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DP 9.1 experience - install and beyond....

Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2016 9:35 am
by advancedspectrum
Dear Members,

I thought of capturing my experience as it happens for the greater good.

I am installing DP 9.1 on Windows 10 on this machine:
- Asus X99 AII motherboard
- Intel i7-6800k 3.4 Ghz
- 32G RAM
- 512G SSD for main OS + VST applications
- an internal 2T 7200rpm drive for DP projects
- another internal 2T 7200rpm drive for various samples
- Windows 10 OS

Challenge #1:
I own DP 7 on an older Mac machine. So I qualified for an upgrade. The first question I had which a nice DP rep answered was:
1. Do I need to install DP 7 on the new computer and then download the DP 9.1 upgrade?
Fix:
Answer is no. You can log in to your DP account and proceed to get the upgrade (if you qualify) on a separate machine directly.

Challenge #2:
I own Komplete 7 + Kontakt 4 on my older Mac machine. I have installed it successfully on my new PC. When I ran DP 9.1, immediately I saw that Kontakt was not even being discovered. I knew immediately it has to do with where the Kontakt VSTs are located on my machine vs. where DP expects to find them.
Fix:
In DP, under Edit->Preference->General->Audio Plug-ins indicate under the 'Additional VST Plug-in folder' section the path to your VST locations. In my case I added C:\\Program Files\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins 64 bit and C:\\Program Files\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins 32 bit.
When I restarted DP I sure enough was able to find the new VSTs as it started the VST examinations.

Challenge# 3
Several of the Komplete 7 and Kontakt 4 VST examinations failed. In DP, I when I go to add an instrument track, I can see not all instruments were loaded. Motu's default ones are there and working fine. Plus if you start DP 32 bit edition you see one set of Komplete instruments loaded while in DP 64 bit edition a different set of instruments were loaded. In any case, I am trying to work out a fix and will respond as soon as I can.

Steps completed so far:
1. Ensure all drivers for Komplete 7 and Kontakt 4 instruments are up to date
2. The standalone versions of the Kontakt Instruments run just fine.
Fix
I have upgraded to Komplete 11. It was becoming a war of vendors as I called Kontakt and DP to figure the issues out I was having with Komplete 7. All of Komplete 11 installs passed DP examination.

Challenge# 4
I retired my Presonus Firestudio Mobile and replaced it with Babyface Pro. Sample settings at 48kH 24 bits. Buffer size at 1024. A simple DP project with 1 Kontakt instrument, 3 samples loaded and Kontakt internal output enabled was causing major pops and clicks.
Fix
After a lot of research I found out that my settings in Kontakt were defaulted to use the Windows driver and not my interface for RME BabyPro. Switched that and saw considerable improvement but DP processing was at a all time high and still pops and clicks occurred.

Challenge# 5
DP processing was intense for a small 1 Kontakt instrument project with internal Kontakt output routing enabled. So I had to do some performance testing.

Scenario 1:
I set up one instance of Kontakt 5 and loaded 3 samples from the Cinematic Strings library (which is very scripted and sizeable). To be able to record multiple MIDI tracks into audio at once (rather than freezing), I used Kontakt's internal multi output routing (many of you might be familiar). My Kontakt audio settings are configured to use the Babyface Pro sound card and multi cores is ON. My computer's CPU was at 4.7% and memory at 1.7GB for the DP process.

Scenario 2:
1. Created new DP file. Same settings as above for DP but loaded one instance of Kontakt 5 and the same 3 samples but used not internal Kontakt routing. My computer's CPU was at 4.9% and memory at 1.6GB for the DP process. But DPs audio processing performance was visible lower than in the scenario above.

Scenario 3:
Created new DP file. Same settings as above for DP but loaded I instances of Kontakt with one instrument loaded in each. My computer's CPU was at 5.4% and memory at 2.3GB for the DP process. DPs audio processing performance was higher than Test 2 but less than Test 1.

So granted 1024 buffer size was generous to begin with, I brought it down to 512 and repeated the same three tests. Here are the results:

Scenario 1: CPU 5.6% and 1.6GB for DP process. DP processing in red and pops and clicks in audio can be heard.

Scenario 2: CPU 5.2% and 1.6GB for DP process. DP processing very low. No pops or clicks in audio.

Scenario 3: CPU 5.8% and 1.7GB for DP process. DP processing higher than low scenario 2 but less than scenario 1. No pops or clicks in audio.
Fix
1. What I am deducing from this is that for me and my computer, the best approach is to use as fewer Kontakt instances as possible.
2. I am not going to use Kontakt's internal routing options. At this point there appears to be a memory issue that either DP or Kontakt or both need to address.
3. Similar samples from the same 3rd party library vendor should be loaded together in groups as they will share many of the Kontakt instance memory and resource pools. So for example if I am working with Cinematic Strings library it would be best to load 1st Violins, 2nd Violins and Cellos in one instance. Then Basses and Violas in another instance. This way you have sample distribution across Kontakt instances and taxing DP less.
4. Loading one sample on to its own Kontakt instance dramatically adds to DPs processing. So conserve instance loading until you really need it.