Introduction

Masterpiece is a free, open-source pipe organ sample player. It plays Hauptwerk-format sample sets and GrandOrgue organs, each with its own console, wiring, wind and swell boxes, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, iPhone and iPad, as a standalone program and as VST3, LV2 and AU plugins. It is part of OpenPipes, an open-source virtual pipe organ platform, and is published under the GPL-3.0 licence.

This manual has two parts. The user guide covers installing the program, opening sample sets, playing, connecting a console, audio, and the memory and loading choices that decide which organs a computer can hold, followed by a complete reference of every setting. The developer guide covers building Masterpiece from source, its architecture, its tests and its performance figures.

Where to start

• Installing Masterpiece for the download for your system.
• Opening an organ for sample sets in folders and in their packages.
• MIDI and consoles to connect keyboards, pistons and shoes.
• Memory, loading and streaming and Small, medium and large organs before loading a large set.
• Troubleshooting and caveats when something does not sound as expected.

Questions and ideas are welcome in the discussions, and problems in the issues of the repository on GitHub.

Installing Masterpiece

This page lists every file a Masterpiece release offers, the systems each file runs on, what it installs and where, what happens at the first start, and how to update and remove the program. Use it to pick the right file for a computer, phone or tablet, to install it, and to find the plugins and the program’s data afterwards.

Release files

Each release on github.com/bonninr/masterpiece/releases carries the files below. <version> is the release number, for example 0.8.0. Every file name starts with masterpiece-<version>-.

The Raspberry Pi, Flatpak and mobile builds contain the standalone program only. The plugin formats are built for Windows, macOS and the Linux PC packages.

Download addresses

The addresses below on masterpieceorgan.com send the browser to the matching file of the latest release. When the latest release lacks the file, the address leads to the release page.

The two ARM .tar.gz archives have no short address. They are on the release page.

System requirements

Notes:

• The Windows program links the Visual C++ runtime statically. No redistributable package needs installing.
• The .deb packages were tested in CI by installing them in Debian 12 and Ubuntu 24.04 containers, for all three architectures.
• Android builds exist for 64-bit processors only. The build file gives the reason: a 32-bit device cannot hold a sample set worth playing.
• Memory is set by the sample sets. The default limit for the samples of one organ is 80% of the computer’s memory, with a floor of 512 MB. See Memory, loading and streaming and Small, medium and large organs.

Processor features and the vector engine

The audio engine renders several samples at a time with the processor’s vector unit. It picks the unit once, when the program starts.

The release builds target the baseline x86-64 instruction set and choose AVX2 at run time. A processor that lacks AVX2 runs the same program on the SSE2 path.

The box Faster audio engine on Settings > Organ settings… > Loading turns the vector engine on and off. It is on by default and takes effect at once. When on, the box reads Faster audio engine: using AVX2 (or SSE2, or NEON); on a processor that has none of them it reads Faster audio engine: not available on this processor. Setting the environment variable MASTERPIECE_SIMD=0 before starting the program forces the per-frame engine.

Windows

Installer

Run masterpiece-<version>-windows-setup.exe. The installer puts bin\Masterpiece.exe and Uninstall.exe into an install folder whose default name is Masterpiece, adds a Start menu entry in a folder that defaults to Masterpiece, adds an entry in Windows Apps & features, and registers the file types listed under File associations.

The installer installs Masterpiece.exe only. The VST3 plugin ships in the Windows zip.

The release workflow adds no code signature to the Windows files.

A silent installation, as used in the project’s own tests:

masterpiece-<version>-windows-setup.exe /S /D=C:\Path\To\Masterpiece

/D= has to be the last argument and takes no quotes. The silent uninstaller is Uninstall.exe /S in the install folder.

Zip

masterpiece-<version>-windows.zip runs from any folder and installs nothing. Extract it and start Masterpiece.exe. The archive also holds the VST3 plugin Masterpiece.vst3; copy it to a folder the DAW scans (see Plugins).

macOS

Download the zip for the processor: macos-arm64 for Apple silicon, macos-x86_64 for Intel. The zip unpacks to a folder Masterpiece that holds Masterpiece.app, Masterpiece.component (Audio Unit) and Masterpiece.vst3. Move Masterpiece.app to Applications.

The macOS builds are unsigned. At the first start macOS may report that Masterpiece “is damaged and can’t be opened”. Remove the quarantine flag and open the app from its context menu:

xattr -cr /Applications/Masterpiece.app

Then right-click Masterpiece.app and choose Open.

The Intel build runs on Apple silicon through Rosetta; it uses the SSE2 vector path there.

Linux

Flatpak

flatpak install --user ./masterpiece-<version>-linux-x86_64.flatpak
flatpak run io.github.bonninr.Masterpiece

The bundle runs on the freedesktop 24.08 runtime. Its permissions:

A sample set elsewhere (for example under /data) needs the folder granted:

flatpak override --user --filesystem=/data io.github.bonninr.Masterpiece

The Flatpak contains no plugins.

Debian, Ubuntu and relatives (.deb)

sudo apt install ./masterpiece-<version>-linux-amd64.deb

The package is named masterpiece and installs:

The package depends on libasound2 (or libasound2t64), libfreetype6, libfontconfig1, libx11-6, libxext6, libxrandr2, libxinerama1, libxcursor1 and libgl1, plus the C library version the binary needs. apt installs them. JACK is optional: Masterpiece opens libjack at run time when it exists and then lists JACK as an audio device type.

Remove it with sudo apt remove masterpiece.

Tar archive

masterpiece-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz holds the program and the VST3 and LV2 plugins as loose files. The files are packed from build artifacts, which carry no executable bit; the build’s own launch check runs chmod +x on the binary. Set the bit on the Masterpiece file before the first start:

tar -xzf masterpiece-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
chmod +x path/to/Masterpiece

The libraries listed for the .deb have to be present on the system.

Raspberry Pi

Pick the package for the installed operating system, 64-bit or 32-bit:

sudo apt install ./masterpiece-<version>-linux-arm64.deb     # Raspberry Pi OS, 64-bit
sudo apt install ./masterpiece-<version>-linux-armhf.deb     # Raspberry Pi OS, 32-bit

Both install the program as masterpiece, with the menu entry and the file types. They contain no plugins. The tarballs linux-arm64.tar.gz and linux-armhf.tar.gz hold the same program as loose files, with the same chmod +x step as above.

The 64-bit build targets plain ARMv8-A, which covers the Raspberry Pi 3 to the Raspberry Pi 5. The 32-bit build is compiled for ARMv7-A with NEON and VFPv4 (-march=armv7-a -mfpu=neon-vfpv4, hard-float) and needs a processor with those.

Both builds use the NEON vector engine. Audio on the Pi goes through ALSA, or through JACK when libjack is installed. See Audio, room and mixer.

Android

Download masterpiece-<version>-android.apk on the device and open it, or install it from a computer with adb:

adb install -r masterpiece-<version>-android.apk

All versions share one signing key, so a newer APK installs over the older one and keeps the organs and settings.

The manifest asks for:

USB host, MIDI and Bluetooth LE are declared as optional features; the app installs on devices that lack them. Phones and tablets covers the app itself.

iPhone and iPad

masterpiece-<version>-ios.ipa is unsigned, and iOS runs only signed apps. Sign and install it with a sideloading tool and an Apple ID of your own; AltStore and Sideloadly are the tools the project’s build notes name. No Apple developer account is needed. The steps for each tool are in the 0.7.0 release notes.

Phones and tablets covers the app itself.

Plugins

The plugin formats are VST3 (Windows, macOS, Linux), Audio Unit (macOS) and LV2 (Linux). The plugin shares its settings folder with the standalone program. See Plugins in a DAW.

There are no separate plugin downloads. Windows and macOS ship the plugins as bundles inside the zips; copy them into a folder that the host scans.

File associations

Windows, macOS and Linux register the same five file types: .Organ_Hauptwerk_xml, .CustomOrgan_Hauptwerk_xml, .organ, .orgue and .rar. Double-clicking or Open with passes the file to the program, which opens it as File > Open… does. See Opening an organ.

First start

Settings folder

Masterpiece keeps its settings, logs and caches in a folder named Masterpiece inside the user’s application-data folder:

Files and folders lists the contents. Two files decide the first start:

Audio device defaults

Before the window opens, the program starts the system’s default audio device with two output channels and no input. A device that opens at a rate below 44.1 kHz is moved to 48 kHz, or to 44.1 kHz when 48 kHz is unavailable. On a first start, or when a saved setup could not be used, the buffer size is the available size nearest to about 10 ms. A saved setup that names missing hardware, or that opens with no live output, is replaced by the defaults.

MIDI inputs

At the start every MIDI input is opened, except those switched off earlier. A console plugged in for the first time plays at once. An input that another program holds is tried again every 3 seconds.

The first-run wizard

On a first start the window opens with a dialog titled Welcome to Masterpiece. It has three steps, shown as Step 1 of 3 and so on. Back and Next move between steps, Next becomes Finish on the last one, and Skip setup ends the wizard at any step. Finish and Skip setup both write settings.mpglobal with the current defaults, which ends the first-run state.

The wizard is a dialog of the standalone program. The plugins and the --gui-only mode skip it. It appears while settings.mpglobal is missing, and any write of that file ends the first-run state. Finish and Skip setup write it.

To see the wizard again, close Masterpiece and remove or rename settings.mpglobal. The general settings start from their defaults at the next start.

The first organ

The first load of each organ opens Organ settings on the Loading tab before the samples are read, so the memory profile can be chosen. Keep changes starts the load. The organ’s console is on screen in seconds, ahead of the samples. See Opening an organ and Memory, loading and streaming.

Updating

The program has no update check. Install a newer release the same way as the first one; settings, favourites and caches stay in the settings folder.

Uninstalling

The settings folder holds the saved organ settings, favourites, MIDI maps and the sample cache. The program creates it at run time; the installers and packages place no files in it, and the routes below leave it in place. Delete the folder by hand to remove that data. The sample cache is as large as the decoded samples of an organ and can fill several gigabytes; Cache folder on Settings > Organ settings… > Loading shows where it is.

Opening an organ

This page covers every way an organ reaches the console: the file formats Masterpiece reads, organs installed in folders, organs played straight from their packages, sample sets that live in several places, demo sets, licences, the favourites window, and the load itself with its progress dialog. It tells you which file to pick, where Masterpiece looks for the rest of a set, and what the log says when something is missing.

Settings that decide how much memory an organ takes, and whether release tails stream from disk, are chosen at load time and are described in Memory, loading and streaming.

Formats

GrandOrgue files may be encoded in UTF-8 or in the Western code page of their author; Masterpiece detects which. A GrandOrgue organ has no organ id, so Masterpiece derives one from a hash of the file: the same file is always the same organ and keeps its own settings.

Sample files

Samples may have any sample rate. They are held at the rate they were recorded in unless the Sample rate option on the Loading tab of Organ settings is set to 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz; a file whose rate differs from the chosen one is then converted at load time with Lagrange interpolation, and its loop points and release marker move with the audio. The option takes effect at the next load. See Memory, loading and streaming.

Ways to open an organ

File > Open…

File > Open… opens the favourites window. When the favourites list is empty, it opens the file dialog directly.

The File menu holds three items:

The file dialog

The file dialog is titled Choose an organ definition file (Choose an organ package on phones and tablets). It lists these patterns:

*.Organ_Hauptwerk_xml, *.CustomOrgan_Hauptwerk_xml, *.Organ.Hauptwerk.xml, *.CustomOrgan.Hauptwerk.xml, *.organ, *.rar, *.orgue

On phones and tablets the list is *.rar and *.orgue, and any other file is ignored. The dialog starts in the folder the last organ was chosen from; that folder is stored as openfolder in settings.mpglobal. On macOS the dialog also lets you navigate into tagged folders from search results.

Other ways

Masterpiece does not accept files dropped on its window.

The plugins have no startup reopen and store no organ in the host’s project state.

Organs installed in folders

An installed Hauptwerk-format organ has this layout:

<root>/OrganDefinitions/<name>.Organ_Hauptwerk_xml
<root>/OrganInstallationPackages/000123/...

The definition names its sample files relative to a package folder. The folder is OrganInstallationPackages/ plus the package id padded to six digits (000123). Masterpiece takes the organ’s root as the grandparent of the definition file. Names are matched without regard to case, and backslashes in definitions are read as folder separators on every platform.

When a set was reorganised with symbolic links, and the folder derived from the definition holds no OrganInstallationPackages, Masterpiece looks in the sample libraries it knows. A library is a folder that holds an OrganInstallationPackages folder. The library that holds the packages the definition names is used, and the log says load: packages found in a known library.

Libraries come from two places:

• Hauptwerk/HauptwerkSampleSetsAndComponents in the home folder, when it holds an OrganInstallationPackages folder.
• The root of every organ that has loaded with samples. Each is stored as a library line in settings.mpglobal.

Libraries are collected automatically. Masterpiece has no setting that lists them by hand.

For a layout that cannot be worked out from the path, the Organ folder row on the Loading tab of Organ settings names the folder that holds OrganInstallationPackages. It is stored with the organ, takes effect at the next load, and has Choose… and Default buttons. By default it reads From the definition (<folder>).

Playing from packages

A sample set is published as one or more RAR archives that hold the tree of an installed organ: OrganDefinitions/ and OrganInstallationPackages/<id>/. Masterpiece reads these archives in place. It never needs the disk space of an unpacked set.

What is unpacked and what stays

At the first open of a set of packages, Masterpiece reads the file lists and unpacks every file that is not audio into a folder of its own. Those files are the organ definitions, the console artwork and the package definitions. Image editor sources (.psd, .psb, .xcf) and encrypted files are skipped. The samples (.wav, .wv, .flac, .aif, .aiff, .ogg) are never written to disk. They are decompressed into memory during the load, one pass per archive, in archive order.

Because the samples have no file of their own, a packaged organ keeps them resident in memory. Release tails of such an organ do not stream from disk. See Memory, loading and streaming.

The unpacked files live in Packaged/<identity> inside the Masterpiece folder in the user’s application data (see Files and folders). The identity is a hash of the archives’ lower-case file names and sizes, so the same packages open the same folder wherever they are kept. The folder holds:

A later open of the same packages logs archive: already unpacked in <folder> and skips the unpacking. A set copied or moved elsewhere is recognised by file name and size; its samples are read from the new place from then on, and the log says archive: now read from <path> (was <path>).

Note

Reading a RAR archive runs front to back. A solid archive has to be decompressed from the start to reach any file, so the first open of a large solid set takes the longest. The progress dialog shows Reading the archive and Extracting definitions and artwork during this step.

Package names Masterpiece recognises

Open any one file of a set. Masterpiece finds the others in the same folder.

Copies saved by a browser or a download manager, such as Name (1).rar or Name.1.rar, are ignored when the original is in the folder, and the log says which file was ignored. A copy with no original beside it produces a hint in the error message to rename it. A file with a partial-download companion beside it (.crdownload, .part, .download or .opdownload) is refused with the message that the download has not finished.

Limits

Masterpiece reads RAR archives and .orgue packages. It does not read other archive formats as packages.

A file that fails to read inside an archive (a CRC error, a download cut short) is listed, and the rest is unpacked. The organ opens when its definition came out. A dialog titled <file> is damaged lists up to three files, advises testing the archive and downloading it again, and offers Show the log. The marker file is not written for a damaged set, so the next open unpacks again.

A package without a definition fails with there is no organ definition file (.Organ_Hauptwerk_xml) in "<file>" or the packages beside it.

Several organs in one set of packages

When the unpacked folder holds more than one definition (perspectives, full and light versions, or two organs), the status line reads These packages hold several organs: choose one and a menu headed Which organ? lists the definitions by file name. The one opened last carries (last opened) and comes first. Escaping the menu leaves the status No organ opened.

