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Technical information on computer specs for Hauptwerk
Part 4: audio interface
Functionally, the computer's audio (or sound) interface determines:
- The maximum number of audio output channels to which pipe ranks can be routed from Hauptwerk.
- The sample resolution in which Hauptwerk will produce output (16, 24 or 32-bit). Hauptwerk automatically uses the highest resolution supported by the interface.
- The sample sets that can be used, by way of its maximum sample rate. Hauptwerk will only allow a sample set to be used if the audio interface supports the sample rate used for its samples (technically speaking, that is in order to avoid the overheads of real-time anti-aliasing filters).
- On Windows platforms: the types of audio drivers that can be used by Hauptwerk. Hauptwerk supports both ASIO and DirectSound on Windows, with ASIO usually giving lower latency (delay from pressing a key to hearing the sound). Generally only professional audio interfaces and high-end consumer sound cards support ASIO natively.
- On Windows platforms: the minimum latency that can be achieved reliably. Usually professional audio interface ASIO drivers are better, but the results still vary greatly between individual interfaces and their drivers, from as little as 1.5 milliseconds to more than 50 milliseconds.
- On Windows platforms: the maximum polyphony that can be achieved reliably (number of simultaneous pipes). The interface's drivers can have a large effect on polyphony, as much as doubling or halving it between different interfaces and drivers.
Mac OS X has its own high-performance professional-grade audio system called 'CoreAudio' built in, so there is much less dependency on driver quality on OS X, and latency (delay from pressing a key to hearing the sound) and polyphony should not be affected significantly by the choice of audio interface.
On Windows PCs: the audio interface and the quality of its drivers (either ASIO or DirectSound) are the biggest factors determining the lowest latency that can be achieved, and also have a huge effect on polyphony. ASIO drivers will usually give a much lower latency than DirectSound drivers, and tend to be much more resilient. If you want high polyphony and low latency, please buy a good basic professional/semi-pro audio interface, rather than economising on the most important part of the whole system! A low-cost sound card or emulated/third-party drivers will not usually give especially high performance.
The quality of the audio interface itself (and its digital-to-analogue converters) makes an enormous difference to the audio quality you will hear from Hauptwerk. We would strongly recommend using professional audio interfaces that support at least 24-bit, 96 kHz audio with good quality drivers.
Any audio interface you use must natively support the sample rates used by the organs you wish to load into Hauptwerk (typically 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz and 96 kHz). Note that the default built-in sound output found on many computers, including Apple Macs, only supports 44.1 kHz and so cannot be used with sample sets requiring other sample rates, such as 48 kHz. The sound quality from most computers' built-in outputs is also not usually especially high.
The number of audio outputs required depends on how you wish to amplify the output; for use in churches and reverberant spaces, where dry sample sets would normally be preferred, using many audio channels with separate amplifiers and speakers gives a much better spatial effect, and allows the sound to mix more naturally within the room acoustic. However, for listening at home to sample sets recorded in their original acoustic, a single stereo pair is often more appropriate. Multi-channel audio output facilities are only available in the Advanced Edition of Hauptwerk.
In principle, any audio or sound interface which is supported by the manufacturer on your operating system and hardware, and has good drivers should work. However, since it is impossible for us to test with all products, and some interfaces do have problems with some types of drivers on some platforms, we would either recommend using one of the following interfaces, which we test with and fully support, or we would recommend testing an evaluation version of Hauptwerk with your system before purchasing a licence.
On Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' our recommendations are:
- Echo Audiofire 12 (firewire), which has 12 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Echo Audiofire 8 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- MOTU 24 I/O (PCIe version), which has 24 analogue (mono) outputs. Can be used in Mac Pro only.
- Focusrite Saffire (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio FireWire Audiophile (firewire), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio FireWire 410 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs. Can be used in older G4/G5 Macs only.
- M-Audio Audiophile 1010/1010LT (PCI card), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs. Can be used in older G4/G5 Macs only.
On Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' our recommendations are:
- Echo Audiofire 12 (firewire), which has 12 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Echo Audiofire 8 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- MOTU 24 I/O (PCIe version), which has 24 analogue (mono) outputs. Can be used in Mac Pro only.
- Focusrite Saffire (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio FireWire Audiophile (firewire), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio FireWire 410 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs. Can be used in older G4/G5 Macs only.
- M-Audio Audiophile 1010/1010LT (PCI card), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs. Can be used in older G4/G5 Macs only.
