Rear channels for non-surround organs

I greatly prefer surround, or a varient of it. For my non surround set, (Bovenkerk), I use a mixdown and send it through an external reverb to add a bit more to the rear. It's not as good as the surround sets, but definitely better than just front sound. To switch between sets, I run the mixdown through another set of channels on my audio interface, and then use an external switch to switch the rears between the surround and mixdown outputs. At the time I couldn't find an easier method. Maybe HW4 has better options, but I'm still using HW3 as my computer is very difficult to upgrade to the next version, although I purchased HW4 several years ago. Last major upgrade I was without HW for several months until an IT person at work helped to get it working again, alsong with Martin's help. We had to use Win Rar to extract it.

Eric

Hello Eric,

Your tip is interesting too. Could you please tell me which audio interface you are using, allowing to switch between several configurations without a restart of HW? Thanks in advance.

I have been thinking about a hypothetical setup with surround speakers with emulation of the rear channels for wet sample-sets.
You would also have to use mix channels in Hauptwerk.
I believe you can program Hauptwerk to send MIDI messages when loading a specific sample set, also a Lexicon unit's parameters can be changed via MIDI. So maybe one could make a setup that automatically switches the output of the Lexicon to 100% dry with real surround sets and to some reverb setting when loading a wet set.
If the Lexion has multiple inputs and outputs it might be possible to skip the mix channels in Hauptwerk and work out the routing within the Lexicon.
But since I never had my hands on such equipment and am only using the Free Edition of Hauptwerk, someone else should do the actual research and the experiments.

Hello Eric,

Your tip is interesting too. Could you please tell me which audio interface you are using, allowing to switch between several configurations without a restart of HW? Thanks in advance.

Hi Ludu,

I use an Echo Audiofire 12. I just assign a different set of channels for the sample set with the mixdown. The routing is done in Hauptwerk when the organ loads. I have an external switch though that switches the speakers between channels.

Eric

Many thanks Eric.

I have set up three VST output routes from Hauptwerk, Front, Rear and Front Stereo into Cantabile. For surround samples I route the samples via Front and Rear without additional processing. For stereo samples I route the samples via Front Stereo and when the sample "reaches" Cantabile it is split to Front speakers (without reverb) and Rear speakers (wth minor additional REverberate LE reverb). True, Salisbury probably doesn't need much rear reverb being a pretty echoy building, but subtle changes in the rear channel reverb allow me to get a good echo from the rear speakers from Salisbury, without having to do anything about the front or rear speaker configurations or alternate Hauptwerk instances etc, when playing surround samples.