Hello David,
[I'll move this topic to the 'Amplification' section of the forum once you've had a chance to read it.]
To add to others' replies:
damuehlbauer wrote:I have HW 8 and generally use the Paramount 450. I only have two studio monitors and a sub-woofer. I route all the audio through the sub, and them from it to the monitors.
I'm just trying to have basic stereo sound. So what is the significance of the perspectives that appear in the Audio Mixer? Specifically, it shows some combination of these four perspectives being output when I play a note.
Primary 0005 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs01'
Primary 0006 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs02'
Primary 0007 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs03'
Primary 0008 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs04'
Given your audio hardware (a single pair of stereo speakers, fed via a sub-woofer) there's no need for you to learn or use any of Hauptwerk's audio routing facilities at all -- you only need a single stereo output from Hauptwerk anyway. On the "
General settings | Audio mixer" screen, from the default settings, if they aren't already selected (audio device channels 1+2 are selected by default), all you need to do is to select your pair of audio device channels for the "
Master mix 1 ... (main/recording)" bus.
If instead you're considering adding more pairs of speakers for doing more complex routing (such as routing some ranks to one pair of speakers, and others to another), then I'd recommend starting by reading the "
Audio routing and impulse response reverb part 1 ... : adding overall reverbs, surround/3D sound, stereo-only sound, and routing concepts for basic use" section in the user guide (pages 208-226 in the v8 version). It explains the four output perspectives and how to use them for configuring surround/3D-sound (routing any ranks to any of four speaker pairs) in depth. Please do read that whole section -- it's thorough, with simple click-by-click examples for the most common scenarios. E.g. within that section:
- Page 213 explains how to use the "
Organ settings | Rank voicing ..." screen to route ranks to the four perspectives, and how to select audio output device channels for the four perspectives on the "
General settings | Audio mixer" screen (master mix buses 5-8).
- The "
Example 2: surround/3D sound output, optionally plus a sub-woofer" sub-section (pages 221-224) has click-by-click instructions for configuring the four output perspectives.
The four output perspectives are usually used for 'surround' sound (e.g. routing some ranks to a 'front' pair of speakers, and other ranks to a 'rear' pair), and the perspectives are named appropriately for that by default. E.g. output perspective 1 is suffixed with "
front 1/main", and output perspective 3 with "
rear 1/main".
However, if you had 2-4 pairs of speakers and mainly use dry/stereo sample sets (such as theatre organs), you could instead use the four output perspectives (with a speaker pair selected for each of their master mix buses on the Mixer screen, as covered in the above example instructions) to route different ranks to different ones of your speaker pairs according to the ranks' theatre organ chamber.
For example, if you had just two stereo pairs of full-range speakers and you use theatre organs, you might use:
- Output perspective 1 for the "Main" chamber's ranks.
- Output perspective 2 for the "Solo" chamber's ranks.
The "Example 2" instructions (pages 221-224) would then give you click-by-click instructions for setting that up.
[It's only if you want to use more than four stereo pairs of speakers, or if you want to do more complex things such as routing a rank via a group to distribute pipes within the rank amongst multiple pairs of speakers, that you need to learn or use the primary mixer buses or "
General settings | Audio mixer bus groups" or "
Organ settings | Rank routing" screens. Those things are covered in depth in the "
Audio routing and impulse response reverb part 2 ... : multi-channel audio, multi-channel virtual acoustics, and routing concepts for advanced use" chapter in the guide -- pages 227-257.]
Hauptwerk's primary mixer buses and groups are intentionally configured by default so that they're already set up appropriately for doing what 99% of Hauptwerk users of need (for up to four speaker pairs -- most semi-professional audio interfaces have up to 8 output channels), with only a small number of clicks needed to route ranks and select device channels for them. The example sub-sections in the audio routing chapters have click-by-click instructions for doing those things.
damuehlbauer wrote:Specifically, it shows some combination of these four perspectives being output when I play a note.
Primary 0005 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs01'
Primary 0006 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs02'
Primary 0007 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs03'
Primary 0008 'Outp persp 2 (front 1/main) spkrs04'
[As abaymajr noted, they're actually labelled "
... outp persp 1 ...", not 2.]
Just for reference, those primary buses are configured that way by default to make it very quick and easy for people to distribute pipes automatically amongst four stereo pairs of speakers if they want to, as covered in the instructions in the "
Example 3: simple multi-channel audio with 8 (or more) speakers configured as stereo pairs all in a single group ..." sub-section (pages 239-244) of the "
Audio routing part 2 ..." chapter.
abaymajr wrote:Don't know if bus allocation algorithm adds a CPU overhead
No -- the default settings (e.g. primary buses 5-8 and their group) add negligible overheads. There's no need to do anything with them if you don't need them.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.