On 32-bit editions of Windows Vista our recommendations are:
- Echo Audiofire 12 (firewire), which has 12 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Echo Audiofire 8 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- MOTU 24 I/O (PCIe version), which has 24 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Focusrite Saffire (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- E-MU 1212M (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 1616M (PCI card), which has 6 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 0404 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb. The 1212M/1616M have much higher quality DACs than the 0404.
- M-Audio FireWire Audiophile (firewire), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio FireWire 410 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio 1010/1010LT (PCI card), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
On 64-bit editions of Windows Vista our recommendations are:
- Echo Audiofire 12 (firewire), which has 12 analogue (mono) outputs. (1)
- Echo Audiofire 8 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs. (1)
- MOTU 24 I/O (PCIe version), which has 24 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Focusrite Saffire (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- E-MU 1212M (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 1820/1820M (PCI card), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 0404 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb. The 1212M has much higher quality DACs than the 0404.
On 32-bit editions of Windows XP our recommendations are:
- Echo Audiofire 12 (firewire), which has 12 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Echo Audiofire 8 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- MOTU 24 I/O (PCIe version), which has 24 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Focusrite Saffire (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- E-MU 1212M (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 1616M (PCI card), which has 6 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 0404 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb. The 1212M/1616M have much higher quality audio than the 0404.
- M-Audio FireWire Audiophile (firewire), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio FireWire 410 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs.
- M-Audio 1010/1010LT (PCI card), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
On 64-bit Windows XP x64 our recommendations are:
- Echo Audiofire 12 (firewire), which has 12 analogue (mono) outputs. (1)
- Echo Audiofire 8 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs. (1)
- MOTU 24 I/O (PCIe version), which has 24 analogue (mono) outputs.
- Focusrite Saffire (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs.
- E-MU 1212M (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 1616M (PCI card), which has 6 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb.
- E-MU 0404 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs and built-in reverb. The 1212M/1616M have much higher quality audio than the 0404.
- M-Audio FireWire Audiophile (firewire), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs. (2) (3)
- M-Audio FireWire 410 (firewire), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs. (2) (3)
- M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI card), which has 2 analogue (mono) outputs. (2) (3)
- M-Audio 1010/1010LT (PCI card), which has 8 analogue (mono) outputs. (2) (3)
(1) We found that performance of the onboard MIDI ports was sluggish with the current Echo drivers for 64-bit Windows (only). Hence we would currently recommend using a separate MIDI interface with the Echo Audiofire interfaces on 64-bit Windows platforms.
(2) The current M-Audio 64-bit ASIO drivers only work with 32-bit Hauptwerk, limiting usable memory to 4 GB.
(3) The current drivers for this interface are beta and/or not fully supported by the manufacturer. We found them to work but you might not be able get support from the manufacturer if you have a problem.
On both Mac and Windows platforms, the Echo, MOTU and M-Audio (1010/1010LT and 2496 only) drivers allow several units to be connected to the computer at the same time to give more outputs.
The Echo, MOTU, Focusrite, E-MU and M-Audio websites have their full specifications.
Professional or semi-professional audio interfaces with high-quality DACs and drivers are strongly recommended above consumer-level sound cards. Apart from audio quality, the quality of the audio interface and its drivers can have an enormous effect on performance, as much as halving or doubling the number of pipes that your computer will be able to sound simultaneously, and determining the delay between pressing a key and hearing the sound ('latency').
Unless specifically advised to do otherwise, it is usually best to ensure that the latest versions of the manufacturers' drivers and firmware are installed.
Please note that the Creative Audigy 2 interfaces, commonly-used in PCs, do have ASIO drivers, but those drivers do not fully support multiple sample rates, and thus cannot be used with some Hauptwerk sample sets in ASIO mode. However, the Creative Audigy 2 interfaces do have fairly low-latency DirectSound drivers on both 32 and 64-bit editions of Windows. In general, we do not recommend the Creative interfaces for use with Hauptwerk because of their restrictive ASIO drivers, although they can instead be used with DirectSound drivers.
Notes about audio interface compatibility with 64-bit Windows: If you intend to use Hauptwerk on 64-bit Windows, please check the website of your intended audio interface's manufacturer for genuine 64-bit ASIO driver support, and, if possible, test the interface with Hauptwerk first, since some 64-bit ASIO drivers do not yet fully work with native 64-bit software.
Of course, the quality of the audio amplifiers and speakers is also critical; there is little point spending a lot of money on a computer and audio interface and then using PC speakers - the results will be terrible. At the very least, a good quality stereo hi-fi amplifier and pair of speakers should be used, or good quality hi-fi headphones. Recording studio monitor speakers are usually good alternatives. For amplification in large buildings, it is often better to have many smaller high-quality amplifiers and speakers than a few high-powered ones.
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