Kontakt VI skipping during playback of many tracks

[wonder]

I'm working on a project arranging symphony for a live show.

This is by far the most MIDI/VI intensive session I've done and I'm having issues with Kontakt spiking my Processor.

I'm on a Mac Pro (2008). 24 Gigs of RAM. Yosemite.

I'm using 3 instances of Kontakt.

the first 2 are full (16 instruments each) and the 3rd has about 11 instruments loaded.

I'm using probably 8 or so instances of LASS....which seems to be most of the CPU heavy problem.

I turned "MultiProcessor Support" OFF inside of Kontakt and that seemed to help.

But I have to mute a bunch of MIDI tracks while I'm recording other MIDI tracks or else the session pays back at about half speed or so with constant red lining of Processor in DP and audio dropouts of the VI's.

I'm streaming my VI's from an internal SATA drive.

I have to increase my buffer to 1024 which then leads to latency.

Any suggestions?

I've heard of guys easily running 100+ MIDI tracks without any issue.

Time to get a new(er) Mac Pro?

[mikehalloran]

At first glance, I was wondering about Kontakt 6.... It took me a minute.

When you bounce to disk, do the missing tracks reappear in the mix? This is common when the buffer is set too low as your Mac sets priorities and audio playback is usually low on the list. If all of the tracks mix properly, this is how a Mac works.

If setting your buffer to 1024 works, that pretty much tells you what you need to know. Yes, increasing it adds latency but only while tracking and this is normal. I reduce the number of tracks I monitor during overdubs so that I can run at near-zero. When mixing, I set it to the level that works, normally 1024 on my iMac. Again, this is normal.

Do you have a major investment in PCIe? If so, consider an MP 5.1. There are those upgrade threads that may or may not be useful. More RAM will help—but by how much?

There are those old posts by Magic Dave on maximizing multi-core performance. I'm not finding them at the moment but, perhaps, someone else knows right where they are and can post the link.

[terrybritton]

If using Kontakt extensively, you likely will find this video by member Steve Steele quite interesting.

Terry

I show you five ways to optimize Kontakt 5 in a large film scoring type template to take up less of a memory footprint, use less CPU threads and how to save the optimize version in your template.

In this video I cover:

Kontakt's Multiprocessor Support (CPU core count).
Kontakt's Database and how to manage it.
How Kontakt's uses DFD and how to set it for your system.
Kontakt's CPU Profiling Mode
How to correctly Purge Kontakt.

[buzzsmith]

Following.


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[buzzsmith]

Great tips.


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[wonder]

Re: PCIe, yes. My interface is a 2408mk3 ... so without the PCIe, I'm dead.

I will take a look at that video .. thanks so much.

I found if I do a restart, that will help. Maybe that flushes the cache or something?


I have noticed that most, if not all of the issues are from LASS. Maybe thats just a CPU intensive VI?

[mikehalloran]

Re: PCIe, yes. My interface is a 2408mk3 ... so without the PCIe, I'm dead.

I will take a look at that video .. thanks so much.

I found if I do a restart, that will help. Maybe that flushes the cache or something?


I have noticed that most, if not all of the issues are from LASS. Maybe thats just a CPU intensive VI?

Many applications and plugins have memory leaks. In addition, apps do not release all memory -- this allows the machine to be more efficient. Running sudo purge in Terminal will help to clear RAM but not as much as a reboot.

It looks to me like more RAM may help after all.

[wonder]

I just ordered 8 more GB. Will see if that helps.

[Gravity Jim]

Each instance of Kontakt gets assigned to one core of your processor. So if you have one instance of Kontakt with 16 instruments loaded into it, the running of that instance is not spread across multi-core processors: it ALL runs under the same core, and causes digital hilarity.

You might try using more instances and fewer instruments in each one.

Turning off Kontakt's MultiProcessor Support is definitely the right thing to do. And while this is pretty heavy on your CPU, LASS will use all the memory it can, and streaming that much data from an SATA drive is going to heat the drive right up.

So, another 8Gb of RAM is a good idea, too.

[David Polich]

Personally I think running more than one instance of Kontakt with one instrument is asking for trouble. The disk streaming just becomes too bottlenecked. Having your sample-based libraries on a
their own SSD or hybrid drive helps for sure. And while I know it is difficult to "imagine" an arrangement in your head, I try to do just that and commit one part at a time to audio, then move on to the next part, and so on.

Another option is to have a multitimbral workstation synth (like a Yamaha Motif or Montage) on
hand to sketch your arrangement with, then use those parts' MIDI to trigger your Kontakt parts one at a time and record each one as audio.

[mikehalloran]

This is helping me a lot. I bought Komplete a few weeks ago and am getting into Kontakt slowly.

Later iMacs have Thunderbolt (2011) and TB+USB 3 (2012 on) but my 2010 has neither. Fortunately, it and the 2011 have an unused SATA bus (27" iMacs only).

OWC has a modification that converts the extra SATA bus to an eSATA port so I had Apple ship it there when I bought it—the difference between CA and IL sales taxes nearly paid for the mod. This means I don't have to go back inside to install a library drive on that spare bus. An external eSATA dock works great and is holding a second 850 EVO where I've installed my libraries.

Now that my machine is 7 years old, I'm thinking it's time to upgrade. I expect that Kontakt is going to be the deciding factor of whether the next one is another iMac or a Mac Pro and how soon I need to do it. I don't like that the maximum amount of internal storage is only 1T (not doing a fusion drive).

[Gravity Jim]

Personally I think running more than one instance of Kontakt with one instrument is asking for trouble.

I have a 12-core 3.33Ghz 5,1 Mac with 32Gb of RAM and my sample libraries on a separate, internal 1Tb SSD. I am wrapping up a video game project where I had 8 instances of Kontakt 5 running 27 orchestral instruments (LASS and CineWinds, CinePerc and VOXOS Choir), all running live at once, and experienced no trouble. I did get to the point where I had to print a couple instruments to audio before final mix, but I'mm not any kind of Mac maven and I'm living proof that this statement isn't necessarily so.