Phones and tablets

On phones and tablets an organ is opened as a package: a .rar or .orgue. On Android the chosen document is copied into the application’s storage under Masterpiece/Organs before it opens; a copy of the same size is reused. On iPhone and iPad the Files app lends the document, and a volume of a multi-volume set asks for the folder that holds the rest (The rest of <file>). See Phones and tablets.

Packages found elsewhere

A definition may name packages that are not with the organ. Every definition checks this at load time. A package counts as present when any one of its samples is found under the organ’s root, in the organ’s archives, or in a place already found. One sample is enough because a demo’s definition names the samples of the whole organ and ships only some of them.

For each package that is missing, Masterpiece searches in this order:

1. The folders it was pointed to before, from package-folders.txt.
2. The organ’s home: the folder of the archive for a packaged organ, or the organ’s root for an installed one. The folders directly inside it are searched too.
3. The folder set as Package folder, and the folders directly inside it.
4. The known sample libraries, for installed packages.
5. For archives: the archives named in joined-packages.txt; when that file is absent, every .rar and .orgue file in the folders of step 2 and 3 whose first package folder is one of those wanted. Only the first volume of a set is examined; later volumes and renamed copies are passed over. The archives found are written to joined-packages.txt.
6. The dialog described below.

The log records the search: load: N package(s) not with the organ; looking in <folder> and the K folders in it, and in the package folder <folder>. Each package then gets a line: load: package 002374 (<name>) from <folder>, ... from another organ's archives, or ... is not in <folder>, a folder in it, nor the package folder: its pipes are silent.

The package folder setting

Package folder is on the Loading tab of Organ settings. It names a folder where you keep packages. The folder and the folders directly in it are searched. The default is None; Choose… sets it and Clear removes it. The setting is stored at once in settings.mpglobal (key packagedir) and applies to every organ at its next load.

The missing-package dialog

When a package is still missing after the search, a dialog titled A package this organ plays is missing names the package id and name. Package 1, the format’s standard components, is never asked for (see Composite organs).

package-folders.txt and joined-packages.txt

Both files are plain text, kept in the organ’s root folder: the folder holding OrganDefinitions for an installed organ, and the Packaged/<identity> folder for a packaged one. A third file, joined-<identity>.txt, holds the saved file index of each joined archive.

To forget a choice, delete the file or the line.

Composite organs

A composite organ is a definition assembled from several sample sets. Its sample table references packages that ship with other organs; for example, one composite plays the samples of two separate demonstration sets. It opens like any other definition from a folder or from packages, and the search described in Packages found elsewhere finds the sets it plays: kept beside the composite, in the package folder, in a sample library, or in archives.

A composite may also borrow the format’s standard components (package 1) for its key, stop and blower noises. Those components come with no sample set, so Masterpiece generates stand-in noises, stores them in Standard noises in the Masterpiece folder, and loads them like samples. The log counts them: samples: N standard noises played as generated ones.

Sets found in archives are joined to the composite’s own archives and read from them in the same pass as its other samples. The packages found with other organs are part of what the composite’s sample cache holds.

GrandOrgue organs

A GrandOrgue organ opens from its .organ file in a folder or from an .orgue package. The converter translates the organ’s manuals, stops, ranks, couplers, tremulants, enclosures and panels into the model the loader reads. Sample and image paths stay relative to the folder of the .organ file. Where the two formats differ, the semantics are GrandOrgue’s: a manual is a keyboard and a division at once, a pipe’s release defaults to the tail of its own attack file found at the file’s cue point, and an enclosure lowers the level of its windchest groups with no filter.

Demo sets

A demonstration set ships the definition of the whole organ and the samples of some stops. The stops it leaves out are shown as not available and stay off.

• A stop counts as playing when its ranks have pipes in the definition, or when its switch leads, through the wiring, to the pallet of a pipe that a key opens. A demo keeps every stop’s action noise, a pipe on a pallet that the stop’s own switch opens with no key; those pipes do not count as playing.
• An organ that names no key switches keeps every pallet.
• Locked stops are drawn as the set draws them. A click on one is refused, and its tooltip reads <stop> is not available.
• Locked stops also stay in when anything else would draw them: a general, a piston, the crescendo, a tutti, a MIDI message or the organ’s own wiring. The switch network holds their switches off. A switch that also draws a stop with pipes stays free, and so does a switch the organ starts engaged.
• Copies of a locked stop’s knob on other console pages follow it.
• An organ in which no stop has pipes is not treated as a demo, and its stops are left as they are.
• In the stop list, a locked stop is greyed and its tooltip reads This stop’s ranks ship no pipes in this sample set. In Organ settings, Stops and perspectives, its checkbox is disabled with the same tooltip.

A stop left out by your own choice in Organ settings is a different case. It is dimmed on the console, and its tooltip reads <stop> is not loaded: chosen in Organ settings, Stops.

Licences and encrypted samples

Licences

Some definitions mark their samples as requiring the publisher’s licence (the definition’s licence-serial-number flag on the sample). The files themselves are plain and readable. Masterpiece cannot check a licence. It asks once per organ whether you hold one that allows you to play the set in this program.

The question is asked on the loading thread, after the definition is read and before any sample. The box is titled A licence is needed for these samples and names the organ and, when the packages state one, the publisher. Its buttons are Load the samples and Cancel. Enter, Escape and closing the box all answer Cancel; only a click on Load the samples answers yes.

The Settings menu holds Licence confirmed for this organ when the loaded organ has licensed samples. A tick shows that the licence is confirmed. Choosing it while ticked withdraws the licence and loads the organ again without the licensed samples. Choosing it while unticked asks the question again, and a yes loads the organ again with the samples.

The sample cache is kept separately for the two states, so withdrawing and confirming does not mix them.

Encrypted samples

Files with the extensions .hbw and .hbx are encrypted for another program. Masterpiece detects them by name, never decodes them, and counts them.

A licence confirmation has no effect on encrypted files.

The favourites window

File > Open… shows the favourites window, titled Open. It is resizable and keeps up to 64 organs in numbered slots.

A favourite whose file is gone shows not found: <path> on its row. Clicking it shows Not found: <path> in the status line, and the favourite is kept, so a set on a drive that is not plugged in is still listed. When the organ has a kept copy (Keep this organ playable without its installation files on the Loading tab of Organ settings), a click opens the copy.

The list is stored in settings.mpglobal as favourite organ <slot> <name> | <file> lines and is written at once. The same file holds favourites of temperaments and combination sets. An organ is listed once: the list is matched by file path.

Other versions of an organ

File > Other versions of this organ lists the definitions beside the loaded one: the other perspectives, or the full and light versions of a set. Each entry shows a file name without extension. The loaded organ is ticked and disabled. A choice loads that definition.

• For an organ opened from packages, the list holds every definition in the unpacked folder, searched through its subfolders.
• For an organ in a folder, the list holds the definitions in the folder of the loaded definition, without its subfolders. For an installed Hauptwerk-format organ that folder is OrganDefinitions, so it lists every organ installed there.

The patterns are *.Organ_Hauptwerk_xml, *.CustomOrgan_Hauptwerk_xml, *.organ (also spelled .Organ and .ORGAN), *.Organ.Hauptwerk.xml and *.CustomOrgan.Hauptwerk.xml. The submenu appears only when there is more than one entry.

Reopening the last organ

Reopen the last organ when Masterpiece starts is on the Loading tab of Organ settings. It is off by default, applies to the standalone application, and is stored at once in settings.mpglobal (key reopenlastorgan). The last organ is recorded when a load completes; a cancelled or failed load leaves the record as it was. At start, a file named on the command line takes precedence. Otherwise the recorded organ opens, provided its file still exists; when it does not, nothing opens.

The crash guard

The standalone application keeps a record of the organ being loaded. When a load starts, the organ’s path is written to settings.mpglobal as a running line. A clean exit removes it. A system shutdown, logout or service stop (the termination and hang-up signals on Linux and macOS) counts as a clean exit. On phones and tablets the line is removed when the application goes to the background and written again when it returns, because the system may end a backgrounded application without notice.

At the next start Masterpiece reads the line and removes it. When it was present, the log records:

start: the last session did not end cleanly while <file> was loaded

with ; reopened appended when that organ was opened again by Reopen the last organ when Masterpiece starts. The crash writes this log line and changes nothing else: no dialog is shown, and the setting reopens the last organ as after a clean exit.

First load of an organ

The first time an organ loads (it has no settings file yet), Masterpiece reads the definition and draws the console without audio. Organ settings then opens on the organ, so you can choose the resident format, streaming, mono and which stops to load before any memory is spent. Closing Organ settings (Keep changes) loads the audio. Later loads of the same organ use the stored choices. See Organ settings.

Organ settings and the other settings files are stored by the organ’s identity (its name and unique id; for a definition with no id, its name and a hash of its path), so renaming or moving the set keeps its settings.

The load

While a load runs, the Loading dialog stays in front. It shows the file name of the organ, the current phase, a progress bar, a line of detail and a button. The dialog has a native title bar and a fixed size (460 by 190 pixels). It ignores Escape and the title bar’s close button; it closes when the load ends. The status line shows Opening <file>... for a package and Loading <file>... for a definition. The bar moves like a barber pole in a phase with nothing to count.

Phases

Saving the samples for the next load writes the sample cache and runs only when the cache has to be written and Save the sample cache is set to Before the organ plays. With In silence, while it plays, the organ opens first and the status line shows saving the samples for the next load with a percentage. See Memory, loading and streaming.

The log records the time in each phase after the load, as stage: <phase name> N s lines, and ends with load: TOTAL N ms (<file>).

Cancelling

A cancelled load discards the partly loaded organ, because half an instrument that silently drops notes is worse than none. The status line reads Load cancelled - no organ is loaded. Masterpiece then loads the console of the same organ without audio, so Organ settings can be opened from the Settings menu. The same happens when a load stops at the memory limit, after the dialog Not enough memory for this organ.

Failures

The status line after a successful load reads N stops, N ranks, N samples (N MB), followed by the counts above when they apply.

The log

Every session writes masterpiece.log in the Masterpiece folder; the session before it is kept as masterpiece.previous.log. --log <file> writes it elsewhere. Dialogs that report a failure offer Show the log. These lines concern opening:

Attach masterpiece.log to a bug report. See Troubleshooting and caveats.

A tour of the window

This page describes the main window from top to bottom: the three menus and every control in the top bar, the console pages and how the mouse works on them, pages in windows of their own, panels, the plain stop list, the swell faders, the on-screen keyboard and the context menus. Registration, pistons, tuning and recording are covered on Playing.

The window opens at 1280 x 760 pixels and can be resized freely. From top to bottom it holds:

The top bar

From left to right the bar holds the File, View and Settings menus; the No DSP box; the volume slider with its dB readout; the level meter; Set; the stepper (<, the frame readout and >); the tuning button, which shows the temperament and the pitch of A; the layout selector, when the organ offers a choice; the save button; and the Panic button, drawn as an octagon with a cross.

File

View

The Swell faders, Keyboard and window items are described in the sections below. Show played keys is described under Show played keys.

Settings

The standalone application supplies the three settings windows. In the VST3, LV2 and AU plugins the editor has no handler for Organ settings… and General settings…, and Audio and MIDI… is absent.

Controls in the bar

The bar shortens in a fixed order when the window narrows. The level meter gives way first and the volume fader keeps at least 90 px. When the sequencer, tuning and utility buttons leave less than 350 px for the menus, No DSP and the fader, the buttons move to a second row of their own.

The sequencer buttons on a phone or tablet are 44 px wide and the Panic and Save state buttons 46 px wide, as against 30 px and 38 px on a desktop.

The status line

The strip along the bottom edge shows, from left to right and separated by |:

1. The result of the last load: the number of stops and ranks, the samples loaded with their size in MB, and any of N missing (named in the log), N unreadable (named in the log), N encrypted, N awaiting a licence and INCOMPLETE (memory limit). A load with no audio reads graphics only - no audio loaded.
2. voices N: the number of voices sounding now.
3. While the sample cache is being written, saving the samples for the next load, with a percentage and, after a few seconds, the time left.
4. When non-zero, each after a comma: dropped N (note starts that found no free voice), no audio N (starts whose samples were not in memory), late blocks N (audio blocks that took longer than the audio they produced) and, with streamed release tails, a warning that the disk fell behind.

After a load with no audio, the line reads `65 stops, 312 ranks, graphics only

• no audio loaded | voices 0, no audio 24`. The line is cut short in a narrow window; the whole text appears as a tooltip. The window has no CPU readout.

Page tabs

A console that ships more than one page shows one tab per page. A page is named as the organ names it, or Page 1, Page 2 and so on. Panels shown as tabs follow the console pages. A click on a tab shows that page.

In the standalone application each console page tab carries a small button, a square with an arrow. A click on it opens the page in its own window; the button is filled while the window is open, and a click then closes the window and brings the page back to its tab.

A right-click on a console page tab opens a menu:

A right-click on a panel’s tab offers Rename <name>…. In the plugins the pages stay tabs and the icon and menu are absent.

The console

Where an organ ships console artwork, the console is the organ’s own: the bitmaps of its drawstops, pistons, couplers, shoes, manuals and engraved labels, placed as the set places them. A click on a drawstop moves the switch the drawstop is bound to and changes its picture in one step.

Scaling

The window shows a whole page at once, so the console has no scroll bars. The page is scaled by one factor for both directions, and the factor is raised as well as lowered: a console drawn smaller than the window is enlarged. The factor is the largest at which the whole page fits. The page is centred and the spare room is split evenly on both sides. The proportions are kept, so the case and the keys keep their shape.

A page much smaller than the organ’s first page (a settings panel a few hundred pixels wide, for example) is shown at the scale of the first page, which is smaller than the largest scale that fits. This applies when the first page is at least twice as wide and twice as tall as the page shown. A page in its own window always fits the window.

Clicks, drags and right-clicks land on the picture at any scale.

Layouts

A set can draw its pages again for another screen shape, with up to three alternate layouts beside the main one. A layout counts as portrait when its console is taller than it is wide. The layout selector in the top bar lists them as Console: main, Console: alt 1, Console: alt 2 (portrait) and so on.

The window follows its own shape. When the area for the console turns taller than it is wide, the first portrait layout is chosen; when it turns wider again, the first landscape layout is chosen. A layout picked by hand holds until the shape turns. A page that declares nothing for the chosen layout is drawn in the main layout, whole.

Clicking and dragging

A control is dragged up and down, with the pointer’s movement scaled to half a unit of the 0 to 127 range per pixel. A control drawn lying down, such as a slider labelled from Original to Silent, is dragged sideways: right is more, and the movement is scaled to the drawn width, between 0.3 and 1 unit per pixel. The axis is whichever the pointer has moved further along from the press. A control whose artwork says that clicking higher decreases the value is reversed. The drag keeps working when the pointer leaves the picture, and the value stops at the ends of its travel.

A drag of the crescendo pedal fires each step it crosses, in order. See Crescendo.

The console has no mouse-wheel handler: the wheel does not move a drawstop, a piston, a shoe or the crescendo.

Stops that make no sound

Two kinds of stop are drawn and move but make no sound. A tooltip names the cause when the pointer rests on the drawstop for 700 ms.

A stop with no pipes is also held in. A general, the crescendo, a tutti, a MIDI message and the organ’s own wiring leave it pushed in. A switch that also draws a stop with pipes stays free to draw it, and so does a switch that the organ starts engaged. A stop whose pipes are reached only through a pallet that a key opens counts as having pipes. When none of the organ’s stops has pipes, the organ is not a demo and its stops are left as they are.

A stop that was left out of the load has to be loaded again to sound: change the choice in Organ settings and load the organ again.

Context menus

A right-click opens the menu of the object under the pointer. The mappings themselves are described on MIDI and consoles.

