It's alive ! - -And kicking a bit,..

Mates,

Having received the new music computer on Friday, [refurbished HP Elite Intel Q6600 2,4 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM, 512B video, 640 and 750GB HD, Vista Home Premium 64-bit, $550), I setup, culling about 1GB of unnecessary items from the HP and tried to configure Vista (my first look at it) as economically as possible. I first installed the M-Audio ""Audiophile" 2496 soundcard, then Cakewalk Home Studio 2 XL (2004) for recording software, then Hauptwerk 3 Free Edition, and finally a mini, free download version of Nero 9. Monitoring is for the moment by the Harmon Kardon speakers that came with the 1998 Dell P750 the new computer replaces. I tried to install a free mini evaluation version of an organ by Sonus Paradisi - which mentions being useful with Free Edition to experiment with having multiple organ choices, but wasn't able to get Hauptwerk to recognize the *.RAR file for some reason.

Using a Yamaha S90 88-note synthesizer as controller, I connected the MIDI OUT to the M-Audio card. At first, I could only have sounds using the mouse on the virtual console- there was no apparent communication from the S90 to HWFE. After some trial and I realized I had to re-assign MIDI CH1 to the St. Anne GREAT division and then I could use the couplers to have use of the SWELL sounds.

The sound, even from the 16-bit FE setup -and on these inadequate speakers was immediately a whole world improvement over the native pipe organ sounds of the S90, and I enjoyed the blower and stop sounds. The problem was that it was unplayable as it: 1>> ran out of steam and began dropping out notes after about 30 seconds and 2>> there was such a long delay between pressing the keys, I couldn't reconcile what I was hearing to pressing the keys. I've occasionally played organs with the pipes quite far from the console and have this same playability problem, not being used to it. And, an interesting effect happened when I accidentally switched the S90 to VOICE mode, such that when I played 3 or 4 certain keys in the upper part of the range, they would turn certain stops on and off- every time a certain A would play, it would toggle the 4' Clarion on and off -that kind of thing. Very odd.

Using only two or three stops could extend the playing time a bit, but it would eventually start dropping out. I tried fussing with buffers and anything I thought would affect latency/delay but the problems of drop outs and delay remained. I tried loading the St. Anne organ selecting only the GREAT and SWELL sounds and skipping the PEDAL division and the blower and stop effects. Perhaps it's a feature of the FE, but it seems to want to only load the full set with all the effects every time.

I understand the limitations on FE -as well as on my computer skills, but do you have any suggestions to set this up to allow a reasonable playability?

Thanks again!

Cheers,

Bambi B

Hi,

A couple of thoughts for you.

First, make sure that the M-Audio is set for ASIO with a buffer size that is large enough to avoid dropouts and small enough that latency isn't noticeable. I use 1024.

Second, I've had trouble with the Midi-In on the M-Audio 2496. Unless someone here can tell you how to configure that so that it works (which I've totally failed at!), I'd recommend getting a separate midi port. On my machine with the M-Audio 2496, I use one of the cheap ones you can find on E-Bay and, so far, it works. There is a long discussion about the pros and cons of these on another thread.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5366

Good luck!

Hi,

I've had trouble with the Midi-In on the M-Audio 2496. Unless someone here can tell you how to configure that so that it works (which I've totally failed at!), I'd recommend getting a separate midi port.

Sorry to hear of your problems with this card. I've been using the M-Audio 2496 on my original Hauptwerk PC for over 3 years with never a moment's hassle, and I don't remember ever having to configure it (though my ageing memory may be at fault). Originally it handled all the MIDI and audio; more recently I have used it just for MIDI in, with audio routed via the Focusrite SAFFIRE LE for multi-channel output. It has also been working faultlessly for almost a year with the new 64-bit drivers.

Douglas.

[mdyde]

Hello Bambi,

Briefly (since we don't provide official support for the Free Edition):

I tried to install a free mini evaluation version of an organ by Sonus Paradisi - which mentions being useful with Free Edition to experiment with having multiple organ choices, but wasn't able to get Hauptwerk to recognize the *.RAR file for some reason.

