Hauptwerk IX Early User Experience

[larason2]

Well, I went and upgraded to V9. Like the new menu! It feels easier to navigate. I left hiding all the optionals "unchecked!" Next time I play my silver octopus set, I'll give it a separate bus with its own convolution reverb. That will be nice!

When I loaded the PAB wet at 16 bit, I thought I noticed the free RAM number was different. So just for kicks, I tried loading it in 20 bit again, and it worked! (In 8, the audio driver crashed every time I tried). Not sure if this is an Apple software update, or Hauptwerk now measures free RAM more accurately (or some other change, the bar doesn't stall as much when loading the PAB the first time), but either way, that was worth the cost of upgrade alone! 16 bit isn't terrible, but the extra noise bothers me. 20 bit sounds much clearer. I still have ~15 GB of RAM free. I'm happy!

[mnailor]

Well, I went and upgraded to V9. Like the new menu! It feels easier to navigate. I left hiding all the optionals "unchecked!" Next time I play my silver octopus set, I'll give it a separate bus with its own convolution reverb. That will be nice!

HW8 could do that with a separate bus. In HW9, you can route organs to the same bus and give each a different per-organ reverb (or none).

[larason2]

Ah, ok. Thanks! It's been a while since I last worked with the busses. It's even easier than I thought now!

[mdyde]

Hello larason2,

Thanks very much for upgrading, and glad to hear you like v9.

When I loaded the PAB wet at 16 bit, I thought I noticed the free RAM number was different. So just for kicks, I tried loading it in 20 bit again, and it worked! (In 8, the audio driver crashed every time I tried). Not sure if this is an Apple software update, or Hauptwerk now measures free RAM more accurately (or some other change, the bar doesn't stall as much when loading the PAB the first time), but either way, that was worth the cost of upgrade alone!

Compared to v8, there's actually no difference at all in the way that v9 uses or reports RAM, or loads/handles/plays data, so any changes in that regard must just be coincidence (e.g. a recent macOS update, or that some other background process was previously using some RAM). However, glad to hear you're able to squeeze a bit more data into RAM on your Mac now anyway! I'd be wary, though -- filling the RAM that full might be risky.

[larason2]

Thanks Martin, I'm sure you're right! I like the 20 bit though, so I'll take the risk. Surely 15 GB of RAM should be enough for the OS!

Back when I was on Hauptwerk 4 Basic, I only had 4 GB of RAM. Somehow, I'd manage to run St. Eucaire on 16 bit (only the close perspective). I remember it was dangerously close to full, Hauptwerk would report something like 0.1 GB remaining! It would crash often, but I ran it like that for years! I spent hundreds of hours playing it. Those were the days.

[mdyde]

Fair enough!

[martinus]

Hello All,

Hauptwerk 9 advanced downloaded and installed , runs like clockwork
Big thank you to the Hauptwerk team , you have done it again!

kind greetings,
Mart c van Herk

[mdyde]

Thanks very much, Mart. Excellent. Hope you enjoy it.

[mnailor]

Before using the new per-organ reverb option (nice feature!), I had a set of 12 buses with some of the Caen 6m omni and rear IRs on them for use by any organ that I wanted to have a long reverb added to one of its perspectives. Then I decided to add a shorter reverb to St. David's on perspective 2 from the front ranks with releases truncated.

I didn't realize exactly how checking the per-organ reverb would behave until I tried it. The buses where I enabled per-organ reverb removed the existing Caen reverbs and only have a reverb if I set one for the loaded organ. It does what it said it would do, so I'm not complaining.

So I'm using one set of 12 buses for Caen reverbs only, and another set of 12 for per-organ reverbs, and a set of 12 for no reverb, with corresponding bus groups. The reason the last two aren't combined is that I use some perspectives on an organ with its original releases while adding reverb to one (dry or truncated) perspective. That wouldn't work if there were no pure non-reverb buses available separately from the ones with per-organ reverb.

[einer_von_weitem]

Can someone enlighten me please: from what I've read about version 9 I have formed the impression that it can only be operated via a touchscreen? you cannot use a mouse? (People talk about there no longer being "menus"?)

[mdyde]

Hello Einer,

Thanks for the continued interest in v9.

You can most certainly still use a mouse, and/or keyboard shortcuts, and/or MIDI pistons. There's no need to use a touch-screen. (I don't use one myself.)

[einer_von_weitem]

Thank you for the quick response Martin! That is reassuring.

[mdyde]

Thanks, Einer. You're very welcome.

[tf11972]

When I push the button to load an organ, it lasts 37 (!) seconds until the organ starts to load. I cannot remember this behaviour from a previous version. Is there a workaround to cancel this?

[mdyde]

When I push the button to load an organ, it lasts 37 (!) seconds until the organ starts to load. I cannot remember this behaviour from a previous version. Is there a workaround to cancel this?

Hello Thomas,

That almost certainly isn't related to v9 -- there are no changes in v9 related to how organs load. In Hauptwerk (v2+) whenever you load an organ, the MIDI drivers get stopped and restarted. (Unless you're loading an extremely large/complex organ definition file, which may take a few seconds to read in any Hauptwerk version), if there's a long pause before the organ starts to load it's probably because one or more of your MIDI devices are being slow to stop/start for some reason. E.g. perhaps the operating system has put something to sleep.

Please try:

- If you're using a PC (as opposed to a Mac), follow these instructions (from the Hauptwerk user guide) to prevent Windows putting things to sleep (especially its option for putting USB devices to sleep):

• Disable all Windows power-saving functions, including the options for putting USB ports/devices to sleep. For example, on Windows 10 you would use 'Windows Control Panel | System | Power and sleep | Additional power settings', select the 'High performance' power plan, then click its 'Change plan settings | Change advanced power settings', then make sure that the settings are set as follows:
Sleep: Hibernate after = Never (for 'plugged in' if present)
USB settings: USB selective suspend setting = Disabled (for 'plugged in' if present)
PCI Express: Link state power management = Off (for 'plugged in' if present)

- Shut the computer down.
- Completely switch off mains power to the computer and all hardware (including audio/MIDI interfaces, MIDI console, etc.).
- Turn it all back on again.
- Boot the computer.
- Log in to the operating system if prompted.
- Wait a minute or so, to ensure that everything has had time to finish booting.
- Launch Hauptwerk.
- Make sure that no other software is running that might be trying to use the audio and/or MIDI interface(s) that you use with Hauptwerk.
- Load St. Anne's (which is a small organ that should be quick to load).

Does it load quickly?