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WHAT IS A VIRTUAL PIPE ORGAN
A Virtual Pipe Organ is a digital sound system which reproduces the sound of a pipe organ using high-quality digital recordings of each wind-blown pipe of an existing pipe organ. These are not synthesized sounds or short samples, but detailed recordings of the organ pipes.   The Hauptwerk  Virtual Pipe Organ software then accurately reproduces the sounds of the individual pipes in real time as the organist plays.  The sounds so created are based on the Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ Software and  the information  of the 'sample set'.

A 'sample set' is a collection of data from a real pipe organ, in many cases a really important historic pipe organ. Each individual pipe in the donor organ is recorded using state of the art digital recording equipment. These recordings consists of both the beginning of the pipe speaking, the sound of the pipe after it has begun to speak and the end of the pipe sounds as the air is cut off. These sounds are then made into wav files for each note of each rank and stored in a form that the Hauptwerk software can use. Hauptwerk then reassembles the sounds of the organ as it is being played note by note, including the ambiance of the room in which it was recorded, in many cases! This is truly an amazing piece of software and the results can sound very much like the real thing.  The sound reproduction equipment  is selected to match the environment in which the sound is being reproduced.

WHERE ARE THE STOPS AND COUPLERS?
There are no stop jambs apparent because the Touchstop™ screen is also the computer monitor. Thus it looks like a normal keydesk except that there are no stop jambs and there is a computer monitor sitting on top.  (In some cases the stop jambs are touchscreens.) The reason for this is, in a Virtual Pipe Organ environment such as this one, the current organ can be swapped for another one in just a minute or two. If there were physically labeled stop knobs or rocker switches, the flexibility to change the names and number of stops and rank would not be there! So we use the touch screen to display animated stop knobs and rockers and select them by touching the picture on the touchscreen and the knob/rocker moves.  In practice it is very intuitive and organ like to select stops this way. Particularly so if there is a left jamb and right jamb.

HOW DO I SET COMBINATIONS?
The combination action and registration sequencer is set using the touch screen by touching the 'set button' on the console display, selecting the desired stops and then touching the general or divisional piston number ON THE TOUCHSCREEN and then touching the 'set' button again to turn off.  The combinations are then actually selected during play by using the pistons of the manuals.