Hauptwerk Sample Sets

Hauptwerk is a computer program, available from Milan Digital Audio, designed to allow the playback or live performance of pipe organ music using MIDI and recorded sound samples. There are various companies that produce sample sets for Hauptwerk and there are over 100 virtual organs available at this time. We selected one of the best sample sets.

Sonus Paradisi is one of the company that produces high quality recordings, documenting and archiving the sound of historical and significant pipe organs making them available for software samplers like Hauptwerk. They create audible and interactive software models of pipe organs. In this way, playable “snapshots” of musical instruments are offered to users.

One of the nicest sample sets is the one from the Protestant Church in Rotterdam (Netherlands), called the Laurenskerk.

The church has a mechanical tracker organ with 85 speaking stops and ca. 7600 pipes. It is said to be the largest purely mechanical organ in Europe. The organ was designed to allow the performance of all organ literature. Thus, wide range or organ music from Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism up to the modern times can be performed adequately on the instrument.