Inheriting auto-detected console setup

I don't think this has been raised before, but if so I apologise in advance.

While the HW auto-detect system is extremely useful and works perfectly well, I find it troublesome to go through the process from scratch whenever I install a new organ. This is partly because the computer is not particularly near the console and there are some 'trip hazards' (not HW's fault as I readily conceed) on the way from one to the other.

HW already 'knows' the MIDI channels, compass and designation of my keyboards and pedal board, swell pedal and pistons. Also common couplers, combination pistons and so on.

I know I could keep a written record and set things up at the computer without actually activating the controls themselves, but it would be easier and quicker to ask HW to set these up automatically either based on an existing installed organ, or from some sort of template.

Nick

[mdyde]

Hello Nick,

Yes -- it's actually been discussed extensively quite a few times before, especially around the time that v4.0.0 was first released. Hauptwerk v3 effectively used to work like that (with MIDI settings defined globally, then mapped to each sample set), but so many people found it difficult to understand and use, and there are so many differences between different styles of organs (and different ways that different sample set developers designated 'role codes' for different keyboards/stops/pedals/controls/functions/etc. on their sample sets), that in practice we decided that it was best and simplest for the vast majority of users simply to make the MIDI settings organ-specific. The intention was, and is, that auto-detection should make that quick and easy (although I do appreciate that the logistic issue with travelling back and forth between your console and computer makes that awkward in your specific case).

We don't want to change that design fundamentally (at least in the near/medium-term), I'm afraid -- sorry.

If moving the computer closer to your console isn't a possibility for you, then I'd recommend using some kind of remote desktop software (e.g. from a laptop or tablet), so that you could operate your Hauptwerk computer remotely from the organ console when needed.

I'd be very grateful for a less comprehensive feature that initializes *only* the MIDI console mappings to the master registration virtual controls, which don't vary by sampleset, to the saved user scheme. It takes a long time to autodetect 96 pistons, all of which I use consistently across samplesets to control master registration buttons: setter, scope, hand reg, gen cancel, generals, scoped, reversibles, and master couplers. Well, okay, I skip autodetecting about half of them on smaller organs...

Sorry to repeat myself. Thanks.

[mdyde]

Hello Mark,

Yes -- that too has been asked for quite a few times. When designing v4, we made the decision for MIDI settings for the 'master' functions to be organ-specific (rather than global) because it gives more flexibility, allowing things to be configured differently to suit different styles of organ, and to suit organs with different sets of native features. For example, people often like to use an organ's native couplers, pistons, and crescendos when an organ has them, but to use Hauptwerk's 'master' equivalents otherwise.

I appreciate that it would technically be possible to duplicate functions globally and organ-specifically, and/or to add user settings for whether each given function should be global or organ-specific, and/or to add functionality to import/export master functions' MIDI settings between organs, but that also potentially makes things rather tangled and introduces considerable scope for confusion and unintended results, so we felt it was simpler and clearer that such settings should be fixed as being either global, or organ-specific, and, of the two, that organ-specific would be appreciated by the larger proportion of people. Perhaps we might consider revisiting it at some point in the longer-term, but for the moment we feel that it still offers a good balance of flexibility to usability overall.

. It takes a long time to autodetect 96 pistons, all of which I use consistently across samplesets to control master registration buttons: setter, scope, hand reg, gen cancel, generals, scoped, reversibles, and master couplers.

Not officially supported, but it is possible to look at the user settings file for a given organ that has all of these pistons properly set up, find where the piston settings are defined, then use cut-and-paste to insert them into the user settings file for a different organ. Voila! Everything is ready to go. Just be sure you have everything well backed-up before attempting this.