A page in its own window

A console surrounds the player: jambs to either side, the key desk in front, a combination panel above. A set draws each on a page of its own, and each page can open in a window of its own to spread the console over several screens. The windows are available in the standalone application. A page is opened from the icon on its tab, from the right-click menu of its tab, or from View > A page in its own window.

A page window:

• has the title <page name> - <organ name>, a native title bar with minimise, maximise and close buttons, and can be resized;
• opens with the page’s own size and shape, scaled down to fit 1600 x 1000 pixels at most, and never above its own size; a page that draws nothing opens at 1000 x 700;
• opens on another display when there is one, and on a portrait display when its layout is portrait and one exists. With one display it opens beside the main window, offset 40 px down and across for each window already open;
• shows its page whole at the largest scale that fits, centred;
• opens in the layout chosen in the tab menu, or follows the shape of its own window as the main window does (a portrait layout when the window is taller than it is wide);
• passes the computer-keyboard shortcuts of the MIDI windows to the program;
• on close, returns the page to its tab in the main window.

The windows are remembered per organ: which pages are open, where, at what size and in which layout. They close when another organ loads and reopen where they were once the organ is in. A position that no display shows any longer is moved onto a display that exists.

Panels

A panel shows the organ as equal rectangles with the name in the middle, for a touch screen or for a console that is hard to read at a distance. An organ has up to two panels. Each panel is a tab beside the console pages, or a window of its own on any screen. Every rectangle stands for something the organ already has, so its MIDI mapping is the stop’s, piston’s or control’s own.

View > Panel of the whole organ makes the first panel; View > New panel makes the second. The panels are named Panel 1 and Panel 2 until renamed.

Sections

The panel is divided into columns, one per section, in this order:

A division’s own prefix, repeated on its stops (HW Principal, HW Flute), is dropped from the names in that column when most of the column’s names carry it. A footage at the end of a name (8', 2 2/3', IV) is set on a line of its own below the name.

Using a panel

The bar

The bar along the top of the panel holds, from left to right:

In edit mode every element shows a tick box at its top-right corner. A click on the tick box shows or hides the element; hidden elements are dimmed in edit mode and absent otherwise. A click anywhere else on the element, or a right-click, opens a dialog with the element’s name. The dialog has OK, Organ’s name, which gives the organ’s own name back, and Cancel. On a fader the title bar names it and the rest of the fader shows or hides it.

A panel made, deleted or renamed through the View menu is written at once. Other changes are written by Save. The panels of an organ are kept in organs/<organ>.mppanels, in the data folder described on Files and folders. A panel window opens at the position and size saved with the panel, or 1024 x 600 pixels centred.

New stops and sections that an organ update brings show by default. The file lists only what was switched off.

The plain stop list

An organ that ships no console artwork opens on the plain stop list. It shows the organ’s stops under a heading for each division, as tiles 190 px wide in as many columns as fit, with a slim scroll bar. A drawn stop is ivory with dark lettering; a pushed-in stop is dark. The list follows the engine, so a stop drawn by a piston, a combination or MIDI shows drawn here too.

A stop that was left out of the load is dimmed and carries the tooltip Not loaded: chosen in Organ settings, Stops. A stop whose ranks ship no pipes is disabled and carries the tooltip This stop’s ranks ship no pipes in this sample set.

The list holds stops. Couplers, tremulants and pistons that the organ has as switches alone are reached through a panel.

Swell faders

View > Swell faders shows a strip 120 px wide at the right of the window with one vertical fader for each swell shoe of the organ. The item is present when the organ has at least one shoe. The strip is off at every start.

• Each fader runs from 0 (closed) to 127 (open) in steps of 1. Every fader starts open, at 127, when an organ is loaded.
• The label under a fader is the shoe’s name with the words Enclosure, Swell box or Swell taken off the front, so that two boxes called Enclosure R and Enclosure PO read R and PO. A shoe with no name left reads Swell. The organ’s own full name appears as a tooltip.
• A shoe moved over MIDI moves its fader.
• Two enclosures worked by one shoe share one fader.
• A control that sets a level, and that the organ asks to remember, has no fader here; the organ draws it on a page of its own.
• The crescendo has a fader in the Expression section of a panel, or the organ’s own drawn control.
• A right-click on a fader opens the menu of a continuous control described under Context menus.

On-screen keyboard

View > Keyboard shows a keyboard along the bottom of the window, 96 px high. It spans MIDI notes 24 to 108 (C1 to C8, with middle C as C4), and the key width follows the window width. A click plays the key through the same path as a MIDI keyboard, so stops and couplers apply.

When the organ has more than one playable keyboard, a selector above the keyboard names the manual that the keys play. It starts on the organ’s preferred manual, which is the widest compass when declared and otherwise the unenclosed manual with the most pipework. The keys play on the channel assigned to that manual in Settings > General settings > MIDI, and follow a change of channel made there while the organ is loaded. The keyboard is off at every start. The keys are played with the mouse.

Show played keys

View > Show played keys is ticked by default. While it is on, a key of a drawn manual lights when the key is down on that manual, whether it was pressed on the screen, on a console or by a recorded performance. A key lights on the manual it reached. Switching the item off stops the console from looking at the keys and from drawing them; any key lit goes dark once. Drawing the keys is the most costly part of repainting the window in a fast passage, so the item helps on a slow machine. The choice is kept for every organ.

Keyboard shortcuts

The window has no fixed shortcuts. Any stop, coupler, piston, setter and other object that has a MIDI window can be given a computer key there. The key then works from the main window, from page windows and from the Combinations window, unless the control with the focus uses the key itself. See MIDI and consoles.

Tooltips

A tooltip appears after the pointer rests on a control for 700 ms.

Where the plugins and phones differ

Playing

This page covers what a player does at the console: drawing stops, couplers and tremulants, the organ’s own pistons, the player’s own combinations and sequencer, the crescendo and the swell boxes, the transposer, temperament and pitch, the metronome, the recorder, and what Masterpiece remembers between sessions. Each section says how the feature is reached. The window itself is described on A tour of the window.

Drawing stops, couplers and tremulants

A stop, coupler or tremulant is drawn from any of these:

• its drawstop on the console, or its rectangle in a panel or tile in the stop list (see A tour of the window);
• a MIDI message mapped to it, or a computer key assigned to it in its MIDI window (see MIDI and consoles);
• a piston, a general, a divisional, the crescendo or the sequencer.

Drawing goes through the organ’s own wiring: the click moves the knob a player would move, and the stops, couplers and noises that the wiring joins to the knob follow it.

A key that is down answers to the registration as it changes. Drawing a stop while a key is held makes that rank speak, and pushing it in silences it. A coupler drawn or pushed in while keys are held reaches, or stops reaching, the divisions it couples at once. A tremulant switch that swaps a stop’s rank for its alternate recording sounds the held notes again on the other rank.

A tremulant shakes the pipes only when the engine runs its detailed path. The Tremulants box in Settings > Organ settings…, tab Loading, is on by default, and the No DSP box in the top bar bypasses tremulants together with the wind model, enclosure shading and voicing.

A stop that was left out of the load, and a locked stop of a demo set, are described under Stops that make no sound.

Drawing every stop

The program has no button that draws every stop. The command line draws them for a scripted take: --draw-stops all, described on Command line. The opposite is the general cancel, which pushes in every stop, coupler and tremulant of the registration (see Generals and cancels).

Panic

Panic in the top bar releases every key on every channel, as a console’s cancel does. An organ pipe has no decay, so a note left down by a lost MIDI note-off, or by a coupler changed in mid-chord, sounds until something releases it.

The organ’s own pistons

An organ declares the pistons its builder put on the console, and the console draws the ones the set draws. They work as follows.

• A piston fires on the press and lets itself out again, as a button does.
• Which combination a piston fires is declared by the organ, either directly or by a type code (101 for General 01, 100 for General cancel).
• The organ’s setter is the switch with assignment code 12. While it is engaged, a press on any piston stores what is drawn into that piston, and recalls nothing. The setter of the organ and the Set button of the Combinations window follow each other: pressing either lights both.
• A capture reads the state that results from the wiring, which is what is seen and heard. A stop pulled by a coupler or by another piston is stored as drawn.
• A combination the organ marks as fixed does not capture. A cancel disengages and never engages; a combination marked so engages and never disengages.
• Stored combinations belong to the player. They are kept in the combination file described under Combination sets, and never in the sample set. A combination that was never captured recalls what the organ declares for it.
• A drawn Set, GC and cancels that are wired to the organ’s real switches work from the drawn picture.
• The General cancel of GrandOrgue organs is the player’s own general cancel.
• Option General Cancel also puts the keyboards back on their own manuals (Settings > General settings > MIDI, off by default): the cancel then also returns every keyboard moved by a manual button to the manual it started on.

The player’s own combinations

Every organ has generals, divisionals, cancels and a sequencer of the player’s own, whatever its file declares. They are the same on every organ, answer the same setter as the organ’s pistons, and are saved per organ in the player’s data.

What a registration holds

A registration holds the drawn state of stops, couplers and tremulants and nothing else. The blower, noises, action sounds and page switches are not part of it, so a general cancel never stops the blower. A stop whose name contains noise or blower, a stop in a division with noise in its name, a stop that sounds only noise ranks and a stop worked from a switch named blower are left out.

On an organ with a drawn console, the registration holds what has a drawstop on the console. An organ that draws no console offers every stop, coupler and tremulant.

A divisional covers one division: its stops, the couplers that feed it (counted to the division of the keyboard they are played from), and the tremulant that shakes it. A coupler or tremulant whose division the file does not make clear belongs to the generals only. The Combinations window lists the divisions that hold at least one element, the pedal first and then by manual number.

The Combinations window

View > Combinations shows or hides the window. It is a window of its own, resizable in height, with a close button that hides it. The first time an organ opens, the window is closed; after that it opens as the player left it, at the position and size saved with the organ. On the first showing it sits at the bottom right of the main window.

The counts are saved with the combination set. A piston button is dim when it was never set, lighter when it holds a registration, and amber when it is the one whose registration is drawn now. Any hand-drawn change unlights every piston. Recalling a general replaces every lit piston; recalling a divisional lights it and unlights only the general.

Capture

There are two ways to store a registration.

1. Turn Set on, then press the piston. Pressing a piston while Set is on stores what is drawn into it. Set stays on until it is turned off again, or turns off after the store when Set turns off after storing is ticked.
2. Press the piston, draw the stops, then press Set in the top bar. Set in the top bar is momentary. It stores what is drawn into the piston or the step chosen last, which is the last general, divisional or frame pressed or reached, and the status line reads Stored in <name>. With nothing chosen it reads Choose a piston or a step first; then Set stores what is drawn into it. When capture is on from the console or the Combinations window, Set lights, and a press on it lets capture go (Set is off: pistons recall again).

Names of targets read General 3, Pedal divisional 2 (the division’s name) and Step 12.

Recall

Pressing a general sets every element of the registration to its stored state. Pressing a divisional sets the elements of its division. A registration stored with nothing drawn recalls as a cancel. A piston that was never set does nothing and clears nothing; pressing it chooses it as the target for Set.

Generals and cancels

GC pushes in every element of the registration. Each division’s 0 pushes in the elements of that division. A cancel leaves the blower, noises and page switches alone.

The sequencer and its frames

The sequencer holds up to 999 frames, each a registration of the whole console. It is walked with two pistons, previous and next, and is meant for the pistons of a piece: one press, no looking.

• The frame readout in the top bar reads Frame 3 / 12 and the one in the Combinations window Frame 3 of 12. The second number is the last frame that holds anything, or the current frame if that is higher. With no frame stored the readouts read No frames; the window shows - of 12 with stored frames and frame 0.
• Stepping forward stops after the last frame that holds anything, and stepping back stops at frame 1. It never wraps. Stepping from frame 0 goes to frame 1.
• With Set on, stepping captures what is drawn into the frame it lands on, and may run past the last frame to frame 999. Hold Set, walk forwards and set each frame as you go: that is how a sequence for a piece is built.
• |< goes to frame 1, >| to the last frame that holds anything, -10 and +10 move by ten frames and stop at the ends. The digit buttons go to a frame without leaving the keys; outside capture they stop at the last frame that holds anything.
• A click on the readout, in either place, asks for a frame number of up to 3 digits (Go to a frame). A number past the last frame goes to the last frame, unless Set is on.
• Insert opens an empty frame at the current frame (frame 1 when none is current) and the frames after it move up one. It does nothing when frame 999 holds a registration. Delete takes the current frame out and the frames after it move down one.
• A frame recalled by the sequencer behaves exactly as the same registration pressed by hand.
• The sequencer buttons in the top bar, < and >, step the same sequencer; < is disabled at frame 1 and > is disabled at the last frame unless Set is on.

Combination sets

A combination set is a whole registration book: a recital’s, a service’s. An organ has the default set and any number of named sets.

A set holds the organ’s own pistons that were captured, the player’s generals, divisionals and frames, and the counts of generals and divisionals. A set that defines fewer pistons than the last one leaves none of the last one behind.

The sets are files in the data folder, combinations/<organ>.mpcomb for the default set and combinations/<organ>.<name>.mpcomb for a named set. The name becomes part of the file name; the characters / \ : * ? " < > | and control characters become _, and trailing dots and spaces are dropped. The file holds the organ’s own pistons first, then the player’s lines, each starting with player. Elements are stored as s<stop> and w<switch>, so a file survives an organ update that adds or reorders stops; an element the organ no longer has is dropped when the file is read. To copy a set to another computer, copy the file.

A capture is written within a quarter of a second, and at once when the program closes. Switching a set writes the set being left.

Mapping the pistons to a console

A right-click on Set, GC, a general, a divisional, a 0, or any sequencer button opens a menu: the current mappings, Learn (for Set, Learn: held while pressed and Learn: toggles), MIDI window… and Clear mapping. Press the control on the console after Learn; a second right-click cancels. Settings > General settings > MIDI has the buttons Learn sequencer + and Learn sequencer -. The mappings of the sequencer, generals, setter and the page and tuning buttons are kept for every organ in midi/console.mpmidi. See MIDI and consoles.

Crescendo and swell boxes

Swell boxes

A swell box is an enclosure. Its shoe is a continuous control with values from 0 to 127. The shoe is worked in these ways:

• the organ’s drawn shoe, dragged on the console;
• a fader of View > Swell faders, one for each shoe;
• a fader in the Expression section of a panel;
• a pedal or fader mapped to it (right-click the shoe, see MIDI and consoles).

Every shoe starts open, at 127, when an organ loads, and is forgotten at the next load. The effect of the box on the sound is the Enclosures (swell shades) box in Settings > Organ settings…, tab Loading; it is on by default, and the No DSP box bypasses it.

When a pedal does not send the whole of 0 to 127, put the pedal in the closed position, right-click the shoe and choose Closed position: where the pedal is now; do the same for Open position: where the pedal is now. Use the pedal’s whole travel restores 0 to 127.

Crescendo

A crescendo is one continuous control with a row for each step. Each row names the switch that fires that step’s registration. The same mechanism starts the blower and fires enclosure noises, so a shoe that drives switches may do more than one thing.

• Moving the control fires every threshold it sweeps past, in the order it passes them. A drag from nothing to full fires each step in turn and the top one lands last; a drag back fires them in reverse, so the registration that stays is the one that belongs to where the control stopped.
• The steps are alternatives. A new step disengages the previous one, so the shoe can fire it again.
• A step is a threshold crossing, which lets an organ give a switch hysteresis: a blower can start at 120 on the way up and stop at 126 on the way down.
• The crescendo is the organ’s drawn control, or the Crescendo fader in a panel’s Expression section, which is present when the organ has a staged control with at least 3 steps; the control with the most steps is taken. It is mapped to a pedal like a shoe.
• The control that a player moves can differ from the control that carries the steps; Masterpiece follows the organ’s linkages up to the control that nothing feeds and moves that one.

