Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:36 pm
I hope I'm not being presumptuous, as I am new to both Hauptwerk and this forum. However, a surprising number of people emailed my personal account to express gratitude for my detailed writeup on step-by-step memory/CPU optimization of ranks, and one person asked if I would give him similarly detailed step-by-step instructions for adding a separate output for some ranks. Rather than email him directly, I decided to write up my steps and post it here, both for comment/criticism from any experts who wish to weigh in, as well as to help anyone who would like detailed hand-holding.
I have three stereo outputs (large front, medium rear, and small for sweet solo stops), and I souped up the stereo St. Anne organ to use all speakers.
I did two separate things. First, I chose a few stops that do not have heavy bass (which my bookshelf speakers could not handle) and which would most likely be used as solo stops in performance. I routed them to a pair of bookshelf speakers mounted high on a side wall. Then I copied the main channel to rear speakers, a crude form of surround. I'll present these separately here.
Separating Solo Stops
1) You need to provide an arbitrary but meaningful name for your new output group that will handle solo stops in a separate stereo pair of speakers. So click General setting / Audio output groups
2) Click the 'Insert' button and type the name you wish to use for this new group. I chose 'Solo'. Click OK. You now have a new audio output group, though nothing is being done with it yet.
3) You need to tell Hauptwerk that it will have to send sound out another stereo pair of outputs on your hardware interface, the pair that feeds your new (Solo in my case) amplifiers/speakers. Click General settings / Audio outputs and select the Main tab if it's not already highlighted. Click the 'Insert' button to insert a new stereo output.
4) Confirm that your audio interface hardware device is named in the "Audio output device" field. If you have multiple devices (most people do not) you'll need to select the one you want to use for this output group. In the vast majority of situations, you will get the best performance by using the device's native ASIO outputs, so do not choose Direct Sound or any other outputs unless you know what you are doing and have a very good reason.
5) You must specify the output channels of this hardware interface device that feed the amplifier that will be used for this output group. In my case, I was using Channels 1 and 2 for the main outputs, so I selected 3 and 4 and connected my amplifier wires accordingly.
6) Optionally, type a meaningful name for this set of output channels. You can leave it blank, as this name is arbitrary and purely for your own convenience. This is the name that Hauptwerk will display in the list of hardware output channels. If you choose to fill in a name, make it something that is meaningful to you. I chose "Sweet solo stops".
7) At this point you have specified to Hauptwerk a stereo pair of outputs on your hardware interface device that you will want to use. You must now associate this physical output with the output group you created earlier. So click the "Routing and Aux Mix' tab. In the left pane, highlight the physical output that you just created (which was 'Sweet solo stops' in my case). In the 'Output group' field, select the output group (Solo in my case) that you created as your first step in the whole procedure. You have now completed the process of associating an output group (Solo for me) with a physical stereo output (Sweet solo stops on channels 3/4 for me) on your hardware interface device. Click OK.
8 ) The last step is to choose which ranks will move to this new output group. If an organ is loaded, unload it. Load the organ, using the 'Rank and audio routing' option. You will be presented with a list of all ranks for the organ. Select each rank that you want to sound from your new output group, and in the 'Output group' field select the group name. In my case, I selected some soft, sweet stops and assigned them to the new 'Solo' group. Click OK, and you're done!
Copying the Main Outputs to a Pair of Rear Channels
If you have a surround system but a strictly stereo organ, it is a pity to waste those rear channels. You might as well copy the front (Main) channels to them.
First, let me mention an option that may appeal to some people, but in most cases is probably less ideal. Maybe a LOT less than ideal. I will not delve into how to implement this generally undesirable option, but I must mention it. It is tempting (perhaps because it is easy!) to assign your rear channels to the main audio output group, along with the front channels that were put there by default. This is perfectly legal. If you do this, the pipes in each rank will be distributed across these four speakers by whatever distribution algorithm you specified, perhaps putting the first pipe in front, the next pipe in the rear, then back to front, and so forth. First of all, pipe organs are generally not laid out like this, and the sound will be unnatural to say the least. Even worse, if your rear channels are different from the front channels (often they are smaller, lower volume speakers), having some pipes going to big speakers and others going to smaller speakers will give a really bizarre sound. So this simple method is almost never a good idea. A better way is...
1) You must tell Hauptwerk that it will have to send sound out another stereo pair of outputs on your hardware interface, the outputs that feed your rear speakers. Click General settings / Audio outputs and select the Main tab if it's not already highlighted. Click the 'Insert' button.
