Hello csw900,
csw900 wrote:Where can I get cook-improv,mid ? I would like to do what Mathis (above) suggested
but cannot find this file anywhere on my system or on the HW web site.
The file Mathis is referring to is the default St. SAnne's MIDI demo (which was recorded for us by Daniel Cook). It loads automatically in Hauptwerk's built-in MIDI player whenever you load St. Anne's.
csw900 wrote:I have listened to the cook-improve.mp3 and am very doubtful that it is taxing the
free St. Annes organ in any way. Particularly I do not think it is playing enough notes
simultaneously to come anywhere near the polyphony limit.
You can watch Hauptwerk's polyphony meter (on the '
Audio, MIDI and Performance' large control panel; '
View | Large control panels ...') to see (approximately) for yourself. If the meter goes out of the green, then release samples are being dropped. I just checked, and in the Free Edition (polyphony limit=256) it goes nearly into the red.
Hauptwerk's polyphony management system is very, very carefully designed to minimise the audible impact of release samples being dropped, so if you haven't noticed its effects in your Free Edition then it's doing it's doing its job well. However, if you listen carefully you should hear them (the sound will appear slightly drier than it should be when releases are dropped).
csw900 wrote:Regarding the 16/24 bit limitation -- I do not believe that anyone could tell the difference
in a blind test. It is just a case of "Mine is bigger than yours".
The only benefit of 24 bits (and higher) is greater headroom which is useful for making
high quality recordings without bothering too much about the recording level.
The extent to which any (slight) differences might or might not be audible depend especially on how wet the sample set is, noise floor of the microphones/pre-amps/etc. used to create it, how much polyphony your system has (i.e. how many long releases will potentially be playing at once), how good your audio equipment is, how good your hearing is, how trained your hearing is, and especially on the signal level in the sample set (most wet sample sets don't have their individual pipes/ranks normalised to maximum amplitude). If you search the forum there are lots of previous in-depth discussions on it.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.