The player’s generals and the sequencer do not hold the crescendo.

Transposer, temperament and pitch

The tuning button in the top bar shows what is in force, for example Equal A 440.0 +2: the temperament, the pitch of A in Hz, and the transposition when it is not zero. A click opens the tuning panel next to the button.

Each setting applies to notes played after it changes. A held note keeps the pitch it started with. The three settings are saved with the organ.

Temperament

The Temperament selector lists The organ’s own (followed by the name of that temperament, or Equal when the organ declares none), the eight temperaments below, and a loaded Scala file as Scala: <name>. The offsets are cents against equal temperament, for the pitch classes C to B; the offset applies to the sounding pitch class, which is the key played plus the transposition.

Scala file… opens a file dialog for a .scl file. The scale must have twelve notes after the description and note count, and its last note must be 1200 cents (the octave) to within 0.5 cent. Notes are given in cents (with a decimal point) or as ratios (3/2, or a whole number). On a note line, text after the first word is a comment. The scale’s first note is applied to C# and the scale is measured from C. The description line becomes the name. A file that cannot be used leaves the previous temperament in force, and the panel reports <file> was not loaded with one of: the file is empty; no note count; a keyboard temperament has 12 notes; the scale lists fewer than 12 notes; cannot read the note; the scale does not repeat at the octave; the Scala file is missing. The dialog opens in the folder last used for Scala files.

A temperament piston on a console steps through The organ’s own and the eight temperaments in this order and wraps round. A loaded Scala file is not a step of the cycle. Learn the pistons with Learn temperament - and Learn temperament + in Settings > General settings > MIDI.

Pitch (A)

A pitch within 0.05 Hz of the organ’s own is stored as “the organ’s own”, so a later organ with another pitch does not inherit a number. The line under the buttons reads The organ’s own pitch, or the distance in cents (-31.8 cents from the organ's own).

Transpose

Transpose has - and + buttons, a readout and 0. The range is -12 to +12 semitones; the buttons are disabled at the ends. Transposing moves the keys: +2 plays the pipes two keys up, and the samples keep their pitch. Learn console pistons with Learn transpose - and Learn transpose +.

The temperament, pitch and transposition are saved per organ and apply again when the organ is next opened.

Metronome

The metronome is a click generated inside the audio callback, so it keeps time with what is heard. It is in Settings > General settings, tab Metronome.

The click is a short decaying sine, 1000 Hz on an ordinary beat and 1500 Hz and louder on the accented beat. The tab shows the beat as Beat 2. The click comes after the master fader, so the fader leaves it at its level, and it is absent from an audio recording. The settings apply at once. No settings file holds them, so they start at the defaults in the table each time the program starts.

Recorder

File > Recorder… shows the Recorder window, a small window of its own that opens at the top right of the main window and leaves the console playable while it records. Its close button hides it.

MIDI recording

The status reads Nothing recorded, Recording - 12.3 s, 450 events, Playing - 4.1 / 12.3 s or 450 events, 12.3 s.

The recorder takes everything that reaches the engine: notes from the on-screen keyboard, from the drawn manuals and from consoles, and the stop changes, couplers and shoe movements that arrive as MIDI. A recording plays back as the same performance with its registration changes. A drawstop or piston clicked with the mouse sets a switch directly and sends no MIDI message, so it is absent from the take.

Playback drives the same path as live input. When playback ends, or is stopped or restarted with keys still down, they are released in the next block, and keys that the player holds stay held. Playback stops at the end of the take and does not loop.

A saved file is a single track with a time base of 960 ticks per quarter note. Each event is stamped at 960 ticks per second of the take, and the file holds no tempo event. A reader that assumes the default of 120 bpm counts 960 ticks as half a second, so the saved take reads, in Masterpiece’s own Load MIDI… as well, at half its recorded length.

The take is kept in memory until it is saved or replaced. The folder of the last file dialog is remembered for MIDI files.

Audio recording

The recording is a 24-bit WAV at the audio device’s sample rate with one or two channels, as many as the output has. It is taken after the master fader and before the metronome, so the click stays out of the file. It is written on a background thread. The status reads Recording <file> - 12.3 s or Not recording, and Could not open that file for writing when the file cannot be opened. A recording in progress when the program quits is completed. The folder of the last file is remembered.

For scripted recordings with --play-midi and --record-audio, see Command line.

Remembered between sessions

Masterpiece keeps the player’s data in its data folder, never inside a sample set. The folder and the files in it are described on Files and folders. The files are named from the organ’s own identity, so a set moved to another drive or renamed keeps its settings.

Save state

Save state in the top bar (the disk icon, between the layout selector and the Panic button) saves the organ’s starting state. It records every latching switch that is not at its default, and the stops drawn, and writes them to the organ’s settings file. The next time the organ loads, it comes up with those stops and switches drawn. Each press replaces the state saved before. The press also writes the organ’s other per-organ settings as they stand, so the loading choices in force are saved with it.

A locked stop of a demo set is pushed in again after the state is applied.

MIDI and consoles

This page covers connecting a keyboard, a pedalboard or a full console to Masterpiece: which MIDI inputs are open, which MIDI channel plays which manual, the dialog that sets the range, transposition and velocity of one manual, MIDI learn for stops, couplers, pistons and swell shoes, what Masterpiece sends back to a console (lamps, motorised faders, key echo, text displays), and where the mapping is stored. Playing a whole organ from one keyboard is covered on Split keyboard.

How a message reaches the organ

Every MIDI input that Masterpiece opens delivers its messages tagged with the input’s name. A mapping can match a message on four things: the input (Any device or one named device), the channel (any, or 1 to 16), the message type and its number.

• Notes on a channel that a manual claims play that manual. A manual claims a channel through its entries in the manual dialog or through the Keyboards rows of the MIDI tab. A note on a channel that no manual claims reaches the manual the organ itself assigns to that channel, so a partly mapped console plays every manual.
• Notes, controllers, program changes and system exclusive messages that a control claims operate that control: a stop, coupler, piston, shoe or one of the program’s own buttons. A claimed message operates only that control.

When several mappings could take the same message, the most specific one wins: device and channel named, then device only, then channel only, then neither.

Messages from a plug-in host, from a MIDI file played back, and from the on-screen keyboard and the clicks on drawn keys carry no input. Only mappings set to Any device match them.

A Universal Real Time master volume message (F0 7F <device> 04 01 <lsb> <msb> F7) sets the master volume with no mapping. A system exclusive message is accepted up to 256 bytes.

MIDI inputs and outputs

The MIDI tab of General settings (Settings > General settings > MIDI) holds the input and output choices. The same tab is also in Settings > Organ settings > MIDI; both edit the same mapping.

MIDI inputs

The MIDI inputs list has one tick box per input: the inputs the system reports (ALSA ports on Linux), then the inputs Masterpiece opens itself (see Inputs that Masterpiece creates). A ticked input plays; an unticked input is closed and its messages are dropped.

Masterpiece opens its inputs at start. Connect and switch on every console before starting Masterpiece; a console connected later does not play until the next start.

When another program holds an input

Windows gives a MIDI port to one program at a time, so an input that another program has open cannot be opened by Masterpiece. Masterpiece keeps the input ticked and shows it as <name> - in use by another program; opened when it is free. Ticking such an input opens a message box titled <name> could not be opened. A timer checks every 3 seconds, and the input opens as soon as the other program lets it go; the log then records midi: <name> is free now and has been opened. At startup the same case is logged as midi: <name> could not be opened (another program may be using it); it is tried again every few seconds.

How a console is identified

A mapping refers to an input by name, and by an identifier where the system supplies one that lasts:

Two consoles of one model keep separate mappings. The second is stored as <name>-1 and shown as <name> (USB 1.1.2) with its USB socket, or as <name> #2 where the system gives no socket. A console that moves to another USB socket keeps its mapping when its name is unique.

Inputs that Masterpiece creates

On Windows no program can publish a MIDI port. A loopback MIDI driver (loopMIDI, for example) provides one; Masterpiece lists it with the other inputs.

MIDI with JACK on Linux

Masterpiece opens a JACK client named Masterpiece MIDI with one input port, midi_in (full name Masterpiece MIDI:midi_in), for programs that send MIDI only through JACK. The client opens at startup when libjack.so.0 loads and a JACK server is already running. Masterpiece never starts a server. The port appears in the MIDI inputs list as JACK MIDI.

• Messages of up to three bytes pass. System exclusive messages do not arrive through this port.
• The connections made to the port are saved when Masterpiece closes, one JACK source port per line, in jack-connections.txt in the data folder. At the next start Masterpiece reconnects each source; a source whose program is not running yet is retried every 2 seconds until its port appears. A connection taken away by hand stays away once it has been restored.

MIDI output

The MIDI tab opens the output and closes it again when its window closes. Lamps, motorised faders, key echo and console displays therefore work while General settings (or Organ settings) is open. The choice is not kept between sessions: choose the output again after each start.

Feedback and learn options

One MIDI channel per manual

The Keyboards heading of the MIDI tab lists every playable manual of the loaded organ, one row each:

A choice takes effect at once and is saved with the organ. Two behaviours are worth knowing:

• Choosing a channel replaces all the manual’s entries in its dialog with one entry that covers the whole compass on that channel. Choosing a device replaces them in the same way, and removes the channel from any other manual mapped to the same device.
• Manuals may share a channel. A line under the rows lists them (Shared -- Channel 2: Great, Swell) after a change. One keyboard that plays two divisions is a coupler a player can build in this way.

Channels decide which division sounds, and the couplers work from that. A wrong channel makes a manual sound like another one.

Default console

A line beside the buttons reads Default for organs with no channels saved: Pedal 1; Manual 1 2; ... or No default: each organ starts from its own channels.

The dialog for one manual

Right-click a drawn manual on the console, or press Range, transpose… in the MIDI tab. The window is titled <manual> - MIDI and has three tabs: Keys, Pistons and Send.

Keys tab

The tab is headed What plays <manual> and lists the entries that feed the manual, one row each, described as Any device ch any keys C2 (36) to C7 (96) with any transposition, no velocity, short octave and debounce appended. A manual can have several entries. A keyboard split across two manuals is two entries (one on each manual), and a manual played from two consoles is two entries.

Every edit takes effect at once and is saved with the organ. A new entry listens on every device and every channel until narrowed, so set Console and Channel at once.

Pistons tab

The tab is headed Pistons that bring the <manual> to one of your keyboards. A piston added here makes the keyboard on one MIDI channel play this manual. A console with fewer keyboards than the organ has manuals reaches every manual this way.

To add one, press Add a piston…, play any key on the keyboard that should play this manual (the prompt reads Play any key on the keyboard that should play the <manual>...), then press the piston (Now press the piston (keyboard on channel N)...). The list shows each piston as Note 36 on channel 1 brings the <manual> to the keyboard on channel 2, or No pistons yet.

• Pressing the piston lets go of any notes held on that keyboard first, and keys still down sound on the new manual.
• The same button added on several manuals steps the keyboard through them, one press at a time, in the organ’s own manual order. One button can move several keyboards at once when it was learned for several channels.
• The pistons are saved with the organ. The assignment they change is kept for the piece; the next load starts from the assignment the player set by hand.

The tick box is read when Add a piston… starts the learn, so set it first. General Cancel also puts the keyboards back on their own manuals (MIDI tab) restores the keyboards on General Cancel.

Send tab

The Send tab of a manual sends every key played on the manual as a note to the MIDI output, for a sound module or a second program. One row sends to one channel.

The line at the top reads Sent to <output> or No MIDI output is chosen: choose one in Settings, MIDI. New event adds a row; the X button removes it.

Note-on velocity is the played velocity, at least 1; the note off goes out as a note-off message on the same channel.

MIDI learn for stops, couplers, pistons and shoes

Right-click menus

Right-click a drawn stop, coupler, tremulant or piston on the console. The menu’s section header names the object; the next lines list its current mappings, for example Note 36 ch 3 (toggles).

Right-click a swell shoe, wheel or slider to see MIDI window…, Learn: move a pedal, knob or fader, Closed position: where the pedal is now, Open position: where the pedal is now, Use the pedal’s whole travel and Clear mapping. The two position items set the ends of the pedal’s travel from the pedal’s last position, so move the pedal to the position first. A box reading Move the pedal first appears when Masterpiece has no position yet or both ends would be equal.

Right-click a piston in the Combinations window (generals, divisionals, cancels, the setter and the sequencer buttons) to map it: Learn, MIDI window… and Clear mapping. The setter offers Learn: held while pressed and Learn: toggles in place of Learn. Right-clicking again while a learn is armed cancels it.

The program’s own buttons have no object on the console to right-click. Use the learn buttons of the MIDI tab:

Each of these learns a button that fires on the press and ignores the release. A console may have several buttons for one action (two + and two - thumb pistons): each further learn adds a button. The sequencer’s first, last, ten-back and ten-forward moves, the generals and the setter are mapped from the Combinations window.

The line at the bottom of the MIDI tab reads N binding(s), followed by LEARNING: move a control now while a learn is armed.

Message types

The press threshold is the middle of the binding’s value window (above 63 for the default window of 0 to 127). A console that sends 64 for a press registers. Each distinct system exclusive message is one button; a console that sends its pistons this way maps each piston by learning it.

One message operates one object. Learning a message that another object already uses moves it to the new object. The exceptions are shoes, which share a controller (one pedal can move several swell boxes, and learning the same controller for a second shoe keeps the first), and manual buttons, which share a message to step a keyboard through several manuals. A shoe learns only from controllers; a key pressed while a shoe’s learn is armed plays as usual.

What a stop does with each message

A rocker tab, or a console with separate draw and cancel buttons per stop, is two rows: one Draws it and one Cancels it. Learning Draws it only leaves an existing Cancels it only alone, and the reverse, so both can be taught in turn. Any other learn replaces what the object had.

A new row in the MIDI window starts as Each press toggles for a latching switch and Held while pressed for a momentary one. Pistons and program buttons other than switches start as Fires when pressed. Learning is saved within a moment of the message arriving.

Shoes, wheels and sliders

A shoe is operated by a controller value, or by the velocity of a note (a sequencer can write the swell into the velocities of the notes it plays; the note-off does nothing). The binding maps the incoming range onto the control’s whole travel.

A console’s shoe seldom sends the whole 0 to 127, so set the two ends to the values the pedal actually sends. Values outside the window clamp to its ends. Only the span matters; the order in which the two values are entered has no effect, and Invert reverses the sense. Closed position: where the pedal is now and Open position: where the pedal is now in the right-click menu fill in the values from the pedal’s last position and set Invert when the closed end is the larger value. A program change or system exclusive message arrives with the value 127 and drives the shoe fully open.

The MIDI window for one object

MIDI window… opens a window titled <object> - MIDI with the tabs Receive, Send and Shortcut. The program’s own buttons (the player’s generals, divisionals, cancels, the setter, the sequencer) have no Send tab, because they light nothing on a console. Every edit takes effect at once and is saved with the organ; the program’s own buttons are saved in the console file (see The MIDI map files).

Receive tab

One row per message that operates the object. New event adds a row and starts listening at once. A row whose message is not set yet is skipped.

Add a row for every message that operates the object. A message already used by something else moves here.

Send tab

One row per message that Masterpiece sends to the MIDI output when the object changes. The line at the top reads Sent to <output> or No MIDI output is chosen: choose one in Settings, MIDI.

For a stop, coupler or piston, the message goes out whenever the object comes on or goes off, however it moved: the console, a piston, the crescendo or a click. For a lamp in a drawstop or an LED by a piston. For a shoe, the message goes out whenever the shoe moves. When the list changes, Masterpiece sends the present state of every lamp, which a console needs when it is set up.

