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New computer

Buying or building computers for Hauptwerk, recommendations, troubleshooting computer hardware issues.
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atugores

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New computer

PostFri Nov 04, 2016 12:50 pm

Hello there, I plan to change my mac mini and the first option is an iMac 27" i5 quad core with 500 Gg SSD drive and 32 Ggs ram, do you think is enough power to use with HW, 32 Ggs is quite good but an i5 quad core is enough?. Mac mini was good but ram limitation to 16 Ggs don't let me use better samples set, thanks
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mdyde

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Re: New computer

PostFri Nov 04, 2016 1:03 pm

Hello Atugores,

[I've moved your topic here, since it isn't a Hauptwerk technical support issue per-se.]

What's sufficient in terms of CPU power and amount of RAM entirely depends on exactly how you will be using (which sample sets, whether in surround sound, how fast you will play, etc.) There isn't a simple answer that we can give, but this document (from the 'Support | Requirements' section of our website) has general guidance on those things:

https://www.hauptwerk.com/clientuploads/documentation/PDF/HauptwerkBackgroundTechnicalInfoOnComputerHardware.pdf

Note also that 64 GB is available for iMacs from third-part vendors, such as OWC:

I hope that helps.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/2012_27/DDR3L
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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atugores

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Re: New computer

PostThu Nov 10, 2016 1:33 pm

Thank you for your info, according to the document Technical Datasheet, Polyphony, if I multiply the nº of cores minus 1 times 2.500 I will end up with approximately the polyphony that a computer can handle, so in my case with a computer i5 with 64 ram, clock speed 3.3, 6 megs cache and 4 cores will be 3 x 2500 =7500, and this according to the document will allows "4000-8000+ voices of polyphony for extremely large virtual instruments (50 or more ranks) with very long reverberation (the largest cathedral organs) and stereo, or surround, samples". so thats enough to cover almost the best samples, but my last question is i5 or i7 both quad core what does in all this calculations (the difference in clock speed and cache are very small), I think that when something is enough is enough, the rest is spend money for nothing, and my budget is limited, thank you once more
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mdyde

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Re: New computer

PostFri Nov 11, 2016 5:18 am

Hello Atugores,

Just to clarify, the guide only suggests a very, very rough rule of thumb to give an approximate idea of likely static polyphony:

As a very, very rough rule-of-thumb guide to the approximate static polyphony in simultaneous pipes that can normally be expected with recent multi-core Intel processors with a good-quality audio interface and
a 64-bit operating system, subtract one from the number of CPU cores then multiply the result by 1200-2500.


Likewise for the static polyphony figures that different types of instruments might need:

As a very, very rough guide, we would recommend that for average use ...


Note also that the computing power needed (and thus static polyphony) depends a lot on how you play. For example, if you often play very fast on very wet surround sample sets with lots of stops drawn then you may want significantly more polyphony than those suggested rough 'average use' guide figures.

Looking at Apple's website and prices, if I was buying a current 27-inch iMac for Hauptwerk use, my personal inclination would be to go for their fast CPU option (the quad-core 4.0 GHz i7), since that's likely to give significantly more performance (probably 25-40% more polyphony) than their CPU base option (the quad-core 3.2 GHz i5) whilst the price difference is fairly small, relative to the overall price of the computer. iMac CPUs can't be upgraded later, so I feel it's worth building in some 'future-proofing' (and also to be certain that you have ample CPU power now) where it's possible to do that without excessive additional expensive.

Personally, I think I would also order the iMac with the minimal possible amount of RAM (8 GB) from Apple and then also buy OWC's (or another good-quality make's) 64 GB iMac RAM kit to install in it: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/Retina-5K2015/DDR3L . That too would be only a small difference in cost overall, compared to buying it with just 32 GB from Apple.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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atugores

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Re: New computer

PostFri Nov 11, 2016 2:07 pm

I have everything clear by now, thank you Martin

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