Not loading the tremulant ranks (Buckeburg)?

[Tompion]

After having used HW for some time I’ve just now woken up to the fact I’ve not been loading all the ranks of an organ in 24 bit. When first installing a new organ, I’d always changed the default 16bit to 24 bit and had assumed this would cover the entire organ. I’ve now realized that it only affected the single rank highlighted rank.

I’ve now tried installing Buckeburg with all ranks set at 24 bit. But it is using a lot of RAM (I have 64GB) and won’t load properly (or at all). So now I’m wondering if there’s a simple way of highlighting all the tremulant ranks and either not installing them or at least loading them only in 16 bit.

I listen to the organ only in stereo. Up to now I’ve always installed all channels (e.g., Buckeburg has six). I’ve wonder whether I should perhaps reduce the number of channels that I load but my computer has more than enough RAM to meet the computer requirements on the Sonus website.

The Sonus website has the following computer requirements for Buckeburg:
“RAM consumption: 6-channel surround
16-bit, other settings default: 26 GB
20-bit, other settings default: 44 GB (recommended)
24-bit, other settings default: 48 GB
Screen resolution 1280x1024 px or more.
Polyphony of 8000 voices recommended for the full suround (4000 pipes minimum).”

As I mentioned my computer has 64 GB or RAM.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Bruce

[mnailor]

When you changed all ranks to load 24 bit samples, did you leave the other defaults, including lossless compression? Then you should see about 48 GB used in the HW activity log and on the RAM meter control panel.

On Windows, 64 GB should load it okay. On a recent Mac, 64 GB is only good for about 42 GB of sample data, so you'd have to load less.

Are you getting an error message when you use "File | Load adjusting..."? What does it say?

If you need to save memory, you can load ranks at 20 bits with little or no effect on sound quality, and you can omit loading the tremmed ranks and switch to Artificial tremulants on the organ's Mixer tab. Or omit loading one perspective.

[mdyde]

Hello Bruce,

To add to Mark's reply (thanks as always, Mark):

So now I’m wondering if there’s a simple way of highlighting all the tremulant ranks and either not installing them or at least loading them only in 16 bit.

The "Settings screens | Working with multiple selections" section in the Hauptwerk user guide covers how to do that -- pages 62-63 in the current Hauptwerk v8 version.

[I'll move this topic to the "Technical support" section of the forum once you've had a chance to read it.]

[mnailor]

(Thanks, Martin, I missed that part of the question!)

On Windows, you select multiple ranks by clicking the first rank, then either holding down the Control key while clicking on the additional ranks, or holding down the Shift key and clicking the other end of a range of ranks to include. Standard Windows multiselect.

I'm sure Mac has a similar thing. The User Guide does cover this.

[Tompion]

Hi Mark and Martin, thank you for your comments.

Yesterday's failed attempt to load the organ in 24-bit generated a diagnostic file, which I have now sent to support at Hw dot com. I've had a look at the HW log file for yesterday but was not able to see any clear statement of what went wrong.

Before sending the diagnostic file I attempted to load the organ back in the default 16 bit. As I've mentioned in my email with the support file, the computer ground away for 25 minutes before stopping and having accomplished nothing. At the moment, I am unable to load the Buckeburg organ at all. The Salisbury sample set is still loading as it usually does.

When I was selecting all the ranks for changing the bit level yesterday and today, I used the shift and down arrow key to select them all (Windows). The result, however, is that this captures the very large number of tremulant ranks dotted throughout the entire list.

I'm hoping that the diagnostic file will identify the problem as well as a solution.

The only solution I'm currently able to think of is to attempt to completely uninstall the Buckeburg organ, reboot computer then reinstall the organ, starting at square one. I believe, however , that this drastic solution would cause the loss of all my careful stepper/sequencer settings.

[Tompion]

Update: while typing and sending my previous post, I received a very prompt response from François at HW support. He identified the likely cause and provided me with a probable solution.
I will report back in due course once I have an opportunity to return to my computer hopefully later today.

[mdyde]

Thanks, Bruce.

[Topic moved here.]

Francois (who handles our support email) will see your email with diagnostic file in due course, but if you're simply running out of RAM when loading that sample set then all you should need to do is to change the rank options for some or all of its ranks, as Mark mentioned, so that it uses less memory.

On any settings screen, the settings on the right-hand pane show the values for whichever item(s) are selected in the left-hand browse list (as covered on pages 62-63 in the v8 user guide). Here's the excerpt from the guide that covers how to work with multiple selections:

You can select multiple objects in a screen's left-hand browse list in any of the following ways:

• Drag the mouse across the range of objects you wish to select, if the objects are sequential.
• Highlight the first object, then hold down SHIFT and click on another object to select all of the objects in-between.
• Hold down the COMMAND (macOS) or CONTROL (Windows) key while clicking on an object to add or remove it to/from the current selection.
• Press COMMAND+A (macOS) or CONTROL+A (Windows) to select all objects.

Even if more than one object is selected, (only) one of the selected objects (usually the last one you selected) is the current object, and the right-hand pane shows its properties. However, if a given property has several different values for the various selected objects, then the property is shown in bold italic text. When multiple objects are selected, you can change a property for all selected objects at once by simply changing the property in the right-hand pane.

For example, on the Organ keyboards screen you could change the MIDI port used for all virtual keyboards at once by simply highlighting all of the entries in the left-hand pane and then changing the MIDI port setting in the right-hand pane.

The same applies to the "Organ | Load organ, adjusting rank ... options" screen. The "Organ menu | Loading organs" section in the guide (pages 88-90 in the v8 version) covers what the options on the right-hand pane of that screen do.

If you're using a Mac and if you overfilled your RAM, it might be best to reboot, since macOS can misbehave once its RAM has been overfilled.

[mdyde]

P.S. I see we both replied at the same time. Excellent -- glad to hear that hopefully the cause has been identified.