New event adds a row. A new row starts from the object’s first receive row (type, number and channel), because a lamp usually answers on the message that operates the stop; a shoe row starts as a controller.

With none in When off, nothing goes out when the stop goes off. A program change has no off: it sends its number when the stop comes on and nothing when it goes off. For a shoe, Program change sends the scaled value as the program number. System exclusive is listed but is received only; a row of that type sends nothing.

Shortcut tab

A key of the computer keyboard that operates the object.

Click the key button (it reads None or the current key), then press the key, with Ctrl, Alt or Shift if wanted. The button reads Press a key… while it waits; Escape leaves the setting as it was. Clear removes the key. The key works while the console window is in front. One key can operate several objects at once. Saved with the organ.

A stored key operates organ switches (stops, couplers, tremulants and the organ’s own pistons) and shoes. The tab also appears for the player’s generals, divisionals, cancels, setter and sequencer buttons; a key stored there has no effect.

Sending to a console

Three things send to the MIDI output: the rows of the Send tabs (lamps, faders, key echo), the echo option of the MIDI tab, and the text displays. All of them need a MIDI output.

Console displays

Many consoles have text displays on the jamb that a system exclusive message drives. The Display tab of General settings (Settings > General settings > Display, heading Console display) describes one display and what it shows.

Each message is F0 <prefix> <display number> <line number> <text> F7: the prefix bytes, one byte for the display, one byte for the line (counting from 0), and the line’s text as ASCII padded with spaces to the line width. The prefix, display number and line width belong to the console hardware, so the tab asks for them.

7D is the manufacturer id that the MIDI specification reserves for non-commercial use; it is the default because a console’s own prefix is not known. Only lines whose text changed are sent, twice a second at most. Letters with accents are written with the accent removed (ä as ae, ß as ss, Kraków as Krakow), because system exclusive carries seven bits per byte and a byte above 7F would end the message. Characters with no Latin equivalent become ?.

Changes in this tab take effect at once. The setup is not saved and starts switched off each time General settings opens. The display is updated while General settings is open, and the MIDI output must be chosen first. The Combination set line currently shows a blank line.

The MIDI map files

A mapping is stored in the player’s data folder, never inside a sample set:

Two files in the midi folder of the data folder hold it:

<organ> is the organ’s name followed by its unique organ id, for example Nancy-12345. An organ that declares no id uses its name and a hash of its path. Renaming or moving the sample set keeps the file.

Every change in a MIDI dialog is saved at once, and a learn is saved within a moment of the message arriving. Save mapping in the MIDI tab writes both files. Clear mapping removes every binding, send and shortcut from memory and keeps the manual entries; the files change at the next save.

When an organ loads, its .mpmidi file is read, then console.mpmidi. An organ with no file starts from the default console and the organ’s own channels. A mapping carries over to another organ or computer by copying the file to the midi folder under the other organ’s file name; devices travel by name.

When an organ loads, Masterpiece repairs a file that names a manual the organ lacks, or lists an identical manual entry twice. It logs midi: repaired the saved mapping and keeps the original beside the new file as <organ>.mpmidi.before-repair.

The files are plain text, one record per line, with # for comments. A binding line has these fields:

<kind> <channel> <number> <target> <id> <latching> <invert> <trigger> <closed> <open> <device> [<identifier>]

Other lines start with manual (a manual entry: manual id, channel, low key, high key, transpose, low velocity, high velocity, ignore velocity, short octave, debounce, device), send (target, id, kind, channel, number, low, high) or shortcut (target, id, step, key). Edit through the dialogs; a line that cannot be read is skipped and the rest loads.

Split keyboard

The split keyboard plays a whole organ from one keyboard. It divides the keyboard into up to four zones, sends each zone to a manual or the pedal, transposes each zone, can take a pedal bass from the lowest key the left hand holds, and can move the dividing point to follow the hands. This page covers the window, every field in it, the presets, the MIDI controls that switch the split and its presets, and the files that hold the settings.

Open the window with View > Split keyboard. The window can stay open or be closed; closing it hides it and the split carries on.

How it works

The split sits between the MIDI inputs and the organ. It reads the notes of one keyboard (the Keyboard box) and sends them on as notes of its own MIDI input, Split keyboard, with one channel per role:

The MIDI map sends each of those channels to a manual, as it does for any console. The Manuals on this organ rows of the window set the manual of each role. The split knows nothing about the organ beyond that; a role can be sent to any manual, including the pedal.

The split takes the notes of the chosen keyboard only. These pass through unsplit:

• Controllers, program changes and other messages from the keyboard (a sustain pedal, an expression pedal mapped to a shoe).
• Notes and messages from any other input.
• Messages from a plug-in host, from a MIDI file played back and from the on-screen keyboard.
• Notes on the Split keyboard input itself.

All Notes Off and All Sound Off (controllers 123 and 120) from the keyboard release everything the split sounds and then pass on. The Panic button of the main window releases it too.

Switching it on and off

The setting is the same for every organ and is saved at once in split-keyboard.txt (on 1), so the split comes back as it was left. Default: off. With the split off, the keyboard plays as the MIDI map says. A key pressed before the split came on is released the way it was pressed. Switching the split off releases every note it sounds.

The first time the split is on for an organ, each role that has no mapping receives one:

Manuals are taken in the organ’s own order and only those a player can reach from a MIDI keyboard. The proposal is saved with the organ and can be changed in the Manuals on this organ rows.

Window fields

Every change takes effect at once and is saved. The window’s rows follow the panel from top to bottom.

Keyboard and on/off

Choose a named input when more than one keyboard is connected and only one should be split.

Presets

Nine slots shared by every organ. Slots 1 to 3 are factory layouts and cannot be changed. Slots 4 to 9 are the player’s own and start empty.

An organ with no saved layout starts from preset 2.

A preset holds the layout: split points, zones, Transpose all, the follow option and the bass settings. It leaves out the on/off state, the keyboard, the manual assignments and the MIDI controls. Recalling a preset copies it, so a later edit of the organ’s layout leaves the preset as saved, and the preset highlight goes out. The presets are saved in split-keyboard.txt.

The keyboard picture

The picture shows 88 keys, A0 to C8, whatever the real keyboard has. Each zone has a colour: blue, green, amber and purple for zones 1 to 4, grey for a zone that plays nothing. The role of each zone is written above it. A white handle with a round head marks each split point.

• Drag a handle to move a split point. A handle stops before the neighbouring split point.
• While the split is on, the keys that are held light in the colour of the zone they went to.
• With bass from the hands on, an amber line under the keys marks the bass range, and a black dot on a key marks the note the pedal is sounding.
• While the split is on, the first handle shows where the split point is at the moment, which differs from the set point when the first split follows the hands.

Zones

Each zone has a row, headed Zone N: <lowest note> to <highest note>, with these fields:

The note sent is the key pressed plus Semitones, plus 12 times Octaves, plus Transpose all. A note outside 0 to 127 is dropped. A key keeps the zone it was pressed in until it is released, so the release goes where the press went. When two keys send the same note to one role (zones moved onto each other by octaves), one note-on goes out and the note ends with the last key.

A zone whose role is Nothing and whose second role is Nothing plays nothing: the keys are silent.

Following the hands

With The first split follows the hands on, the split point between zone 1 and zone 2 moves to the gap between the hands. Masterpiece looks for the widest gap of more than an octave between two keys held next to each other; the split point moves to the middle of that gap, and never above the second split point minus 1. With keys in one hand only, the split point stays where it is. The moved point stays for 3 seconds after the last key is released and then returns to the set point. A key already down keeps its zone when the point moves; a key pressed in the gap goes to the zone the moved point gives it. Changing the layout puts the point back. Only the first split point follows.

Bass from the hands

The lowest key held in the bass range plays the pedal as well, one pedal note at a time. The pedal note is the key plus Transpose all; the octave and semitone fields of zones do not apply to it. The note goes to the Pedal role (channel 14).

When the lowest key changes, the previous pedal note ends and the new one starts. When the lowest key is released while another key in the range is held, the pedal passes to the lowest key still held and is struck again. A bass held after the hand lifts ends with the next bass note.

The four bass fields are dimmed while the bass is off.

Manuals on this organ

The choice is a mapping of the Split keyboard input and channel to the manual. It is saved in the organ’s MIDI map (see The MIDI map files) and also appears in the Keys tab of the manual’s dialog, with Console set to Split keyboard. A role set to Nothing plays nothing.

MIDI controls

Twelve controls can be operated from any key, button or pedal on any MIDI input:

Each control has a learn button and an x button:

• Click the learn button, then press the key or button (the button reads Press it now…). A note, a controller with a value above 0 or a program change is learned, from any input. The learned press plays nothing, and neither does its release.
• The button then shows the message: Note C4, channel 1, Controller 64, channel 1 or Program 3, channel 1. Before a message is learned it reads Learn.
• x forgets the control.
• One message operates one control; learning it for a second control clears the first. The message is stored with the name of its input, so a control can be tied to one console.

A controller acts on a value above 0, a note on a note-on, and a program change on every arrival. The controls are saved in split-keyboard.txt.

Exclusive input

The Split keyboard input is exclusive. Only mappings that name it take its notes. A manual mapped from Any device on any channel receives no notes from the split, and a control mapped from any input ignores the split’s messages. A role that is mapped nowhere plays nothing. The rule keeps a manual that is mapped from every input from sounding the notes of all four roles.

A recording of the split made with the MIDI recorder holds the notes as the split sent them, on channels 11 to 14. On playback they are treated as the split’s input again and reach the same manuals.

Where the settings are saved

Two files in the data folder (see The MIDI map files for its location):

<organ> is the organ’s name followed by its unique organ id, as for the MIDI map. The manual assignments of the roles are in the organ’s midi/<organ>.mpmidi.

Both split files are plain text with one record per line. An organ’s file looks like this:

splits 2 53 72 84
zone 0 pedal none 0 0
zone 1 lower none 0 0
zone 2 upper none -1 0
zone 3 none none 0 0
transpose 0
follow 0
bass 0 59 1 off 1500
preset 1

A line the program does not know is skipped, and a value out of range is brought into range when the file is read: split points sorted and kept between notes 1 and 127, octaves between -3 and 3, semitones between -12 and 12, the hold time between 50 and 10000 ms.

Audio, room and mixer

This page covers everything between the organ and the loudspeakers: the audio device and its latency, the signal chain, the output pairs of the mixer, the impulse-response room, the player’s voicing of ranks and pipes, the master level, the metronome, and what to do when the sound breaks up. Use it to set up a device for low latency, to place a dry organ in a room, and to find the cause of dropouts.

The controls described here are on the Audio, Room, Metronome, Mixer and Voicing tabs of Settings > General settings. Settings > Audio and MIDI… opens the same window on the Audio tab. The memory and loading choices that decide how many voices a machine can render are in Settings > Organ settings > Loading; see Memory, loading and streaming and Small, medium and large organs.

The signal chain

Each audio block passes through these stages, in this order.

The Simple WAV only (bypass all DSP) box in Organ settings > Loading (also the No DSP box in the top bar) switches off wind model, tremulants, enclosures, voicing EQ, convolution and detuning. The per-rank and per-pipe voicing of the Voicing tab, the organ trim and the master level stay active, because each is a single multiplication or ratio taken when a note starts.

The audio device

Open Settings > Audio and MIDI…. The tab is the device selector with two additions below it: a latency line and the Keep portable speakers awake control.

Driver types

The Audio device type box lists the driver types the system offers. It appears when more than one type exists.

Selector controls

The selector offers one to eight output channels and no input channels. The advanced options are visible. A change to device, rate or buffer size stops the device and starts it again; sounding notes stop while the engine rebuilds its voice pool.

Latency

The line under the selector reads: Key to speaker: about X ms, of which the buffer is Y ms and the output Z ms, as the device reports it. X is the sum of the buffer length and the output latency the driver reports. The line updates whenever the device changes. The convolution of the room is partitioned with a head at the audio block size, so it adds no latency of its own.

The keyboard-to-sound time also contains the delay of the MIDI interface and of the console, which the line does not include.

A first start, and any start where the saved setup failed, sets the buffer to the available size nearest 10 ms (480 samples at 48 kHz). A setup that the player saved is left as it is.

What happens at start and when the device changes

• The setup (driver, device, rate, buffer, channels) is written to audio.xml in the Masterpiece folder of the user’s application data when the program exits. A crash loses the changes of that session.
• At start the saved setup is opened. If it fails to open, or opens with no active output channel, the factory default device is used and the reason is written to the log.
• A device that opens below 44.1 kHz (some virtual outputs default to 8 kHz) is moved to 48 kHz, or to 44.1 kHz when 48 kHz is missing.
• A MIDI input that another program holds is retried every three seconds.
• The latency line follows every change the device manager reports and is empty while no device is open.

The program renders at the device’s sample rate. A sample set recorded at another rate is converted as it loads when Sample rate in Organ settings > Loading is set to 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz; with As recorded each voice is resampled during play.

Keep portable speakers awake

The audio engine

The engine has one switch. Organ settings > Loading > Faster audio engine renders several samples per instruction with the processor’s vector unit. The box label shows what was found: Faster audio engine: using AVX2, using SSE2 or using NEON, or not available on this processor.

Output routing and the mixer

Settings > General settings > Mixer assigns each rank of the loaded organ to one of up to eight pairs. The pairs are rendered separately, each with the enclosure processing of its ranks, and mixed together into the stereo output of the device. No sample set declares an audio routing, so the layout is the player’s, in the way a MIDI mapping is.

A rank is routed when a note starts, so notes already sounding keep the pair they began on. A rank with no entry plays through the first pair, so an organ is audible before the Mixer is opened. The pair of a rank is independent of its enclosure: a Swell rank stays behind the Swell shades whichever pair carries it.

Stored

Changes on this tab are written when Save for this organ is pressed, or by any later save of the organ’s settings, which writes the live state of everything.

The sum of the pairs is the whole organ, so splitting the ranks over more pairs leaves the total unchanged.

The room

Settings > General settings > Room places the organ in a room by convolution with an impulse response (IR). Most sample sets are recorded in the room they live in, and several sets ship close, far and rear perspectives that are the room. Use the Room tab for a dry set or for headphones. A wet fraction far below what a reverb plug-in would use is usually enough.

How the IR is used:

• Mix. The output is the wet signal times Wet plus the dry signal times 1 minus Wet, an equal-gain crossfade. At 0 the room is bypassed.
• Channels. A mono file feeds both sides. A two-channel file is an ordinary stereo room. A file with four or more channels is read as true stereo: channels 1 and 2 carry the left input to the left and right outputs, channels 3 and 4 the right input to the left and right outputs.
• Level. The file is scaled by its total energy with one gain for all channels so that a true-stereo room keeps its balance. Leading silence is trimmed.
• Sample rate. When the chosen file is named <room>-48000Hz.wav (a rate in hertz before the extension) and a sibling for the device’s rate exists, that sibling is loaded. The file’s own sample rate is passed to the convolution engine with its samples.
• Position. The room follows the voicing EQ and precedes the master fader. Simple WAV bypasses it. Convolution is the most expensive stage of the audio callback; the engine uses partitioned convolution with a 256-sample head.

The chosen file, the wet fraction and the on/off state belong to the loaded organ: they are written to its .mporgan file as the reverb line, saved automatically, and restored when that organ opens. Save as default in Organ settings > Loading copies them to the defaults that organs without settings start from. The file is stored as a path, so the IR must stay where it was chosen.

If a file cannot be read, a warning titled The impulse response was not loaded gives the reason, either The file could not be read where it is. or <name> is not an impulse response Masterpiece can read (WAV, AIFF or FLAC). The same reason goes to the log (impulse response not loaded: <path>: <reason>). The previous IR and the state of the box stay as they were. When an organ’s saved IR is missing at load time, the log records reverb: the impulse response saved with this organ was not found: <path> and an IR loaded earlier stays in use, with the wet fraction and the on/off state saved with the organ.

