Hauptwerk 8 Early user experience

[mdyde]

Hello Lee,

Thanks very much for the interest in v8.

I run Hauptwerk on an iMac that’s a few years old now, and runs on OS Catalina (it isn’t compatible with the latest Apple OS updates but runs v.5 just fine).

v8 is still compatible with, and supported on, macOS 10.15 'Catalina', so you shouldn't have any problems in that regard.

I have two touchscreens for controlling stops, and a Hoffrichter console. I would like to have the v.8 touch menus for things like recording and the stepper on my iPad so I can use it like a remote control, instead of on one of my touchscreens.

Whilst I have no experience myself with using a tablet, I understand that macOS has built-in functionality called 'Sidecar' to allow an iPad to be used to extend your macOS desktop, so that windows from applications (such as Hauptwerk's Touch Menu) should be able to be dragged on to it:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210380

Hauptwerk v8's Touch Menu remembers its size and position, so if you were to drag it to a different monitor/position, it should stay there when you next open it (or when you next launch Hauptwerk).

Thanks very much - I’ll check it out using v.5 and hopefully all will be well!

[mdyde]

Thanks, Lee.

Martin,
I have noted (using the iStat monitor application on my Mac) that my Apple Silicon CPU has two basically idle performance cores while running a large organ in Hauptwerk 8. This leads me to believe that I need to wait for a specific Mx version of Hauptwerk before it will take advantage of all the processing power available on my machine. This is somewhat of a disappointment with this new release since the Mx architecture has been available for quite some time now, and much software has converted to native versions. Is the development of a native Mx version something we can look forward to in the not-too-distant future?

Thanks for all you do!
Best regards,
Ray

EDIT: This isn't relevant for Macs. See Martin's below.

Did you try turning off the Bind threads option in General preferences / Advanced on HW 8? I don't have the same processor, but disabling that option distributes the load better on mine. I doubt using Rosetta is the cause of idle P cores.

[mdyde]

Hello Ray,

Hauptwerk intentionally keeps a few virtual cores (4, if there are plenty of virtual cores) free of audio engine load, so that the background models (wind supply model, etc.) have enough 'breathing space' to perform properly. (If all cores were loaded with audio engine threads then realism would suffer, since the background models wouldn't get enough resources.) A native Apple-CPU port would make no difference in that regard (although we do hope to produce one in the future).

The "Bind audio engine threads to CPU cores on Windows?" general preference is only relevant on Windows, specifically as a work-around for cases where other processes hog CPU resources on the same core(s) that Hauptwerk is trying to use for its audio engine. It isn't relevant on macOS, since thread affinity is handled differently (and, in my view, more sensibly) within macOS, so problems with different processes binding to the same CPU core can't occur on macOS (whilst still allowing an application to ensure different ones of its own threads don't get scheduled on the same core).

Mark,
Thanks for the thoughts. I was quite sure the Mac would not be using that setting, but all thoughts are most welcome and appreciated.

Martin,
Thank you for the details on the "internal" workings of Hauptwerk. It just pained me to see two performance cores with only about a 5% load but now I understand.

Regards to you both,
Ray

[mdyde]

Thanks, Ray.

Upgraded from v7 to v8 over the weekend and concur with others that it has been a very worthwhile upgrade.

I'm running gen 12 Intel i9-12900K and was previously running sample sets at maximum resolution settings with v7, I've now increased polyphony to 15000 (Rotterdam and Nancy) and haven't had any issues with pushing the CPU into the red. The new Touch panel in 'engine' mode is very useful as it lets you see clearly what is happening with Audio, Polyphony and CPU levels in real time.

I've noticed a subtle but definite improvement is sound quality in terms of low level detail, there appears to be more 'space' around notes than previously. For example, with Rotterdam where you can layer multiple mixture stops, there's greater clarity and separation which I wasn't detecting before.

Loading times and changing from one sample set to another quicker.

Very pleased!

[mdyde]

Thanks very much, Clavecin. Glad you like it.

Audio engine quality in v8 would be the same as v7 -- any benefit you notice to quality/realism would be due to the higher polyphony limit that your CPU can now achieve, resulting in less polyphony-dropping in long release tails at high polyphony.

Today I also upgraded to V8 and detected a small bug:

When I load an organ, two bars are displayed, in the second one there is a RAM display. This counts down when the organ is loaded. However, if I load a new organ, it remains in the previous display. This value does not change even after the organ has been completely loaded.

Can anyone confirm this issue?

Please see this thread for the explanation. Not a bug.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20949

Thanks, I haven‘t read this.