Why does Hauptwerk sound so realistic compared to other digital organs?
Hauptwerk’s system is built around the philosophy of using at least one large sample per pipe, (typically 3-10 seconds of a recorded pipe), all including natural attack and release samples of each individual pipe, and recorded with a resolution of up to 24 bit 96kHz. Since all samples are recorded chromatically from a real pipe organ there is no pitch strecthing to “fill in” sections of the keyboard compass. Every note is an individual and unique pipe recording! All samples are held in the computer memory (RAM) to achieve a much higher polyphony than is possible with disk-streaming, commonly used in most samplers. Unlike generic software or hardware samplers, Hauptwerk has complex physical and acoustic models specifically designed to reproduce the features and sound of a pipe organ, and is thus able to achieve much more realistic results. It is also designed for a much higher polyphony than generic samplers and supports up to 32,768 simultaneous notes! Many digital organs compromise th
