HW 8 is Splendid

Congratulations to the HW team.
I am running Mac OS 13.5.1, and have upgraded from Version 7 to Version 8.
The results exceeded al my expectations.
HW 8 runs smoothly, swiftly, and the memory allocation in larger chunks is splendid.

Regards,

Gilberto Guarino

[mdyde]

Excellent. Thanks very much, Gilberto. Glad you like it.

I must Amen! Gilberto’s sentiments.

Instruments load and unload much faster than before. And thanks to the added text on the Realtime option, I’m now running Hauptwerk as Administrator and all the crackling audio artefacts I was getting once a minute or so are now gone, even with an Audio buffer size of just 128 samples equating to a delay of just 1.3ms at 96kHz, and the highest quality options selected in the Audio engine of the Organ preferences. And all this on a modesty powerful (by today’s standards) AMD 1500X CPU.

I couldn’t be happier!

@cthart:
If that's the case, then I wonder why other users spend $500 on a CPU when everything works at the highest resolution with a $50 CPU. What value is your polyphony set to? Which sample sets do you refer to?

[mdyde]

I must Amen! Gilberto’s sentiments.

Instruments load and unload much faster than before. And thanks to the added text on the Realtime option, I’m now running Hauptwerk as Administrator and all the crackling audio artefacts I was getting once a minute or so are now gone, even with an Audio buffer size of just 128 samples equating to a delay of just 1.3ms at 96kHz, and the highest quality options selected in the Audio engine of the Organ preferences. And all this on a modesty powerful (by today’s standards) AMD 1500X CPU.

I couldn’t be happier!

Thanks very much, Colin. Splendid!

There seems to be a noticeable difference in sound quality vs Hauptwerk VI. The sound is much richer in my opinion. I have Hauptwerk control the CPU for the Realtime setting. At least it seems to be working. I have to give Hauptwerk permission to control the settings when I click on the Hauptwerk icon. The CPU has yet to randomly spike. I also like the touch screens, and they have made things so flexible for me that I have "cleaned" the appearance. I used to have a lot of things on the screens, now I just have the screen size button and the button for the touch screens. I have it set up so I can just touch a key on the mini keyboard I use for the computer in order to see the couplers, floating divisions and other things.

There is one anomaly I am experiencing however. The second A note for some reason is louder on the Doesburg sample set and the Paramount 341 sample set (perhaps others), so I have to make volume adjustments for every stop on those organs. I have one sample set that doesn't have that issue.

Every thing is running very well, and I personally feel it is best to upgrade Hauptwek every time there is a revision. I didn't do that when I had version VI because version VII was released less than a year after I purchased version VI, so I was a bit disappointed.

The one thing I would like however is to be able to adjust the Low, Mid and High frequencies, and if possible have a mid adjustment like the ones found on the audio boards so that I can dial in an exact frequency that I want to either reduce in volume or increase in volume, Then perhaps I would be able to make adjustments to get ride of certain sounds when a particular pipe is being played. I know lots of people want to hear all the imperfections which is great, but I myself prefer to try to make the organs I have sound like they did when they were new. When ever I helped tune organs we would always get rid of any "offending" sound or rattle before we tuned various ranks.

VIII is very intuitive because of the touch screens and have made doing certain things much easier.

Francois was also a big help. Certain things can be quite stressful because of my PTSD. Francois was a great help!
Glen

[mdyde]

Thanks very much, Glen. Glad you're enjoying it so much.

There is one anomaly I am experiencing however. The second A note for some reason is louder on the Doesburg sample set and the Paramount 341 sample set (perhaps others), so I have to make volume adjustments for every stop on those organs. I have one sample set that doesn't have that issue.

I don't think that could be due to the v8 upgrade above v7 in itself (there are no changes at all to Hauptwerk's audio engine or voicing above v7). Probably the biggest benefit in overall audio quality that you're hearing is due to the 'Higher' audio engine quality option that was introduced in v7 (which you wouldn't have experienced until now), although v8's improved polyphony management system that now supports load-balancing across CPU cores of unequal performance may help to squeeze more polyphony out of the CPU cores, reducing the need for release-tail dropping in times of heavy load, which can also help with perceived realism.