Voicing

Settings > General settings > Voicing is the voicer’s tab: a level and a tuning for a whole rank or for one pipe, in two sets for comparison.

The line under the buttons reads Slot A - N rank(s), M pipe(s) adjusted - takes effect on the next note. A pipe that does not exist on the chosen rank shows This rank has no pipe at that note.

• A rank adjustment and a pipe adjustment add.
• Level is a gain and tuning a pitch ratio, both taken once when a note starts. Notes already sounding keep what they began with. Both work with Simple WAV on and cost nothing while a note sounds.
• Voicing is stored per organ, as voicingadj lines for both slots and the live slot (voicingslot), because a rank number has no meaning in another instrument. The tab changes the live set at once; Save for this organ writes it.
• The file also holds brightness and balance values for each adjustment. The tab has no control for them and the engine does not apply them.

Relation to Voicing EQ

The Voicing EQ tab of Organ settings is a different tool. It is a ten-band equaliser for the whole organ (31.5 Hz to 16 kHz, plus an output gain, up to 12 dB per band), off by default and stored per organ, applied before the room. The Voicing tab of General settings changes single ranks and pipes in level and pitch. Both are per organ. See Organ settings for the equaliser.

The Voicing box among the switches of Organ settings > Loading is saved with the organ and does not change the sound; the adjustments of the Voicing tab apply whatever it says.

Level

The organ trim is the producer’s calibration, which brings sets recorded at different levels to comparable loudness. It is applied under Simple WAV as well. The meter shows the finished output, metronome included; it rises instantly and falls with a time constant of 0.3 s.

The wind model’s depth has no control in the program; the engine uses the physics as solved (depth 1).

The metronome

Settings > General settings > Metronome adds a click to the output.

A label below the sliders reads Beat and the number of the beat in the bar while the click runs. All four controls act at once. Their settings last for the session; each start begins with the defaults above.

The click is a short decaying sine (a time constant of about 9 ms): 1000 Hz on ordinary beats and 1500 Hz at 100% strength on the accented first beat, with ordinary beats at 70% strength. It is added after the master fader, so the master level does not change it, and after the audio recorder, so recordings do not contain it. It sounds on both channels.

Note

The Metronome box starts unticked each time the window opens, whether or not the click is running. Tick it and clear it again to stop a click that was started earlier.

Audio dropouts

A late block is an audio block that took longer to compute than the audio in it lasts. Each late block is a click or a gap in the sound. The engine counts blocks on the audio thread and reports the figures below.

The figures the program shows

The log is masterpiece.log in the Masterpiece folder of the application data (the previous session is masterpiece.previous.log). The Open the log folder button on the Log tab of General settings opens that folder.

While an organ loads, the engine answers with silence and drops notes that arrive.

Causes and remedies

The voice-rendering threads are chosen automatically: the number of usable processor cores minus one (one thread when there are two or fewer cores), at most eight. The program has no control for the count.

The sample cache writing “in silence, while it plays” waits for silence and takes no voices from the organ; Save the sample cache in Organ settings > Loading chooses between this and writing before the organ plays.

Platform notes

• Plug-ins. The host owns the audio device and the MIDI ports. The General settings and Organ settings items of the Settings menu do nothing in the plug-in editor, so the tabs on this page are not available there. See Plugins in a DAW.
• Phones and tablets. The same selector is used with the driver types above; see Phones and tablets.
• Raspberry Pi. The faster audio engine uses the NEON unit.

Memory, loading and streaming

This page explains how Masterpiece holds an organ in memory, what each loading choice costs and saves, and how loading, the sample cache, release streaming, the memory limit and the voice pool fit together. Use it to decide the settings on Settings > Organ settings > Loading and Settings > Organ settings > Stops and perspectives, to read the memory figures Masterpiece shows, and to understand a load that stops at the memory limit or a stream that falls behind. Small, medium and large organs turns these mechanisms into recommended settings per computer.

Where the settings are

Every setting on this page is on the Loading tab of Settings > Organ settings (the entry is available while an organ is loaded). The tab holds the resident format, mono folding, the sample rate, the release choices, release streaming, the sample cache and its folder, the memory limit and the polyphony limit. The Stops and perspectives tab holds the choice of which stops, perspectives and ranks are loaded, with a memory estimate per entry. General settings holds none of them; its Log tab reports the cache folder and the cache files.

The Loading tab applies its choices in three ways.

A change to the loading choices stays live for the session. Revert changes puts back the values the window opened with. Keep changes closes the window. Save for this organ writes the choices to the organ’s settings file (organs/<organ>.mporgan in the settings folder). Save as default writes them to settings.mpglobal, where an organ without settings of its own starts. An organ that has settings of its own keeps them.

When a change decides what the sample cache holds and the window closes before the organ is loaded again, Masterpiece asks Rebuild the sample cache? with the buttons Rebuild and load again and Back to settings. The choices that trigger the question are the resident format, mono, release streaming and its hold, Preloaded per sample, the sample rate, the cache mode, Releases and Release length.

What an organ costs in memory

A sample set is the audio of every pipe: an attack with a sustain loop, and one or more releases, for each pipe of each rank, in some sets for several microphone positions. Masterpiece reads the files once, converts them, and holds the result in memory. Drawing a stop changes nothing in memory: every loaded rank is resident whether its stop is drawn or not. In the measurement on Friesach with Masterpiece 0.3.3, peak process memory with one stop drawn and with all 44 stops drawn differed by 2 MB at 24-bit and by 12 MB at 16-bit, both with streamed releases.

The memory an organ takes follows from these choices, in this order of effect:

1. The resident format: 32-bit float, 24-bit or 16-bit.
2. Whether release tails are streamed from disk.
3. Mono folding.
4. Which stops, perspectives and ranks are loaded.
5. The sample rate and the release choices.
6. The voice pool, which counts against the memory limit together with the samples.

Resident format

The Resident format box chooses what one held frame costs.

Default: 24-bit. Takes effect: at the next load. The settings file stores the width (storage 16, storage 24 or storage 32).

Measured on 60 files chosen at random from Friesach, 24-bit is bit-for-bit identical to the source file, and 16-bit has a signal to quantisation noise ratio of 78.1 dB (median) and 75.2 dB (lowest). Processing runs in 32-bit float whatever the resident format is.

Note

Resident format changes only what is held. A streamed release tail is read from its file at the file’s own precision and joined to the resident head, which is held in the chosen format.

Tip

Advice: 16-bit is the usual choice when the organ does not fit at 24-bit. 32-bit float costs a third more than 24-bit and adds no content to a 24-bit set; keep it for a set whose files are floating point.

Memory profile

The Memory profile box sets four choices at once: the resident format, mono, release streaming and Preloaded per sample.

Each profile also sets Preloaded per sample to Whole samples (most memory). The box shows Custom whenever the four choices match none of the three profiles. The profile box does not change the sample rate, the release choices, the cache or the limits.

Preloaded per sample

Preloaded per sample limits how much of each attack is resident. Whole samples (most memory) holds the file from its start to its end. Up to the loop (less memory) holds each attack from its start to the end of its sustain loop plus a margin of 8,192 frames for the loop crossfade, which is all a held note plays.

Default: Whole samples (most memory). Takes effect: at the next load.

The setting has a small effect. In an organ sample the loop runs nearly to the end of the file, so the part after the loop is short. A sample whose release is in the same file (marked by a cue point) is always held whole, and a release in a file of its own is held whole or streamed as described below. Earlier versions offered Loop + 1 s and Loop + 2 s; the box shows them as Loop + 1 s (earlier choice) and Loop + 2 s (earlier choice) while a saved organ still uses them.

Mono folding

The toggle Load in mono (halves memory, gives up the stereo image) folds every stereo file to one channel as it is read. The channels are averaged, which avoids the clipping a sum of two correlated channels can cause. A streamed tail is folded the same way, so the join from the resident head to the tail does not step from a downmix to one bare channel.

Default: off. Takes effect: at the next load.

Mono halves the memory of stereo files and has no effect on files that are already mono. It does not reduce the disk reads of streamed tails, because both channels are read to make the average.

Caution

Mono folding gives up the recorded stereo image. For a set recorded in a building the image is part of the sound, and folding it changes the character of the room. Use mono when the choice is between mono and an organ that does not load.

Sample rate

The Sample rate box converts every sample to one rate as it is read, with a Lagrange interpolator. Conversion happens once, at load, where nobody listens.

Default: As recorded. Takes effect: at the next load. The settings file stores the rate in Hz (rate 48000); --load-rate <Hz> accepts any rate.

Memory is in exact proportion to the load rate. A 96 kHz set converted to 48 kHz takes half the memory. Verified on five Friesach ranks converted from their native 48 kHz:

Pitch and level are unchanged at every rate. Nothing above half of the chosen rate survives the conversion. Conversion goes both ways: a file whose rate differs from the chosen one by more than 1 Hz is converted up or down. Memory changes by the ratio of the rates, so a conversion that raises the rate (44.1 kHz material at 48 kHz) increases the memory by 8.8% and adds no content, and a conversion that lowers it (48 kHz material at 44.1 kHz) reduces the memory by 8.1%.

Playback also converts the rate of any voice whose sample rate differs from the audio device’s rate, so pitch is correct at every setting, and the setting saves memory and processor time.

Releases

A release is the sound of a pipe after its key is let go. Many sets record several releases per pipe, chosen by how long the key was held. Three settings control which releases are loaded and how much of each.

Releases chooses which of each pipe’s releases are loaded.

Default: As the organ has them. Takes effect: at the next load. The settings file stores the choice as a number from 0 (all) to 3 (none) in the key releases.

Release length keeps each release up to a given length after its start and fades it out over its last quarter with a raised-cosine curve.

Default: Whole. Takes effect: at the next load. A release shortened this way is always held in memory. A Release length other than Whole therefore turns off release streaming for the releases it shortens, and the memory estimate follows the shortened length.

Release tails end below stops a release tail once it has stayed below a level for a twentieth of a second.

Default: -90 dB. Takes effect: at once, and is saved with the organ. A tail only fades, so one that is far down stays there. A fast passage on many stops leaves hundreds of tails sounding far below hearing, each costing as much processor time as a note. Each tail is judged on its own level, measured from sixteen of the frames the voice is about to play. With many stops drawn, -80 dB can end the last decay of a full chord audibly early, which is why -90 dB is the default. The cutoff applies to release samples; a note that fades because no release is loaded is not cut.

Tip

Advice: a set recorded in a reverberant room carries the room in its releases. A shorter Release length or The shortest only removes part of that reverberation. Use them with an impulse-response reverb, or when memory leaves no other choice.

Memory figures before a load

The Stops and perspectives tab estimates what the organ will take before it is loaded, at the settings on the Loading tab. The estimate reads the sizes and the WAV or WavPack headers of the sample files and decodes nothing. It runs on a worker thread while the tab shows Estimating the memory each stop takes….

For each sample the estimate takes the frame count, the channels and the rate from the file header, and applies the current settings: the resident format (2, 3 or 4 bytes per sample), mono, the load rate, the length of Release length, and, for a release played only as a release, the streamed head. It does not apply Preloaded per sample, so Up to the loop is not reflected. A file that exists only inside an archive has no header to read and is taken to be 24-bit stereo; a WavPack file without a readable header is taken to be 55% of its uncompressed size.

The footer shows About 5.6 GB for this choice (the limit is 12.7 GB), in the form About %1 for this choice (the limit is %2). The figure turns red when it exceeds the limit. Each stop, perspective and rank shows its own figure. A sample used by a stop that stays loaded is counted once and stays in the total even when another stop that uses it is left out.

The figure covers the samples. The load itself is checked against the memory limit minus the memory of the voice pool (see The memory limit), so a total just under the limit can still stop a load.

Release streaming

A release tail is several seconds of room sound, played once from its start to its end and never looped. Masterpiece can hold only the first part of each such release in memory and read the rest from the file on disk while the release sounds. An attack cannot be treated the same way: its sustain loop has to be resident, and the loop is most of the file.

The settings

The toggle Stream release tails from disk turns streaming on. Default: off. Takes effect: at the next load.

The box beside it, enabled while streaming is on, chooses how much of each release stays resident.

Default: Hold the first second. Takes effect: at the next load. The fixed head is the floor for every option: the resident part of a release is the larger of 48,000 frames and the chosen share. A release no longer than its head is held whole and has nothing to stream.

What is held and what is read

Every sounding voice has a ring buffer holding the next two seconds of its streamed release. When a key is let go, the voice plays the resident head while one streaming thread reads the rest of the release, 16,384 frames at a time, into the ring. It passes over all streaming voices about every 10 milliseconds. A plain 16-bit or 24-bit PCM WAV is read straight from the file into the ring. Any other file, a WavPack file for example, goes through its decoder on the streaming thread. A voice that reaches material the thread has not delivered plays silence for the shortfall and adds one to the underrun count. Only a streamed release can underrun.

The ring is part of the voice pool, not of the samples. Its size is two seconds of stereo 32-bit float at the audio device’s rate: 768,000 bytes at 48 kHz for each voice in the pool. At the default 1,536 voices the rings take about 1.1 GB. The Polyphony limit box shows the exact figure for each choice. This memory is counted against the memory limit, and it is why a streamed organ at its default polyphony takes more process memory than the sample figure alone. In the Friesach measurement with Masterpiece 0.3.3, process memory exceeded the sample memory by about 1.29 GB in both streamed runs (8,270 MB against 6,976 MB, and 5,939 MB against 4,651 MB).

Streamed tails open their files on first use and keep them open while they are played. The number of tail files open at once is half of the process’s file limit, between 96 and 4,096; when the limit is reached the tail read longest ago is closed and reopens when it is needed again.

The disk it needs

A streamed release is read at the rate of its source file, whatever the resident format and whether the set is folded to mono.

A chord of 100 pipes let go together is 100 releases in 100 different files. At 24-bit stereo that is about 29 MB per second sustained, and the first 16,384-frame read of every one of them has to arrive before the resident head ends, one second at the default. The load is many small reads from many files. These figures are worked from the constants above (a two-second ring, reads of 16,384 frames, a pass about every 10 ms); Masterpiece does not measure the disk. Advice: use a solid-state drive. A hard disk, an SD card or a network drive may not keep up, and the underrun messages below report it.

A larger share (Hold 25%, 50%, 75%) gives a slow disk longer before a release reaches the end of its resident part, and costs memory in proportion. Hold 75% leaves a quarter of each release on disk.

The two places Masterpiece reports a disk that falls behind:

• The Loading tab’s readout line shows DISK TOO SLOW: %1 underrun(s).
• The status line shows streamed releases fell behind %1x: turn off “Stream release tails” in Organ settings.

Warning

A streamed release that underruns goes quiet partway. When either message appears, raise the hold share, move the sample files to a faster drive, or turn streaming off.

Savings

Streaming is the largest single saving. On Friesach it leaves 56% of the sample data on disk. The Loading tab’s readout shows how many samples stream and how much stays on disk: %1 streamed, %2 MB left on disk.

The note on the Loading tab states that on the Nancy demo streaming takes the memory from 12.2 GB to 5.6 GB, with the rendered audio identical sample for sample.

Memory by configuration

Measured on Friesach: 44 stops, three manuals and pedal, 17.0 GB and 12,148 WAV files on disk, 24-bit, 48 kHz, stereo. Machine with 15.9 GB of RAM, Windows. Masterpiece 0.3.3. The figures are the sample library’s own accounting at the end of each load (the log line memory: resident ...).

The settings multiply, and each step is an exact ratio of the one before.

