Hauptwerk Free Edition coming very soon

[B. Milan]

Dear all,

Soon we will be releasing a new Free Edition of Hauptwerk. As its name suggests, it will be entirely free for personal, home, non-commercial use. It will be included as part of Hauptwerk v3.23, which we hope to have released in about 2-3 weeks (around the end of June).

It will have all of the Hauptwerk Basic Edition features (and will work on all of its platforms), except for the following restrictions:

1. Its polyphony is limited to 256 simultaneous voices (pipes). That's sufficient for practicing with a reasonable number of stops on organs with small and medium-sized acoustics.

2. It will allow a maximum of 1.5 GB of data to be loaded into memory at a time. You can load sample sets of any size, but you will need to disable some ranks (or select other memory-saving rank options, such as 14-bit or mono) if they would need more than 1.5 GB to load in full.

3. 24-bit or 32-bit sample sets will work fully, but can be loaded in a maximum of 16-bit resolution (CD quality).

4. You cannot use commercial sample sets if they are licensed via the Hauptwerk USB key (*). However, all other (freeware and commercial) sample sets in all Hauptwerk formats will work fully. Check licensing for individual sample sets. (*: Exception: if you have a Hauptwerk v2 USB key with sample sets licensed on it, then they will continue to be usable in the v3 Free Edition.)

5. No support. You must buy a licensed edition if you need help or advice from us. We plan to make a new section on the forum so that Free Edition users can provide support to each other, but we won't normally be posting replies there. Most likely any questions have already been answered on this forum, please use the Search facility prior to posting new technical support questions

6. Non-commercial, home personal use only.

7. You may use the Free Edition on only one computer at a time.

We're making this edition available so that people who would not otherwise be able to afford a license can use Hauptwerk for learning and practice. If you can afford to buy a license, please support Hauptwerk's development by buying a license for it.

In all other respects the Free Edition will be functionally identical to the Basic Edition:

http://www.hauptwerk.com/editions

http://www.hauptwerk.com/features

The aim is that the Free Edition should be sufficient to provide very high-quality and flexible small and medium-sized virtual instruments (or medium-sized parts of larger ones) for home practice use for students and others who, for any reason, aren't able to afford a license. It has the features needed for modeling both classical and theatre organs, and there are plenty of free sample sets available for use with it on our organ downloads page:

http://www.hauptwerk.com/instrumentdownloads

We’re releasing this because:

- We do want Hauptwerk, and the virtual organ world in general, to be available to as many people as possible, since we passionately believe in the organ as an instrument and we want to take it to the widest audience possible, and to further its cause.

- We hope it will also help us by getting Hauptwerk to the attention of people who otherwise wouldn't have used or seen it, and who hopefully will one day be able to, and choose to, buy a license for it, thus supporting its future development.

- Likewise we hope it will make the market larger for sample set producers in the longer term, which should benefit us all, in terms of the range and cost of sample sets for users, and in the viability of sampling instruments for sample set producers.

- A significant proportion of Hauptwerk's users are still using old versions of Hauptwerk, and we want everybody to be on the latest, best, most reliable, and easiest-to-use version. That helps us by reducing support, providing a better demonstration of Hauptwerk's most recent capabilities and features, and frees us up to focus more on developing Hauptwerk for the future. It also helps sample set producers because they can rely on more people being on the latest version when deciding whether to take advantage of new features in the sample set formats (and thus to give the most realistic sample sets possible).

Note that we're aware that some people do find Hauptwerk's MIDI settings difficult at the moment, which we'll be addressing fully for the next major version - please be patient with us on that. It will be worth the wait.

So we very much that hope you will like it, and that it helps us all to take the virtual organ world forward in the long-term.

Once the new Free Edition is ready we will follow up here with an announcement.

[gingercat]

Excellent idea, and the best of luck with it. I hope and believe it will indeed get Hauptwerk (and the organ) to a much wider audience. Are you going to be setting user ranks in the forum relating to their Hauptwerk license status to assist in knowing which users to support?

[engrssc]

Total thumbs up. I (better said), we know this will be a well received kind gesture on your and Martin's behalf by those who want to get into this fantastic world of really high quality virtual instrument technology, but on a limited budget. When I was a kid, nothing made me want (and save up for) an ice cream cone than to see someone with one. This is more than an "ice cream" and certainly more long lasting.

It's great to be a part of such a neat "family". Cheers !

