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Hauptwerk is a virtual organ platform that loads all sample data into the computer's RAM. The larger the organ, the more RAM it requires. The required RAM of a sample set is indicated on the Requirements tab of relevant products on our website. It is the memory requirement that also includes Hauptwerk™'s own memory consumption, but does not include the requirements of other software that you run on your PC or Mac simultaneously. Hauptwerk™ runs both on the PC and on the Mac and generally speaking, Mac requires more RAM than a PC. To be sure that the organ will be loaded, you can safely multiply the figures we indicate by 1.25 on the PC and 1.33 on the Mac to obtain the total amount of RAM you need to have in your computer in order to run the sample set assuming a dedicated computer.

For example, if a sample set requires 57 GB of RAM as indicated on our website, you will be safe with 72 GB RAM in the PC or 76 GB RAM in the Mac. It is likely, however, that if you optimize your PC, you can even load this sample set with 57 GB memory footprint into a PC equipped with 64 GB RAM only, but we cannot be sure as it depends on your configuration if this will be possible. Even if Hauptwerk™ indicates that you have more than 57 GB of free RAM before loading the sample set, it might be the case that your operating system will decide that it needs an additional reserve as it sees the RAM getting filled, to ensure a safe and smooth operation.

We obtained our figures measured on a Windows-based computer.

The Computer RAM column shows a recommendation on the amount of RAM your computer should have as a minimum for a given loading setup assuming that some additional RAM is used by the operating system. This value might be different for each case so we recommend the maximum possible amount of RAM installable in your computer for this sample set, except if you are working with external reverberation or in a dry acoustic environment.

Also note that on the Mac you may require more RAM in the computer than the value indicated above, due to the Mac OSX RAM allocation behaviour. Also note that Windows is capable of loading more content than your available RAM, loading (paging) the additional sample data to your hard drive, reading it once the sound is needed (played). In some cases this will cause glitches in the sound when played in real time since the hard drive is slower to access than the computer's RAM, but makes the full library usable in offline music composition and recording even if you do not have the required amount of RAM.