Relative to 24-bit resident, which equals about the size of the WAV files on disk, the other configurations take 1.33 (32-bit float), 0.43 (24-bit streamed), 0.29 (16-bit streamed) and 0.14 (16-bit mono streamed). These ratios depend on how much of a set is release data. Small, medium and large organs uses them to estimate organs of other sizes. The figures in this section were measured with Masterpiece 0.3.3.

The files of a WavPack set are about 55% of their uncompressed size (the estimate’s assumption for a file without a readable header), so such a set takes about twice its disk size in memory at 24-bit resident.

The sample cache

Loading decodes every file and converts it. The result depends only on the files and the settings, so Masterpiece can keep it. The sample cache is a decoded, converted copy of the organ’s samples in one file. The next load of the same organ with the same settings reads that file in one sequential pass, and skips the file opens, the WavPack decoding, the archive reading and the conversion.

What the file holds

The cache holds the resident form of every sample: the audio in the chosen resident format, the channels, the rate, the loop points, the release marker, the pitch the file declares, and a checksum of each sample’s audio. For a streamed release it holds the resident head and, beside it, the path of the source file and the rates needed to reopen the tail when a note asks for it. The cache therefore has about the size of the resident memory. On Friesach, 16-bit mono with streaming gives a cache file of 2,439 MB that stands in for about 7 GB of source files. On a five-rank load the cache files were 291.8 MB at 16-bit, 437.7 MB at 24-bit and 146.0 MB at 16-bit mono.

Time saved on Friesach at 16-bit mono with streaming:

The rest of a load (reading the definition, building the wind model, wiring the console, building the console artwork) takes the same time whether or not a cache is read, which is why the whole organ gains less than the sample loading.

Settings

Sample cache chooses how many caches Masterpiece keeps.

Default: One cache, replaced as organs change. Takes effect: at the next load. The settings file stores the mode as the number in cache (0 off, 1 single, 2 per organ); the command line option is --cache <off | single | per-organ>.

Save the sample cache chooses when a new cache is written.

Default: Before the organ plays. Takes effect: at the next load. General setting, stored as cachewhileplaying in settings.mpglobal.

Cache folder shows the folder that holds the cache files. Default (the button) returns to the usual place, shown in the box as Default (<path>). Choose… opens a folder chooser titled Where should the sample cache be written?. The choice is written at once to settings.mpglobal as cachedir.

The usual place is the cache folder inside the Masterpiece folder of the user’s application data: %APPDATA%\Masterpiece\cache on Windows. On the other systems the parent is the system’s user application data folder. The Log tab of Settings > General settings shows the folder in use, whether it can be written, the free space, and the cache files in it with their total size.

On iPhone and iPad, Choose… opens the system folder picker, which is the Files app. The folder it returns is lent to Masterpiece, held for the session and lent again at the next start, so the choice persists across restarts.

How the cache is keyed

A cache is read only when its stored fingerprint equals the fingerprint of the load that wants it. The fingerprint is one string built from everything that changes the bytes in memory:

• The organ’s stamp, loadedStamp: the definition’s path, its size and its modification time. For a GrandOrgue organ the stamp also holds a hash of the converted sample table, so a cache made by an older importer has a different fingerprint. For an organ opened from its kept copy (see below) the stamp is the original’s.
• The resident format, mono, the load rate and Preloaded per sample.
• The loop selection.
• Release streaming, the fixed head, the hold share, Releases and Release length.
• Whether the publisher’s licence was confirmed for the organ.
• The packages a composite organ found with other organs.
• The set of ranks loaded. Each distinct set of ranks left out is its own fingerprint.

The cache file also carries a format version. The memory limit, the polyphony, Release tails end below and the cache mode are outside the fingerprint and do not rebuild the cache.

When the cache is rebuilt

Any difference in the fingerprint is a miss. The load decodes the files and writes a new cache over the old one. Every mismatch rebuilds, so a stale cache is never played. Verified on a five-rank load: a 16-bit cache is reused at 16-bit and rebuilt at 24-bit and at 16-bit mono. Because one file holds one fingerprint, switching back to the earlier settings rebuilds again.

A cache is also rebuilt when:

• the definition file changes (size or modification time);
• a sample inside the cache fails its checksum. Masterpiece logs cache: sample N is damaged on the disk; the samples are read instead and the cache written again;
• the cache file is truncated or has another format version.

A cache is written only after a complete load: one that was not cancelled, did not stop at the memory limit, read at least one sample and had no file fail to read. A partial or damaged installation is therefore cached only as what it is, and only a complete one is trusted on later loads. The write goes to a file with the extension .part and is moved into place when finished, so an interrupted write, including one cut short by quitting, leaves the earlier cache as it was. The next load then reads the samples again.

Size, disk space and clearing

A cache has about the size of the resident memory of the organ. A cache per organ for several large organs fills a disk. The one-cache default keeps the use to a single organ’s size. The Log tab of General settings shows the free space of the cache folder and the sum of the .mpcache files in it.

To clear the cache, close Masterpiece and delete the .mpcache files in the cache folder. The next load of each organ rebuilds its cache. Off stops reading and writing caches and leaves existing files in place.

Failures

A problem with the cache does not fail a load.

• A cache folder that cannot be created, for example on a drive that is unplugged, falls back to the usual folder. The Log tab reports The cache folder chosen in Loading cannot be used, so the usual one is: ….
• A cache that cannot be written logs cache: could not be written to <path>.
• A cache of the wrong fingerprint, version or size is ignored, and the samples are read.
• A cache larger than the memory limit stops the load before reading it, like any other load.

Playing an organ when its drive is unplugged

The toggle Keep this organ playable without its installation files gives the organ a cache of its own, whatever Sample cache says, and keeps a copy of the organ’s definition and console pictures. With its cache, the organ opens without its installation files: unplug the drive that holds the sample set and open the organ from its usual place or from File > Open…. Masterpiece opens the kept copy.

Default: off. Takes effect: at the next complete load. The copy is made only after a load that read every sample and was not incomplete. It holds everything under the organ’s folder except the audio and archive files (.wav, .wv, .aif, .aiff, .flac, .hbw, .hbx, .rar, .zip, .orgue), in the Portable folder of the Masterpiece settings folder. It costs the size of the cache on that disk.

Warning

Streamed release tails still read the installation files. Turn release streaming off for an organ that must play without them. With streaming on, the notes sound and the releases go quiet after their resident part.

The memory limit

The box Memory limit for samples is the most memory the samples of one load may take. A load that would take more stops and says so, which keeps the computer from running out of memory.

Default: 80% of RAM (defaultMemoryLimitMB). Takes effect: at the next load; the choice is written at once to settings.mpglobal as memlimit.

The budget of a load is the limit minus the memory of the voice pool, because both come from the same memory. The loader charges every sample against the budget as it lands. A cached load charges the size of the cache file before it reads it.

When the budget is exceeded the load stops at the sample that crosses it.

• If some samples were read, the organ is kept as it stands. The status line ends with INCOMPLETE (memory limit) and a window titled Only part of this organ fits states how many of the samples (and what percentage) were loaded. The organ plays, and some stops or notes are silent. No cache is written for it.
• If no sample was read, the load fails. A window titled Not enough memory for this organ names the limit. The console is drawn without sound so that Settings > Organ settings can be opened from it.

The ways to make an organ fit, in order of cost to the sound: leave out perspectives, stops or ranks on the Stops and perspectives tab; stream release tails; load 16-bit; load in mono; raise Memory limit for samples, on the Loading tab of Settings > Organ settings, when the computer has the memory.

Caution

The limit is a ceiling for the samples and the voice pool. The program, the console artwork, the audio system and other programs use memory of their own. A limit above the default leaves less room for them; the 90% choice can slow a computer that starts to swap.

The voice pool and polyphony

Each sounding pipe, attack or release, uses one voice. The pool of voices is built when audio starts and when the polyphony limit grows. It is allocated once, because the audio thread allocates nothing.

Polyphony limit sets the number of voices in the pool, which is the most pipes that sound at once.

Default: 725 voices for each processor thread, at least 1,536 and at most 16,384; 1,536 when release streaming is on. On a computer with 4 threads without streaming that is 2,900. A value equal to the default is stored as the default. Takes effect: at once. A smaller number limits the pool that exists. A larger number builds a new pool at once with the organ staying loaded; the voices sounding at that moment stop. The choice is stored in settings.mpglobal.

The memory shown with each choice is the memory the voices take. With release streaming on it includes the rings described above, 768,000 bytes a voice at 48 kHz, so a pool of 4,096 voices takes about 3 GB.

When a pipe starts and the pool (or the limit) is full, a voice is taken over, in this order:

1. A voice that is already dying away in its release: the one released longest ago, which is the most decayed.
2. If none is releasing, the quietest sounding voice, the oldest first among equals.

A voice that started in the current audio block is left alone. If nothing can be taken, the new pipe is dropped, and the status line shows dropped %1. A passage with more simultaneous pipes than the limit therefore loses its oldest and quietest pipes first. A fuller tutti with couplers needs several hundred voices to over a thousand.

Note

Fewer voices make a thinner tutti on a full organ. More voices than the computer can render make the audio fall behind: the status line shows late blocks %1. Lower the limit, raise the audio buffer or turn on Faster audio engine, which renders several samples at a time with the processor’s vector unit (AVX2 on a PC, NEON on ARM) and is on by default. The panel shows which unit it found: Faster audio engine: using %1.

Release tails that end below the Release tails end below level free their voices early. A cutoff that ends a tail before its natural end can be heard as a decay that stops short, most easily on the last chord of a piece with many stops drawn; -90 dB is the default for that reason.

Loading only some ranks or stops

The Stops and perspectives tab chooses what is loaded. The choices are saved for the organ and take effect at the next load, with the button Load the organ again on the tab (marked when the choice differs from what is loaded).

The buttons All stops, No stops and Only the stops drawn now set the stop ticks; the filter box and the buttons Load shown ranks and Leave out shown ranks act on the ranks that match the filter. Clicking a division heading selects or clears its stops, and a drag over the ticks sets several at once.

A set recorded from three or four places holds the whole organ that many times over, so leaving out a perspective can decide whether the organ fits. Each entry shows its estimated memory. A left-out perspective or stop costs no memory; a stop shown dimmed was left out of the load, not broken.

A partial load is a different set of samples from a full one and has its own cache fingerprint. Leaving a stop out is therefore a cache miss the first time.

Load time

The loading dialog names each phase and shows its progress.

The log, masterpiece.log in the settings folder, records a stage: line with the seconds spent in each phase and a load: TOTAL line, and for a cache the line cache: read ... MB, samples not decoded. The toggle Tap at each 10% while loading an organ plays a short tap at every tenth of the sample loading, so a long load can be followed by ear. It is a general setting, off by default.

What makes a load slow

• Number of files. A large set is ten thousand files or more. Each is opened, read and converted.
• Archives. Samples inside a RAR or .orgue package are read in one pass per archive, front to back, with one reading thread per archive, and decompressed in memory. Nothing is written out. These samples are always resident.
• WavPack decoding. WavPack files cost processor time. The loader uses twice as many threads as the computer has processor threads, between 4 and 32, because loading waits on disk as much as on the processor.
• The disk. A hard disk or a network drive is much slower than a solid-state drive for many small files. On Linux and Android the pages of every file read whole are released from the system’s file cache after reading, so a cold load does not push the program’s own code out of memory.
• The cache write. On the first load of an organ, Before the organ plays adds the time of writing the cache.

How the cache and streaming change it

Streaming leaves unread the part of each release that stays on disk, which is more than half the data on Friesach, and so shortens the load: 55.8 s at 24-bit resident became 28.9 s at 24-bit streamed. A cache replaces the file reads with one sequential read: sample loading fell from 13.0 s to 2.6 s on Friesach. The time of the other phases remains. These times were measured with Masterpiece 0.3.3 on a Windows computer with 15.9 GB of RAM.

Caveats

• Streaming on slow disks. A hard disk, an SD card and a network drive are unsuited to release streaming, as the derivation above shows. The status line and the Loading tab report underruns; turn streaming off, or raise the hold share, when they appear.
• Streaming and WavPack. A streamed tail in a file that is not a plain 16-bit or 24-bit PCM WAV, a WavPack file for example, is read through its decoder on the one streaming thread while playing.
• Streaming and the installation files. A streamed organ needs its sample files on disk while it plays, even when its cache is present. Samples read from archives are always resident.
• Mono folding. Mono loses the stereo image of a stereo set, and saves nothing on a set that is already mono.
• 16-bit. The quantisation step is set by the file’s peak, so the signal to noise ratio of a passage falls with its level. The measured ratios (78.1 dB median, 75.2 dB lowest, over 60 files) are for whole files.
• Release length and the cutoff. A shortened release and a release cutoff end a tail before the recording does, and can be heard as a decay that stops short.
• Cache disk space. The cache has the size of the resident memory. A cache per organ for several large organs fills a disk; keep the cache folder on a drive with the room.
• Plugins. Each plugin instance holds its own copy of the organ’s samples, and the plugin editor cannot open the settings windows: the standalone application alone connects the Organ settings… and General settings… entries of the Settings menu to their windows. A plugin loads an organ with the settings files in the same folder as the standalone application, so choose the loading settings in the standalone application and save them for the organ.
• Phones and tablets. The memory limit follows the device’s RAM, 80% by default, and the Memory limit for samples box offers 50%, 60%, 70% and 90% as well. The sample files are read where they are, from the Files app on iPhone and iPad. Phones and tablets covers the platform details.
• Process memory. The memory figures are those of the sample library. The process takes more: the voice pool and its rings, the console artwork and the program itself.

Related pages: Audio, room and mixer, Organ settings, Files and folders, Troubleshooting and caveats.

Small, medium and large organs

This page gives recommended loading settings for three sizes of organ on computers from 8 GB of RAM to 64 GB, on the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, and on phones and tablets. The settings are the resident format, mono folding, release streaming, the sample cache, the polyphony limit and the audio buffer. The figures come from the mechanisms and measurements on Memory, loading and streaming; read that page for what each setting does. The recommendations are advice, and the page marks where a figure is derived and where a choice is a judgement.

How the sizes are defined

An organ’s size for this page is the memory it takes at 24-bit with every sample resident, which for a set of WAV files is about the size of the files on disk. Use the Stops and perspectives tab of Settings > Organ settings to read the figure for a particular organ: it shows About %1 for this choice at the settings on the Loading tab, before the organ is loaded.

The three sizes in the last column are the examples used in the tables below. A WavPack set is about 55% of its uncompressed size on disk (the estimate’s assumption for a file without a readable header), so its size in this table is its disk size divided by 0.55.

What each configuration takes

The ratios were measured on Friesach (44 stops, 17.0 GB on disk) with Masterpiece 0.3.3 and are applied here to the three example sizes. A set whose releases are a larger or smaller share of its data than Friesach’s gains more or less from streaming. Check the real figure on the Stops and perspectives tab. The Nancy demo, which the Loading tab gives as 12.2 GB down to 5.6 GB with streaming (a ratio of 0.46), is close to the 24-bit streamed ratio of 0.43.

The 16-bit resident and the 16-bit mono resident rows follow from the exact ratios 0.667 (24-bit to 16-bit) and 0.500 (stereo to mono). Those figures are the samples only. The voice pool adds to them, and streaming makes the pool larger, because every voice carries a ring of 768,000 bytes at 48 kHz.

Without streaming there are no rings, and the pool takes much less. The Polyphony limit box shows the exact figure for every choice.

What each computer can hold

The memory limit is 80% of the RAM by default. The load budget is the limit minus the pool, and the samples have to fit in it. The columns below use the default polyphony with streaming, 1.1 GB of rings.

The operating system reports somewhat less than the nominal RAM (the Friesach test computer, a 16 GB machine, reported 15.9 GB), so the real limit is a little lower. On Friesach the process also took about 1.3 GB more than the samples in both streamed runs (Masterpiece 0.3.3, Windows).