In v6, dynamic modulation of brightness filters from the wind supply model was disabled for bass pipes (which could be necessary to avoid distortions with v6 and earlier, especially at 96 kHz). The 'Higher' engine quality option in v7+ made that no longer necessary, so perhaps some of your second-A pipes sound slightly different as a result of that.

The one thing I would like however is to be able to adjust the Low, Mid and High frequencies, and if possible have a mid adjustment like the ones found on the audio boards so that I can dial in an exact frequency that I want to either reduce in volume or increase in volume, Then perhaps I would be able to make adjustments to get ride of certain sounds when a particular pipe is being played. I know lots of people want to hear all the imperfections which is great, but I myself prefer to try to make the organs I have sound like they did when they were new. When ever I helped tune organs we would always get rid of any "offending" sound or rattle before we tuned various ranks.

We do hope to add EQs to the mixer in the future (so that people can tweak EQs for different speakers and speaker positions, for example). We also have an enhancement request logged for more comprehensive/parametric voicing EQs, e.g. so one could use notch-reject filters to remove certain frequencies present in samples. More complex EQs (e.g. parametric) are likely to be quite a bit more CPU-intensive, though, so you probably wouldn't want to use them on too many virtual pipes. I'll add your notes to that request.

Thanks again.

"We do hope to add EQs to the mixer in the future (so that people can tweak EQs for different speakers and speaker positions, for example). We also have an enhancement request logged for more comprehensive/parametric voicing EQs, e.g. so one could use notch-reject filters to remove certain frequencies present in samples. More complex EQs (e.g. parametric) are likely to be quite a bit more CPU-intensive, though, so you probably wouldn't want to use them on too many virtual pipes. I'll add your notes to that request"

Thanks Martin. I have the impression Hauptwerk 4.2 had parametric voicing for individual pipes so I was rather shocked when I saw what amounts to a tone adjustment similar to but not quite the same as what one would see on old radios and cheap audio equipment.

Other than not being able to adjust the equalization for each pipe I am very satisfied. I am very happy that I upgraded from VI.

Haupwerk is continuously improving and there is only so much that can be done over a given span of time. So to me you have accomplished a lot, you really strive to meet the needs and wants of Hauptwerk users.

Glen

[mdyde]

Thanks again, Glen.

Just by way of explanation: the reason that Hauptwerk's existing voicing filters/EQs were kept relatively simple is because they're applied on a per-pipe basis in real-time, so their complexity would has a big effect on achievable polyphony.

.
...
There is one anomaly I am experiencing however. The second A note for some reason is louder on the Doesburg sample set and the Paramount 341 sample set (perhaps others), so I have to make volume adjustments for every stop on those organs. I have one sample set that doesn't have that issue.
...
The one thing I would like however is to be able to adjust the Low, Mid and High frequencies, and if possible have a mid adjustment like the ones found on the audio boards so that I can dial in an exact frequency that I want to either reduce in volume or increase in volume, Then perhaps I would be able to make adjustments to get ride of certain sounds when a particular pipe is being played. I know lots of people want to hear all the imperfections which is great, but I myself prefer to try to make the organs I have sound like they did when they were new. When ever I helped tune organs we would always get rid of any "offending" sound or rattle before we tuned various ranks.
Glen

Glen makes a comment that I've been wondering about. I frequently use Salisbury in HW 7 and have noticed that the same two notes on two of the quiet string stops are voiced far too loudly. While at university many years ago, I worked each summer for the local pipe organ builder. Apart from building new organs, we did maintenance and tuning on all the local pipe organs. So every time I hear a pipe that stands out, my immediate reaction is that the pipe needs attention. The sound may be realistic but definitely needs correction.

The sound may be realistic but definitely needs correction.

A little user-side voicing takes care of things like this. While it would be nice for the sample set producer to fix it, you certainly don't have to live with this if you don't want to.