Rgds,
Ed

[bcollins]

I think this is a great idea. And it should pay dividends for Hauptwerk in the long run.

It also makes the HW3 sample sets which are available free at Zion Organ quite attractive, as they all fall within the restrictions of the free version of Hauptwerk. And they make good practice instruments.

[mdyde]

Thanks, all, for the enthusiasm.

Are you going to be setting user ranks in the forum relating to their Hauptwerk license status to assist in knowing which users to support?

Thanks for the suggestion, Chris. We'll probably just see how it goes for a while to start with and then review it. Getting into trying to distinguish between licensed/evaluation/Free Edition forum users, or on supported/unsupported versions, when determining whether to reply to technical/support questions could get very fiddly, so we'd prefer to avoid that if we can, and we like to keep things open and informal as much as possible, so we'll probably just see if it becomes a significant issue or not as time goes on.

[sutherland]

Will it be possible to run this alongside a licensed earlier version of Hauptwerk?

[mdyde]

Will it be possible to run this alongside a licensed earlier version of Hauptwerk?

It's only possible to have one version of Hauptwerk installed on a computer (operating system disk partition) at a time, so you'd only be able to do that if you ran it on a separate computer or partition.

[firefox]

Brilliant! I have been waiting for this for ages (1 year as a student ) , now I finaly can get rid of the 'jingle'
Super Milan!
Might I ask this to : Does anyone has a copy of the Jan Zwart Psalm 146 (the piece playing on the website..)

[engrssc]

I may be wrong, but it would seem if you have a currently licensed version, that version should be able to play everything that the Free Edition would, of course in addition to those commercial, licensed samples for which we have paid to use. I have several freebies that I use.

In addition, to Martin's reply, many user's contribute very good information which gives Martin and Brett a chance to review but not always originate every request for info. Thanks to all the active contributors.

Rgds,
Ed

[micdev]

This is a great idea and let's hope that some of those that will use and try the Free Edition will eventually upgrade. Lately I've done a lot of demos but hardly convinced anyone yet... not because of the quality of the sound, features etc, but because of the initial cost to get Hauptwerk (software, hardware etc). With the free Edition (no more +10DB ring ) users will be able to enjoy small organs and get hook... instead of calling it "Free Edition" we should call it "Viral Edition"... catching the Hauptwerk fever

I think that you can count on many of us to provide the "underground support" and make our whole community grow!

Best of luck
François

[jmoboe]

I already own HW Advanced edition, so it may seem strange that I welcome HW Free Edition as something that I will certainly use. I have an extra keyboard that I was planning to setup as a positive or one-manual portable organ. I already have the electronics to do that, I just need some free time to build it. With HW Free Ed, I will be able to go out and use a true HW version with my laptop without having to carry this precious and fragile appendage, my dongle.

Thanks for this new development

Jean-Marc

[dflick]

Exciting news! Anything going to change for the Basic users in the update??

[mdyde]

Exciting news! Anything going to change for the Basic users in the update??

We don't currently plan to include any other enhancements or bug fixes in v3.23, unless any significant new problems are found in the meantime (unlikely, since v3.21+ is now well proven in the field and there are no major known bugs in v3.22). Licensing for the Basic and Advanced editions will remain the same.

[wurlitzerwilly]

I already own HW Advanced edition, so it may seem strange that I welcome HW Free Edition as something that I will certainly use. I have an extra keyboard that I was planning to setup as a positive or one-manual portable organ. I already have the electronics to do that, I just need some free time to build it. With HW Free Ed, I will be able to go out and use a true HW version with my laptop without having to carry this precious and fragile appendage, my dongle.

Thanks for this new development

Jean-Marc

Yes, I agree. The free version would be very useful for those of us who want to do a quick setup or test without moving a licence key and without the 'triangle'.

Martin/Brett perhaps you can consider licencing issues which would allow distribution of the free HW version on a CD/DVD or a thumb drive, along with a freely available non-commercial sample set. Much along the lines of one of the MidiTzer distros, albeit without the Linux. This would make a great tool for introducing new people to the scene.

[mdyde]

Hello Alan,

Thanks for the suggestion. We might consider that at some point in the future, but, at least initially, the intention is that the Hauptwerk software will only be available directly from us, or via approved resellers on DVD (as now), to ensure that people always get the latest version of the software with the correct documentation, all necessary files and platforms (Mac and PC etc.), correct packaging, correct licence agreement etc., i.e. that end-users always get a product of a guaranteed quality, as they do now.