2) Confirm that your audio interface hardware device is named in the "Audio output device" field. If you have multiple devices (most people do not) you'll need to select the one you want to use for this rear output. In the vast majority of situations, you will get the best performance by using the device's native ASIO outputs, so do not choose Direct Sound or any other outputs unless you know what you are doing and have a very good reason.
3) You must specify the output channels of this device that feed the amplifier that will be used for this rear output. In my case, I was using Channels 1 and 2 for the main outputs, and 3 and 4 for the Solo outputs, so I selected 5 and 6 for the rear channels and connected my amplifier wires accordingly.
4) Optionally, type a meaningful name for this set of output channels. You can leave it blank, as this name is arbitrary and purely for your own convenience. This is the name that Hauptwerk will display in the list of hardware output channels. If you choose to fill in a name, make it something that is meaningful to you. I kept it simple and chose 'Rear'.
5) At this point you have specified to Hauptwerk a stereo pair of outputs on your hardware device that you will want to use. You must now associate this physical output with a source of sound from Hauptwerk. So click the "Routing and Aux Mix' tab. In the left pane, highlight the physical output that you just created (Rear). Click the 'Output type' and select 'Aux mixdown outputs'. This tells Hauptwerk that the source of sound for this physical output will come from its built-in mixer. If you instead selected 'Primary' the pipes would be rotated as discussed at the start of this procedure, with likely unpleasant results. You have now told Hauptwerk how to associate this source of sound, the mixer's output, with a physical output to drive your amplifier.
6) You must now tell Hauptwerk how to mixdown its existing sounds to produce the sound source for the output that you just created. So, still on the 'Routing and aux mix tab' highlight the Main output in the left pane. A little ways down in the right pane, set the 'Aux send 1 destination' to the output you just created, which was 'Rear' in my case. This in essence copies the main output to the rear output.
7) If in an earlier step you created any separate output groups (such as the 'Solo' group I created) you may wish to include them in the mix. If so, highlight each of them in turn in the left pane and send their Aux mix to the rear (or whatever you called it) channel.
8 ) Note that you have the option of changing the volume of these mixes. I recommend just leaving the volumes at their default of 0 db and adjusting volume on your amplifier. Of course, you can always come back later to tweak volumes here if you wish.
9) Click OK and you are done. You don't need to do anything in the organ ranks, because you have not actually created a new output group. You just mixed down one or more existing groups to produce your rear channel. Nonetheless, Hauptwerk will reload the organ from scratch because you changed output routing.
Tim
I have three stereo outputs (large front, medium rear, and small for sweet solo stops), and I souped up the stereo St. Anne organ to use all speakers.
I did two separate things. First, I chose a few stops that do not have heavy bass (which my bookshelf speakers could not handle) and which would most likely be used as solo stops in performance. I routed them to a pair of bookshelf speakers mounted high on a side wall. Then I copied the main channel to rear speakers, a crude form of surround. I'll present these separately here.
Separating Solo Stops
1) You need to provide an arbitrary but meaningful name for your new output group that will handle solo stops in a separate stereo pair of speakers. So click General setting / Audio output groups
2) Click the 'Insert' button and type the name you wish to use for this new group. I chose 'Solo'. Click OK. You now have a new audio output group, though nothing is being done with it yet.
3) You need to tell Hauptwerk that it will have to send sound out another stereo pair of outputs on your hardware interface, the pair that feeds your new (Solo in my case) amplifiers/speakers. Click General settings / Audio outputs and select the Main tab if it's not already highlighted. Click the 'Insert' button to insert a new stereo output.
4) Confirm that your audio interface hardware device is named in the "Audio output device" field. If you have multiple devices (most people do not) you'll need to select the one you want to use for this output group. In the vast majority of situations, you will get the best performance by using the device's native ASIO outputs, so do not choose Direct Sound or any other outputs unless you know what you are doing and have a very good reason.
5) You must specify the output channels of this hardware interface device that feed the amplifier that will be used for this output group. In my case, I was using Channels 1 and 2 for the main outputs, so I selected 3 and 4 and connected my amplifier wires accordingly.
6) Optionally, type a meaningful name for this set of output channels. You can leave it blank, as this name is arbitrary and purely for your own convenience. This is the name that Hauptwerk will display in the list of hardware output channels. If you choose to fill in a name, make it something that is meaningful to you. I chose "Sweet solo stops".
7) At this point you have specified to Hauptwerk a stereo pair of outputs on your hardware interface device that you will want to use. You must now associate this physical output with the output group you created earlier. So click the "Routing and Aux Mix' tab. In the left pane, highlight the physical output that you just created (which was 'Sweet solo stops' in my case). In the 'Output group' field, select the output group (Solo in my case) that you created as your first step in the whole procedure. You have now completed the process of associating an output group (Solo for me) with a physical stereo output (Sweet solo stops on channels 3/4 for me) on your hardware interface device. Click OK.