Tip

Advice: keep the whole process at about 70% of the RAM or lower, so that the operating system and other programs keep room. The default limit of 80% is a ceiling for the samples and the pool, and the program takes more memory on top. On a computer that also runs other programs (a DAW with the plugin, for example), choose the 60% or 50% entry of Memory limit for samples.

Recommended settings

Each cell gives the resident format, mono folding and release streaming. They are advice for the example sizes. The label in bold is a Memory profile where one matches.

A Raspberry Pi with 16 GB of RAM follows the 16 GB row for memory; its processor still decides polyphony and buffer. The rows for the Raspberry Pi and for phones and tablets are advice derived from the ratios above; they have not been measured on those devices.

Reasoning

Small organs. A small organ fits at 24-bit on any computer with 8 GB or more, and 24-bit keeps the audio bit-for-bit as recorded. Streaming saves little on a small organ and adds the memory of the rings, so leave it off. On a Pi with 4 GB, 16-bit mono resident takes 1.0 GB and leaves room for the system; 24-bit stereo takes 3.0 GB against a limit of 3.2 GB.

Medium organs. An organ of 12 GB does not fit resident at 24-bit on 8 GB. The two lines of attack are 16-bit with streaming (3.4 GB) and, on a slow disk, 16-bit resident (8.0 GB, which fits only from 16 GB). At 16 GB the choice is between 24-bit with streaming (5.2 GB) and 16-bit resident (8.0 GB). The first keeps the 24-bit audio of the attacks and needs a solid-state drive; the second reads nothing from disk while playing. Advice: take streaming on a solid-state drive, and 16-bit resident on a hard disk, a network drive or an SD card. This is a judgement; the two have not been compared by measurement.

Large organs. An organ of 30 GB needs streaming on every computer under 64 GB, or 16-bit resident (20 GB) on 32 GB. At 8 GB only 16-bit mono streamed (4.3 GB) fits within the 5.3 GB of room, so a large organ on 8 GB is a trade of the stereo image for the whole organ. The alternative is the Stops and perspectives tab: a set recorded from several positions holds the whole organ for each, and leaving out one or two perspectives cuts the total in proportion while keeping the stereo image of the others. Advice: try leaving out perspectives before folding to mono, because the other perspectives are complete stereo organs.

Mono. Folding saves exactly half on stereo files and gives up the recorded image, so it is the last choice for a set recorded in a building. It also leaves the disk reads of streaming unchanged: a streamed tail is read from its stereo file and folded while playing.

Streaming. The disk has to deliver about 288 kB per second for each sounding release of a 24-bit stereo file at 48 kHz, and deliver the first read of every release within the resident first second. A chord of 100 pipes let go together is about 29 MB per second from 100 files. A solid-state drive meets that. A hard disk, an SD card and a network drive do not, in the derivation on the memory page; the Loading tab then shows DISK TOO SLOW and the status line says the releases fell behind. Advice: where the disk is slow, raise the hold to Hold 50% of each release or Hold 75% of each release, or choose 16-bit resident. A Release length shorter than Whole also holds the releases in memory and turns streaming off for them.

Cache. Keep the cache on for every large and medium organ: the first load writes it and later loads read one file. On Friesach sample loading fell from 13.0 s to 2.6 s. Use One cache, replaced as organs change when a computer plays one organ at a time. Use One cache per organ (uses more disk) when several organs alternate; each cache has about the size of the resident memory, so three large organs at 16-bit streamed take about 26 GB of disk. On a computer with a small disk (a phone, a Pi with a small card) leave One cache, replaced as organs change and place the Cache folder on the largest drive. Choose In silence, while it plays for Save the sample cache when the first load must finish quickly, and Before the organ plays otherwise; Advice: on a Pi choose In silence, while it plays, because the write at the system’s lowest priority then waits while any voice sounds.

Polyphony. The default is 725 voices per processor thread with at least 1,536, and 1,536 when streaming is on. A four-thread Pi therefore defaults to 2,900 voices without streaming and 1,536 with it. Advice: lower the limit on a Pi and on a phone to 512 or 1,024 voices, which cuts the rings with streaming by 0.4 to 0.8 GB and keeps the processor from falling behind on a full organ; raise it above 1,536 on a large computer only when a full chord is heard to lose pipes. The voices taken over first are the releases that decayed longest ago and then the quietest voices; dropped %1 on the status line counts the pipes that found no voice to take. The figures of 512 and 1,024 voices are advice; the rendering capacity of a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 has not been measured.

Buffer size. The audio buffer is set in the audio device settings of the standalone application (see Audio, room and mixer); a plugin takes the host’s buffer. A larger buffer gives the processor more time per block at the price of latency. Advice: start with the device’s default on a PC, Mac or Linux computer; on a Raspberry Pi and on a phone or tablet start at 1,024 frames and raise it to 2,048 when the status line shows late blocks %1. The status line is the test: play a full-organ chord with the stops of the heaviest registration and watch it. The Faster audio engine toggle is on by default and uses NEON on ARM and AVX2 or SSE2 on a PC. The figures of 1,024 and 2,048 frames are advice.

Phones and tablets. The memory limit follows the device’s RAM. Advice: choose the 50% entry of Memory limit for samples, because the device keeps its system and other apps in the rest. Load a small or medium organ, or load a part of a large one. The sample files are read where they are, and an iPhone or iPad lends the Files app’s folder to Masterpiece. See Phones and tablets.

Plugins. Each plugin instance holds its own organ, so two instances take twice the memory. Choose the loading settings in the standalone program and save them for the organ; the plugin loads the organ with the saved settings from the same folder. The plugin editor cannot open the Organ settings window.

Checking a choice

1. Open Settings > Organ settings > Stops and perspectives. The footer shows About %1 for this choice (the limit is %2). It turns red when the total passes the limit. Keep the total under the room figure in the table above, because the load itself is checked against the limit minus the voice pool.
2. Click Load the organ again on that tab, or Load the organ again to apply on the Loading tab.
3. When the organ is loaded, the readout line of the Loading tab shows the resident samples, the streamed count and the megabytes left on disk, and the voice pool. Compare it with the estimate.
4. Play a full-organ chord and a fast passage. Watch the status line for late blocks, dropped and streamed releases fell behind.

A load that passes the limit stops, keeps what it read, and shows INCOMPLETE (memory limit); change the settings and load again. The page Memory, loading and streaming lists what to change in order of cost to the sound.

Related pages: Organ settings, Troubleshooting and caveats.

Organ settings

Settings > Organ settings… opens the settings of the organ that is loaded: how its samples are held in memory, which stops, perspectives and ranks are loaded at all, an equaliser for the whole organ, and the MIDI channels of its keyboards. This page lists every control on every tab in the order the window shows them: what it does, its default, its range or options, when it takes effect and where it is stored. Memory, loading and streaming explains the loading choices in depth, and Small, medium and large organs helps to pick them for a given computer. The settings of the program and of the player’s console are in General settings.

Opening the window

The entry Organ settings… in the Settings menu is available while an organ is loaded.

The window opens by itself the first time an organ is loaded, when no settings file exists for it yet. Masterpiece first reads the organ without its audio, so the console appears within seconds and the Stops and perspectives tab can show this organ’s own stops with the memory each would take. Closing the window starts the load of the audio with the choices made. After that first time the window opens only from the menu.

The window is titled Organ settings, opens at 660 x 560 pixels and can be resized; the Esc key closes it. It has four tabs.

The MIDI tab is present whenever the window is opened by the standalone application, which always passes its audio device manager to it. The window opens only in the standalone application: in the plugin editor the menu entry does nothing.

One organ, one set of settings

Settings belong to an organ definition. Many sample sets ship one organ as several definitions: a definition for each microphone perspective (near, far, surround), or a full and a light version. Each definition is an organ of its own with its own settings, MIDI mapping and combinations. File > Other versions of this organ lists the definitions beside the one loaded (in its package, or in its folder) and loads the one chosen. A package remembers which of its definitions was opened last.

Inside one definition, a set recorded from several microphone positions carries the whole organ once for each position, as separate ranks named for the position (for example Principal 8 (close) or Principal 8 Rear). The Stops and perspectives tab lists these positions as perspectives, and leaving one out removes its ranks from the load.

The settings file of an organ is named by the organ key: the organ’s name reduced to letters and digits, a hyphen, and the unique organ identifier of the definition (p and a path hash when the definition has none). Two definitions with the same name and identifier share one file; renaming or moving a sample set keeps its file. General settings gives the exact rules.

Loading

The tab scrolls when the window is shorter than its contents. Changes here act on the engine as they are made, and nothing is written to disk until the player chooses. The footer holds the choices: Footer.

Engine switches

Memory

Memory profile moves the four settings that follow it together. Choosing a profile sets Resident format, Load in mono, Stream release tails from disk and Preloaded per sample. The box shows Custom whenever the four match no profile.

Releases

Sample cache

The sample cache keeps the decoded samples on disk, so the next load of the same organ is a read. A change to a setting that decides what the cache holds (resident format, mono, streaming, preload, sample rate, releases, release length, cache mode) rebuilds it at the next load. While such a change is pending the tab shows The cache is rebuilt when this window closes. It can take several minutes.

Folders

Options

Readout

A line under the controls reads Resident samples: N MB (N samples, FORMAT, mono or stereo, RATE). When releases stream it adds N streamed, N MB left on disk. If the disk could not keep up it adds DISK TOO SLOW: N underrun(s). It ends with Voice pool: N voices, N MB. The line updates twice a second.

Footer

Closing the window by any route keeps the format, mono, streaming, preload and engine-switch choices for the loads of this organ in this session; another organ’s load drops them. If the window closes with a change that rebuilds the cache and the organ has not been loaded again, a question Rebuild the sample cache? offers Rebuild and load again and Back to settings.

Stops and perspectives

Chooses what the load reads. A perspective, stop or rank that is left out costs no memory and makes no sound. A stop left out keeps its drawstop and its place in pistons, dimmed on the console, so that it is not taken for a broken one. The choice is saved with the organ at once, and it takes effect when the organ is loaded again. A rank that a loaded stop shares, and noises and ranks wired to keys directly, are always loaded.

The list has up to four groups.

Each row has a tick box and, at the right, the memory it takes. A stop whose ranks ship no pipes in the set is greyed out (This stop’s ranks ship no pipes in this sample set). A rank shows unticked and greyed when something above it leaves it out, and its tooltip says why: Left out with the NAME perspective, Left out with the NAME windchest group, Left out with its stop, or Left out with every stop that plays it. The rank’s own choice waits underneath.

All stops are ticked by default. The keys work as follows: Space ticks or unticks the focused stop; Up and Down move to the previous and next stop shown; with Shift held, the arrows carry the focused stop’s state onto each stop they reach. A press on a stop dragged across others gives them its new state.

Stored. In the organ file: skipstop <stop id>, skipperspective <name> and skiprank <rank id>, one line for each item left out. The file is written shortly after a change.

Voicing EQ

A correction for the room and the speakers, applied to the whole organ. The organ as recorded is the reference, so the equaliser is off until it is turned on here. The curve in the upper part of the tab shows the combined response from 20 Hz to 20 kHz on a logarithmic scale, plus or minus 12 dB; it is drawn orange while the equaliser is on and grey while it is off.

Stored. In the organ file as eq <on> <gain> <band 1> ... <band 10>, written when the equaliser is on or not flat, by Save for this organ and by any other change that makes Masterpiece rewrite the organ file.

MIDI

The same panel as the MIDI tab of General settings, placed here for the player who sets up one organ. Both edit the same mapping and the same global settings. Every control is described in General settings. The controls that belong to the organ are the channel and device boxes of each keyboard, Range, transpose…, and the learned bindings; those are saved in the organ’s .mpmidi file.

Where the organ’s settings are kept

The organ file is organs/<organ key>.mporgan in the data folder (see General settings for the folder on each system). It is plain text; each line is a key, a space and a value, and lines that start with # are ignored. When Masterpiece loads an organ it reads the global file first and the organ file after it, so an organ file overrides the global defaults and a value given on the command line overrides both for that run.

Save for this organ on the Loading, Mixer, Voicing and Voicing EQ tabs writes the whole file from the live state. So do the automatic writes that follow a change to the stops and perspectives, the release tail cutoff, the room, the combinations window and a few other items. A change on the Loading tab that is only kept for the session can therefore reach the file with one of those writes. The stream share, the release tail cutoff and the organ folder write the file themselves.

When the volume slider moves, only the gain line is rewritten, so the slider writes no other unsaved change to disk.

General settings

Settings > General settings… opens one window with ten tabs: the audio device, the room, the metronome, MIDI, the mixer, voicing, combination sets, the console display, the language and the log. This page lists every control on every tab in the order the window shows them: what it does, its default, its range or options, when it takes effect and where it is stored. The topics behind the controls have pages of their own (Audio, room and mixer, MIDI and consoles, Memory, loading and streaming, Playing); this page links to them for depth. The settings that decide how a loaded organ is read from disk are in Organ settings.

Opening the window

The Settings button in the top bar opens a menu with up to four entries.

The window is titled General settings, opens at 660 x 560 pixels and can be resized. The Esc key closes it. It has no OK or Cancel button: each control acts when it is changed, and the Takes effect column below says whether that is at once or later.

General settings hold the program and the player’s console. Four tabs hold choices that belong to the organ that is loaded and are saved with it: Room, Mixer (the rank routing), Voicing and Combination sets. The MIDI tab keeps the keyboard channels and learned controls per organ and the rest for every organ. Where settings are kept lists the files.

Note

In the plugin editor, Organ settings… and General settings… do nothing and Audio and MIDI… is absent. Only the standalone application opens these windows. Licence confirmed for this organ works in both.

Audio

The upper part of the tab is the device selector of the audio library. It chooses where Masterpiece sends sound and which MIDI inputs are open. Its controls are described here generically; their labels and the choices offered depend on the system and the driver.

Below the selector, a line reads Key to speaker: about N ms, of which the buffer is N ms and the output N ms, as the device reports it. It shows the whole delay from a key to the speaker for the open device.

Stored. The device, rate, buffer size and channel choices are written to audio.xml when Masterpiece quits. A saved setup that no longer matches the hardware, or that opens with no live output, is replaced by the defaults. A device that opens below 44.1 kHz is moved to 48 kHz, or to 44.1 kHz where 48 kHz is unavailable. The speaker setting is the key speakerkeepalive in the global file, written only while it is on.

Audio, room and mixer explains choosing a buffer size and a driver.

Room

Impulse-response reverb for a dry set or for headphones. Many sample sets are recorded in the room they live in, and several ship close, far and rear perspectives that already contain the room; for those the wet level wants to be low.

A one-channel response feeds both sides, a two-channel response is read as stereo, and a four-channel response is read as true stereo (left input to both outputs, then right input to both outputs). The response is normalised by its energy, so a room keeps the loudness of its whole tail. When the file name ends in -<rate>Hz and a sibling file with the device’s rate in that place exists, the sibling is used.

Stored. In the organ file, as the key reverb <on> <wet> <path>. The path refers to the file where it lies: if the file has moved when the organ is loaded, the log records reverb: the impulse response saved with this organ was not found and the organ loads with no room. Each organ opens with its own room. The settings of the loaded organ are written shortly after a change.

Metronome

A click track for practice. It is generated inside the audio callback so that it stays in time with the organ. The click is a short 1000 Hz sine; the first beat of each bar is an octave and a half higher (1500 Hz) and louder. The click is added after the master fader and is left out of audio recordings made with the recorder.

Stored. Nowhere. The metronome starts switched off at the defaults in every session.

MIDI

The same panel appears as the MIDI tab of Organ settings; both edit the same mapping. This section lists every control. MIDI and consoles explains the channel assignment, learning and the console actions in depth.

Inputs, keyboards and defaults