Hello Gedackt,
Is there any aural disadvantage, or departure from realism, caused by turning-off the wind model?
The wind supply model is a physical model (it uses fluid dynamics equations to model fluctuations in pressure at various points around the wind system in real-time). In general, the wind supply model does impart fluctuations to the amplitude, brightness and pitch of each pipe individually, as the wind supplies in real organs do, making the result sound more dynamic (because of constant shifts in the relative phases of the pipes and their frequency components, for example).
However, from your description it sounds as though we probably have it set a little extremely in those CODM example organ definitions.
Was there any particular reason for setting the CODM wind model defaults differently to those of the native ODF?
No. It isn't possible to make the results absolutely identical between the main St. Anne's organ and the CODM version because the CODM has simpler parameters for the wind supply model (so that it's fairly easy and quick to learn and adjust). However, the intention was to set the models in both cases so that they were similar to the real organ (and thus similar to each other).
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.