8 ) The last step is to choose which ranks will move to this new output group. If an organ is loaded, unload it. Load the organ, using the 'Rank and audio routing' option. You will be presented with a list of all ranks for the organ. Select each rank that you want to sound from your new output group, and in the 'Output group' field select the group name. In my case, I selected some soft, sweet stops and assigned them to the new 'Solo' group. Click OK, and you're done!
Copying the Main Outputs to a Pair of Rear Channels
If you have a surround system but a strictly stereo organ, it is a pity to waste those rear channels. You might as well copy the front (Main) channels to them.
First, let me mention an option that may appeal to some people, but in most cases is probably less ideal. Maybe a LOT less than ideal. I will not delve into how to implement this generally undesirable option, but I must mention it. It is tempting (perhaps because it is easy!) to assign your rear channels to the main audio output group, along with the front channels that were put there by default. This is perfectly legal. If you do this, the pipes in each rank will be distributed across these four speakers by whatever distribution algorithm you specified, perhaps putting the first pipe in front, the next pipe in the rear, then back to front, and so forth. First of all, pipe organs are generally not laid out like this, and the sound will be unnatural to say the least. Even worse, if your rear channels are different from the front channels (often they are smaller, lower volume speakers), having some pipes going to big speakers and others going to smaller speakers will give a really bizarre sound. So this simple method is almost never a good idea. A better way is...
1) You must tell Hauptwerk that it will have to send sound out another stereo pair of outputs on your hardware interface, the outputs that feed your rear speakers. Click General settings / Audio outputs and select the Main tab if it's not already highlighted. Click the 'Insert' button.
2) Confirm that your audio interface hardware device is named in the "Audio output device" field. If you have multiple devices (most people do not) you'll need to select the one you want to use for this rear output. In the vast majority of situations, you will get the best performance by using the device's native ASIO outputs, so do not choose Direct Sound or any other outputs unless you know what you are doing and have a very good reason.
3) You must specify the output channels of this device that feed the amplifier that will be used for this rear output. In my case, I was using Channels 1 and 2 for the main outputs, and 3 and 4 for the Solo outputs, so I selected 5 and 6 for the rear channels and connected my amplifier wires accordingly.
4) Optionally, type a meaningful name for this set of output channels. You can leave it blank, as this name is arbitrary and purely for your own convenience. This is the name that Hauptwerk will display in the list of hardware output channels. If you choose to fill in a name, make it something that is meaningful to you. I kept it simple and chose 'Rear'.
5) At this point you have specified to Hauptwerk a stereo pair of outputs on your hardware device that you will want to use. You must now associate this physical output with a source of sound from Hauptwerk. So click the "Routing and Aux Mix' tab. In the left pane, highlight the physical output that you just created (Rear). Click the 'Output type' and select 'Aux mixdown outputs'. This tells Hauptwerk that the source of sound for this physical output will come from its built-in mixer. If you instead selected 'Primary' the pipes would be rotated as discussed at the start of this procedure, with likely unpleasant results. You have now told Hauptwerk how to associate this source of sound, the mixer's output, with a physical output to drive your amplifier.
6) You must now tell Hauptwerk how to mixdown its existing sounds to produce the sound source for the output that you just created. So, still on the 'Routing and aux mix tab' highlight the Main output in the left pane. A little ways down in the right pane, set the 'Aux send 1 destination' to the output you just created, which was 'Rear' in my case. This in essence copies the main output to the rear output.
7) If in an earlier step you created any separate output groups (such as the 'Solo' group I created) you may wish to include them in the mix. If so, highlight each of them in turn in the left pane and send their Aux mix to the rear (or whatever you called it) channel.
8 ) Note that you have the option of changing the volume of these mixes. I recommend just leaving the volumes at their default of 0 db and adjusting volume on your amplifier. Of course, you can always come back later to tweak volumes here if you wish.
9) Click OK and you are done. You don't need to do anything in the organ ranks, because you have not actually created a new output group. You just mixed down one or more existing groups to produce your rear channel. Nonetheless, Hauptwerk will reload the organ from scratch because you changed output routing.
Tim
Last edited by TimM on Fri Mar 24, 2017 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
. I'm fortunate to have some nice passive studio monitors for my surround channels so this config worked well and its a thrill to hear the notes ping pong left and right (again like you expect to hear if you were close to a diatonic pipe chest).