Your keyboards and pedals.
A channel per manual, key range, transposition, velocity window, short octaves and debounce; MIDI learn for every control, drawstop lamps and jamb displays.
The king of instruments. Free and open source.
Masterpiece, the player for the two main sample-set formats, Hauptwerk and GrandOrgue: each organ's own console, wiring, wind and swell boxes on a vector-optimised engine, from Windows and macOS to a Raspberry Pi and an iPad.
Release notes
Hauptwerk-format and GrandOrgue sets.
Definitions, consoles and packages of both formats, read as they ship.
AVX2, SSE2 and NEON vector code.
Three to five times the rendering speed at 512 voices.
Six platforms, four plugin formats.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android and iOS.
More than 100 organs tested.
Each set loaded, played on every keyboard and its console pages checked.
Two formats. One player.
Hauptwerk-format and GrandOrgue sample sets with their own consoles and wiring, read straight from the packages they ship in.
Hauptwerk-format definitions.
Full, compact and composite XML, with every console page, jamb and console size the set draws.
GrandOrgue organs.
.organdefinitions converted as they load, console included.Packed or unpacked archives.
Both formats from an unpacked folder or straight from what they ship in: RAR 4 and 5, solid, multi-part and multi-volume, and GrandOrgue
.orguepackages. WAV and WavPack samples at any rate.Each set's own switch network.
Couplers, sub- and super-octaves, unison off, reversibles, crescendo and alternate ranks.
Friesach.Organ_Hauptwerk_xml
Friesach.organFriesach · one organ, both of its releases, the same console · Piotr Grabowski
A vector-optimised engine. More pipes on every processor.
Hand-written AVX2, SSE2 and NEON kernels for every voice, on by default on every processor that has them.
3–5×1
AVX2 rendering speed
−57%2
Memory, releases streamed
18×3
Faster than real time, virtuoso test
- 512 voices on an Intel i7, against the same engine without vector code; 1.7–3.3× with SSE2, about 3× with NEON on a Raspberry Pi 4.
- Friesach, 24-bit samples: 16.2 GB held in memory, 7.0 GB with release tails streamed. See the table below.
- Lemmer on an eight-core i7-9700, 16-bit samples, streamed releases: each audio block computed in 5.4% of its own length on average, and the slowest 1% still 10× faster than real time. The virtuoso test: 1,518 notes in 33 seconds, up to 1,300 notes a second.
- Release tail cutoff: tails end once they fall below −90 dB, inaudible in every test, which frees their voices for the notes being played. At −80 dB, the virtuoso test on a two-core i3 runs with 95% fewer late blocks, and a few release recordings with a late sound in them can end a little early.
| Vector code | AVX2, SSE2 (x86), NEON (ARM, Raspberry Pi) |
| Release selection | By key hold time, crossfaded from the sustain loop |
| Wind model | Chests, bellows and valves as one coupled system; pitch and level follow the pressure |
| Enclosures | Level and treble shelf to the set's stated depth |
| Tremulants | Amplitude and pitch modulation per chest and per pipe |
| Interpolation | Hermite (Catmull-Rom) |
| Polyphony | 725 voices a processor thread by default, up to 16,384; the longest-fading releases give way first |
| Release tails | Ended below hearing, −90 dB by default4 |
Composite organs. Several sample sets, one instrument.
Organs assembled from the pipework of several sets, such as Augustine's Jehmlich and Zamárdi-Buda composites, each set read from its own archive.
Sets found where you keep them.
The composite's folder, your package folder and your sample libraries.
One question per set kept elsewhere.
An archive or folder chosen once, and remembered for every later load.
Standard component noises.
Key action, stop action and blower noises made by Masterpiece.
Split mode. The whole organ from one keyboard.
Up to three split points, each zone on a manual or the pedal, with a layered second manual, its own octave and transposition, and the pedal from the lowest key held.
Everything around the keys.
The full feature list
Generals, divisionals and stepper.
Up to 100 generals, divisionals per manual, general cancel and a 999-frame sequencer, in named combination sets.
The whole organ on one panel.
Stops grouped by division, for sets drawn across many jambs, any page in its own window, and automatic portrait layouts.
Memory and loading choices.
24 or 16 bits, mono folding, streamed release tails, a sample cache and a memory limit, per organ or as defaults.
Stops, ranks and perspectives.
Any stop, rank or microphone perspective left out of a load, for the largest sets on smaller computers.
Temperaments, pitch and transposer.
The organ's own tuning, nine historical temperaments, Scala files, any pitch for A and ±12 semitones.
Voicing per rank and per pipe.
Level and tuning for every rank and pipe, with two voicing sets for A/B comparison.
Routing to up to eight output pairs.
Ranks sent per organ to up to eight stereo outputs, and convolution reverb for sets recorded dry.
MIDI and audio recording.
Performances with every stop and shoe movement, replayable under another registration; audio takes and a metronome.
Windows shown with Nancy · Piotr Grabowski
Cathedral-sized organs. Laptop-sized memory.
Samples held at 24 or 16 bits or folded to mono, release tails streamed from disk, and a sample cache for every later opening.
Up to 9×
Less memory, at 16 bits and in mono with releases streamed
Up to 4×
Faster opening from the sample cache
Per organ
Loading settings kept with each set
| Samples | Release tails | In memory | Streamed from disk | Opening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32-bit float | In memory | 21.6 GB | – | 77 s |
| 24-bit | In memory | 16.2 GB | – | 56 s |
| 24-bit | Streamed | 7.0 GB | 8.9 GB | 29 s |
| 16-bit | Streamed | 4.65 GB | 5.9 GB | 28 s |
| 16-bit, mono | Streamed | 2.33 GB | 3.0 GB | 26 s |
Measured on a 16 GB Windows PC. A streamed tail keeps its first second in memory and reads the rest from disk as it plays. From the sample cache, the organ reopens in 18.9 s.
Masterpiece in action.
Organs and programmesSound demo.
Seventeen minutes on nine organs, recorded from Masterpiece's audio output. Organs and programme
Sound demo II.
Twelve minutes on fifteen organs, filmed from the running console. Organs and programme
Tested with 100+ organs. A look at some samples.
Sample set credits
Built on open source technologies.
One code base for every platform and plugin format, built with CMake and tested on every pull request.
Platform dependencies| Language | C++20 |
| Framework | JUCE 9 |
| Build system | CMake 3.22+, Ninja; dependencies fetched at configure time |
| Compilers | MSVC 2022, GCC 12+, Clang 14+ |
| Targets | Windows x64; macOS arm64, x86_64; Linux x86_64, arm64, armhf, Flatpak; Android; iOS |
| Formats | Standalone, VST3, LV2, AU |
| Licence | GPL-3.0-only |
Masterpiece, free for every organist.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android and iPad, each a direct download.
Powered by openpipes.org. A complete, full-stack virtual pipe organ platform.
OpenPipes OS, a 64-bit Linux tuned for real-time organ audio on a Raspberry Pi or a PC; Pipe2C hardware modules for stop tabs, pistons, draw knobs and pedals, chained on one I2C bus; 3D-printed controls to complete them, from the modules' housings to toe pistons; and ready-made console plans with the Organ Designer, a custom console builder with parametric CAD models, cut lists and drawings as its output.