Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ

My nearly 7 year old HW PC has 24GB of RAM. Even today that's not something you can just walk into a PC store and pick up off the shelf (at least in the UK - PC World's highest spec on display PC has a mere 16GB though I've heard it said that if it's on the shelf of a computer shop then it's already obsolete).

I can run quite large surround samples provided I use 16 or 20 bit sound though I did have to compromise with Armley as I could only load two of the three "mike positions".

I recently visited someone who had just had a professionally built HW organ installed in his house and he was demonstrating Goerlitz. I'm not sure the size of his RAM (might have been 64, 96 or 128GB but it was certainly cutting edge) but what really struck me was just how slow the thing was to load samples compared to my by now slightly antiquated system. Had to believe it was a brand new computer of a vastly higher spec than mine when it felt so slow to load samples. Of course the reality is that the samples it was able to load were far bigger and more detailed than anything I can load, but it did make me wonder whether technological progress is waiting longer for your 24bit surround sample with multiple adjustable positions to play in the church from, was quite the progress I had been expecting. Is it worth waiting five minutes to load an organ in 24bit sound when you can load it in 16 bit sound in a minute?

Organorak. Yes.....

Organorak, it's also quite possible that your friend saved a few $$ by getting a large HD and not getting an SSD. If that is the case, it would explain it. SSDs make all the difference in the world when it comes to load times. (and they can make all the difference in the world of cost...)

Alright, I've made no secret as to my ignorance to "all things computer". So what, if any, is the advantage to loading an organ without compression?

~S

There would be a theoretical improvement in the quality of playback. Not unlike comparing a WAV file to an MP3 or AAC file. However, with high quality compression, it can be very difficult if not impossible to actually hear the difference between the two in real life applications.

EDIT: Because Hauptwerk uses lossless compression, there should be no difference in playback quality.

scottherbert wrote:Alright, I've made no secret as to my ignorance to "all things computer". So what, if any, is the advantage to loading an organ without compression?

~S

Scott,

I have all my sample sets except Goerlitz loaded uncompressed. Supposedly, you gain an extra bit of polyphony. I may be mistaken on this, but it seems to me that the uncompressed sets load much faster than compressed. If someone can verify this, it would be helpful to know.

-Jerry

You'll get slightly higher polyphony (Hauptwerk menu tells so) and indeed much faster loading speeds. With uncompressed you can minimize your loading times when using a PCI-E SSD (so maximizing performance of your premium SSD) which is limited by the CPU. Using a 960 EVO which is the best for this application you can load 50GB of cache file (in the particular case I had) within a minute, and resulting in 100GB of RAM used! Hence a very large organ with all settings maxed out can be played (including computer startup time) within 2 minutes.

If Hauptwerk v5 would support more than 5 CPU cores for loading (and I really hope so), then this time could decrease further.

Only problem at the moment is that RAM is really expensive these days, prices have gone up close to or sometimes even more than a 100%..here in Europe you are close to € 300,- (including VAT) for just 32 GB, that's a lot..

jerrynazard wrote:I may be mistaken on this, but it seems to me that the uncompressed sets load much faster than compressed. If someone can verify this, it would be helpful to know.

To confirm: yes -- you would be expected to get faster loading if you have a fast SSD (and especially so if you have an extremely fast SSD).

In looking for motherboards capable of handling larger amounts of ram, I found very few in the normal 'desktop' type, but when I started looking at 'server' type motherboards, I found that 128 gb was small! Many of them were capable of handling 512 gb to 1 Tb of ram. My question now is, what does a server do, and can it be used as a Hauptwerk computer by itself?

~S

Scott,

I'm surprised someone didn't answer you on this. Only thing I know about servers is that they tend to have much slower memory and that it is ECC or error correcting, and much more expensive. When I was building my computer last year I found many motherboards that handled 128 GB. They were however for the better processors using the 2011-v3 socket and 8 slots.

Related to that I wonder why memory is so much more expensive now. What I paid $159 (32 GB) for now costs around $250 or more. And we're talking the current DDR4.

Eric

The answer to why memory is so much more expensive now is Smart Phones use the DDR4 chips!
So supply is scarcer and price is higher.

Thomas

Eric Sagmuller wrote:Scott,

I'm surprised someone didn't answer you on this. Only thing I know about servers is that they tend to have much slower memory and that it is ECC or error correcting, and much more expensive. When I was building my computer last year I found many motherboards that handled 128 GB. They were however for the better processors using the 2011-v3 socket and 8 slots.

Related to that I wonder why memory is so much more expensive now. What I paid $159 (32 GB) for now costs around $250 or more. And we're talking the current DDR4.

Eric

I would have never thought that, but with all the phones out there, that's a lot.

Eric

O.K., so servers are slower and memory more expensive. Thanks Eric. I guess my search for motherboards had too many filters or something.

~S

And servers tend to be quite loud.

scottherbert wrote:O.K., so servers are slower and memory more expensive. Thanks Eric. I guess my search for motherboards had too many filters or something.

~S

I will say this, however, there are servers offered at a reasonable price available on Craigslist (at least in my area). It's not necessarily out of the question. Most of us, tbh, have processors that are more than we really need for HW. I think you'd need to do a little more research, but it might be possible. I'll defer to others with more expertise on that.