Assuming its a Hauptwerk v2/v3-format sample set, e.g. any of those on our organ downloads page:

http://www.hauptwerk.com/instrumentdownloads

... use 'File | Install ...' on the Hauptwerk menu to install the sample set (see also the Using Hauptwerk: The 'Component Installer' section in the user guide).

2>> there was such a long delay between pressing the keys, I couldn't reconcile what I was hearing to pressing the keys.

Make sure you have the latest 64-bit Vista SP2 driver installed for your M-Audio 2496:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support&tab=driver&serie_ID=1&PID=adf95efc30b88aba043fa8b83343bfb8&OS=85#tabs

Make sure you specifically have the M-Audio ASIO driver selected on the 'General settings | Audio outputs' screen in Hauptwerk, and set the buffer size there to 1024, which should give excellent latency (about 23 milliseconds).

Perhaps it's a feature of the FE, but it seems to want to only load the full set with all the effects every time.

That's not a restriction of the Free Edition. Have a look at the 'Using Hauptwerk: Loading organs' section in the user guide for how to selectively disable ranks if you want to do that. The 'Organ | Load organ, adjusting rank audio output routing' screen provides the functionality. Note that the settings on the right-hand pane of the screen relate just to the rank(s) that you have selected in the left-hand pane.

The problem was that it was unplayable as it: 1>> ran out of steam and began dropping out notes after about 30 seconds and 2>>

I'm not sure if what you're describing is that you're running out of polyphony, but remember that the Free Edition is limited to 256 simultaneous pipes/voices.

That's about enough to play any of the stops on the Great on St. Anne's, but not enough to play the Swell as well, and definitely not enough to play the Swell with octave/sub couplers.

Generally speaking the 256 limit of the Free Edition is sufficient for dry-ish chamber organs, and/or about 5-7 stops (without coupling) on other organs with smaller acoustics like St. Anne's (less than about 1 second reverb time). It will manage a some more stops with completely dry sample sets.

To use more stops or organs with larger acoustics you'd need to buy a licensed edition of Hauptwerk to get enough polyphony. Your quad-core 8 GB 64-bit PC should easily be capable of a very good polyphony with the Advanced Edition (probably around 5000-7000 with all realism features enabled).

For a more full discussion of polyphony, and how to work out the polyphony you might want for a given sample set, see this document:

http://www.hauptwerk.com/clientuploads/documentation/PDF/TechnicalData.pdf

... and also this post:

http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5376&start=30#p37596

Note that Hauptwerk's polyphony limit is measured for mono, uncompressed, unenclosed samples, so you will get the highest possible polyphony from the Free Edition by using the 'Organ | Load organ, adjusting rank audio output routing' screen to disable memory compression for all ranks and setting all ranks to load in mono, and then disabling the swell box filters on the 'General settings | General options | Audio engine' screen tab.

However, to use larger and/or wetter sample sets with a reasonable number of stops you would really need to use one of the licensed editions.

mhyde,

Thank you for the practical suggestions- I understand this is beyond the call of duty.

I discovered the M-Audio- which is using the latest Vista 64 ASIO drivers- was set to 2048 buffers- and this is now reset to 1024 as you suggested. That change and with care in selecting the installation have had the result that both latency and polyphony improved. It's still not usable- four stops on seem to run out of polyphony in about a minute, but I'll keep at it.

Thanks again!

Cheers,

Bambi B

One quick question. When the notes start dropping out, do the keys on the virtual console display still move?

I've loaded St. Anne's and Free Edition on an older computer to try this out. The computer is the one with the M-Audio 2496. Even with a polyphony limit of only 256 notes, I don't experience too many dropouts unless I turn on a large number of stops (8-10) and there's no appreciable latency. Of course, Hauptwerk runs even better on the computer with a licensed copy and quad core processors.

The keys will still appear as pressed even if for whatever reason the audio is dropped out.

