Help center

This section provides tips and recommendations on how the library’s creators believe PAB Pipe Organ Samples can be used most efficiently. If you are new to Hauptwerk™, please refer to their detailed User’s Guide.

Before loading the organ

Increase the default polyphony limit in Hauptwerk™ 3 and later versions, and enable pipe EQ

It is recommended that, before loading the organ, you increase the maximum allowed polyphony (polyphony limit) in Hauptwerk™, in order to permit reproduction of the entire intended performance. This very large organ requires more polyphony to operate effectively than provided by Hauptwerk™’s own default setting.

PAB’s recommended minimum polyphony setting is about 3 000 to 7 000 notes. It is also recommended that you deactivate the Optimise for polyphony instead of model accuracy option.

The following screens show the windows located in Hauptwerk™ ’s General Organ Options page, where you can adjust the settings. Note that this is for Hauptwerk™ version 3.30; later versions may provide a different way to change the maximum allowed polyphony.

In Hauptwerk™ 4 or above, you can set the polyphony limit via the Engine - Polyphony limit (simultaneous pipes/voices, for this organ) menu:

or by adjusting the 'Limit' value when clicking on the appropriate arrows on the 'Audio, Midi and Performance' window:

Note that when you set the polyphony limit to a very high value, your CPU may become stressed when many notes are played together. Please refer to Hauptwerk™ ’s User Guide for how to set this parameter to your CPU appropriately.

It is also important to make sure that the ‘Disable pipe EQ’ option is unchecked as this will allow the extended stops to sound properly.

'Disable pipe EQ' in Hauptwerk™ 4:

Notes to loading the PAB Gravissimo

Hauptwerk™ loads this organ more slowly than other organs

As a result of the tremendous number of elements (switch linkages) and complex logic in the Organ Definition File that implements the advanced functionalities of the PAB Gravissimo, Hauptwerk^TM is loading this organ slower than other simpler instruments. Depending on the speed of your computer, you may need to wait from a few minutes before the Rank Page is displayed in Hauptwerk™. Until the Rank Page appears and Hauptwerk™ is busy processing the organ, it may not respond. This is normal, so there is no workaround for this; please wait while Hauptwerk™ finishes processing the organ definition file.

It may take about one hour to load the organ for the first time after the Rank Page was displayed. This is because first Hauptwerk™ generates a cache file to allow faster subsequent loadings. Using the cache, Hauptwerk™ will load the organ in about 10 minutes depending your computer’s speed.