necessary for v5 on macOS: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17833&start=15#p134736 , but not on Windows). Even if you do uninstall/delete your existing installation first (or even install on a different computer), you can always get your v4 settings back by restoring into v5 ('File | Restore ...') the last backup that you made from v4. (Periodic automatic backups, unless you've disabled them, can be found in the Hauptwerk/AutomaticBackups folder within your computer account's home folder.)

As has always been the case with Hauptwerk v4: note also that if moving to a different computer, or to differently-named MIDI device(s), then MIDI settings might also need to be auto-detected again. If you have several identical USB-MIDI devices attached to a computer, then sometimes the operating system may change the names it presents for them, and/or their order if the names are still identical (especially if the devices use the Windows' built-in MIDI driver, and if you change/add any USB devices connected to the computer, or plug them into different USB ports, or maybe even just install major Windows updates on the PC). Provided that you simply upgrade a given computer from v4 to v5 (without also doing anything else, such as changing computers, installing major operating system upgrades, or MIDI devices, etc.) then your MIDI settings should be retained and migrated automatically. (The MIDI settings behaviour and migration of v4 MIDI settings are no different to any previous v4 versions.)

...and if you change/add any USB devices connected to the computer,..

Well, I actually DID add a USB device connected to the computer. It was the iLok dongle!

[mdyde]

Hello OrganoPleno,

Indeed. Usually, adding an unrelated USB device won't affect the way Windows (or their driver, if they have a manufacturer-supplied one) names MIDI ports unless you have multiple identical USB-MIDI devices connected directly via USB. If you do have multiple identical MIDI devices, I'd always recommend connecting them via a single multi-port MIDI interface, rather than directly via USB-MIDI, since it should ensure that names won't change.