Chris,

If he's just hitting the polyphony limit, then the keys will still move. If he's running into a midi problem, they won't. As I indicated earlier, I have had some trouble with the M-audio 2496 midi-in, so we should rule that out.

howerks,

Yes, the keys on the virtual console still move when the sound drops out.

I can extend the time by loading only the GREAT stops in 16-bit mono and without blower sound, but still can not get through, for example, Bach 2- Part Invention 4 if there are more than 2-3 stops on.



Cheers,

Bambi B

[mdyde]

Hello Bambi,

What sample set are you using? St. Anne's (the one that comes pre-installed with Hauptwerk)?

Did you also disable memory compression for all ranks?

Hello Bambi,

Sorry about your difficulties with getting started. It usually isn't that difficult. The guys have made some great suggestions for you to try and get it working but I noticed one of the things you mention is that the sound quits after 30 seconds or so. Seems to me that the only way that could use up the polyphony is if the sustain pedal is depressed or at least the MIDI device is thinking it is. Perhaps it is not a polyphony problem but an audio driver problem. Could you load the polyphony organ and test the polyphony to eliminate polyphony as a problem? HW Free edition is a max polyphony of 256 so you should come up with that value testing with the polyphony organ.

If that works but you still have audio drop out after 30 seconds, I would go download the drivers from M-Audio again and reload the drivers for the audio card again. Using the St. Ann's organ I am able to use a similar set up and play without problems and I am also able to play the St. Anne's with the MIDI sequencer and the virtual cable.

One last thought. If by some strange chance the removal of the extra 1G of software clobbered something in the background that you need, you may need to go back to square one and start over. Leaving the extra software in place until you get HW working. Not a happy thought I am sure.

Tom

Bambi,

I sort of duplicated your problem. I have an older Dell computer with a 2.4Ghz P4 and 3G of memory running Free Edition with the M-Audio 2496, so it's less powerful than your computer.

Here's my next question for you. Are you sure that you only have a couple of stops turned on? I didn't notice any dropouts with all of the stops on the swell drawn when I played Invention IV. (12 or 13 stops?) It was only when I pulled on the Octave coupler (24 or 26 stops) that I lost notes. The other way I created dropouts was by pressing the "ff" button or by pushing in the crescendo pedal all the way (unknown number of stops). So, first make sure that the organ doesn't make any sound when you play with all of the stops off. Then try it with your registration of 3 or 4 stops. It's possible that one of the continuous controllers on your S90 is activating the crescendo.

With any of these last three scenarios, I could get a bit more than 1/2 way through Invention IV before getting a complete dropout, although I could tell from the audio quality that I was losing some individual ranks before that.

Kirk

Bambi,

I believe I have recreated your problem on my Dual-core 4GB machine. While using the sequencer through LoopBe to play Widor's toccata checking polyphony I experienced audio drop out but without the crackling sound normally associated with a lack of polyphony. I brought up the Resource Monitor and the CPU is running at less than 25% and the memory error rate is very low. However at every drop out I could observe that there were multiple disk accesses and network interrupts visible on the Resource Monitor screens. Does that accurately describe your situation?

Tom

Mates,

I did apparently make some progress with my polyphony problem by loading the St. Anne set in mono and a partial set without blower sound, but at the moment FE is still not usable, or rather, is too restricted in use.

My intention anyway with FE was to evaluate the software and from these tries I can see that the real solution is to buy Advanced Edition. However, to be honest, having just bought the computer, I can not commit the $600 for AE at the moment, plus acquire a multi- manual and pedal arrangement, that I've decided to discontinue with Hauptwerk for the time being.

Thanks to everyone so much for all the help- sorry to have required so much- and I'll look forward to the time I can take it up again. I can hear the potential of a wonderful software that was exactly what I was after.

Best wishes to all - this seems to me like a club I'd like to join- and hope to be in touch soon.

Cheers,

Bambi B

You can always use the Trial Version(s) to evaluate. Just mentally tune out the periodic chime tone that is eliminated when you actually buy the complete $$ version. These trial versions are the complete software package, but with the chime tone.

Rgds,
Ed