Hi CPU use with Kontakt 5 and DP7

toodamnhip · Post by **toodamnhip** » Tue Jul 10, 2012 1:23 pm

Amen Gravity.
Hopefully MOTU “hears you” and considers you representative of 1000s in the same predicament.

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Tue Jul 10, 2012 2:39 pm

Gravity Jim wrote: For the first time since I starting using DP, I'm not going to be among the first-day updaters. Because the price of upgrading DP and the price of Logic Pro are the same, I'm going to have to wait-and-see if these CPU issues disappear for others before deciding what to do.

No matter, if they so give logic away for free, will I use it instead of DP. I owned Logic and upgraded through v7.2 to 9.1? And managed to sell it before it went up on App store. Just couldn't stand it.
If Apple were to go all FCPX on Logic's ass I would maybe give it another chance (I love FCP X!)
But if there's no perceivable improvements in DP8 I might start thinking of switching to something else. But I suppose I'd still wait til I get a new MacPro sometime in 2013 and see how DP ran on that before giving up.
Too much I like about DP and too much time invested using it and reading the manuals etc to give it up easily.
But I think, and hope, that DP8 will be a great upgrade!

Steve Steele · Post by **Steve Steele** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:45 am

This issue between DP and Kontakt MUST be resolved. It has been a thorn in my side for months. With my 2008 MacPro I load about 30 instances of Kontakt with most of the popular Kontakt libs, and that's not too bad but DP7's behavior is rediculous.

I believe it's DP's memory management, and/or legacy code. Of course the same could be said about Kontakt but some developers have assured me (for what it's worth) that Kontakt is well programmed.

I keep a close eye on the Activity Monitor and I notice DP using about 3GBs of memory. But then it begins its chain reaction of crashing, memory errors which mention DP being out of memory (which then makes DP go through the cycle of disabling and re-enabling MAS which takes about 60-90 seconds). So I restart my computer, on and on, several times a day to the point where I spend more time fighting to keep DP running than I do working.

I realize this is really asking a lot from any DAW. That's a lot of I/O. But come on. Is this 1995?

I believe and I hope that when MOTU said DP8 was 100 percent Cocoa and 64-bit they had this in mind and not just for some window dressing.

Once DP is free to access as much memory as it wants, and Kontakt Server can be turned off perhaps this very serious issue will be resolved. Because this is the kind of issue that forces hands to switch platforms. I currently have no real choice but to use Kontakt. However I'm already creating new sessions in 64-bit Logic (not without it's issues either) and keeping a blind eye on Cubase (it's MIDI features are quite good).

DP8 is make or break time for me and MOTU. I hope they know what they're doing.

toodamnhip · Post by **toodamnhip** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:27 pm

nightwatch wrote:This issue between DP and Kontakt MUST be resolved. It has been a thorn in my side for months. With my 2008 MacPro I load about 30 instances of Kontakt with most of the popular Kontakt libs, and that's not too bad but DP7's behavior is rediculous.

I believe it's DP's memory management, and/or legacy code. Of course the same could be said about Kontakt but some developers have assured me (for what it's worth) that Kontakt is well programmed.

I keep a close eye on the Activity Monitor and I notice DP using about 3GBs of memory. But then it begins its chain reaction of crashing, memory errors which mention DP being out of memory (which then makes DP go through the cycle of disabling and re-enabling MAS which takes about 60-90 seconds). So I restart my computer, on and on, several times a day to the point where I spend more time fighting to keep DP running than I do working.

I realize this is really asking a lot from any DAW. That's a lot of I/O. But come on. Is this 1995?

I believe and I hope that when MOTU said DP8 was 100 percent Cocoa and 64-bit they had this in mind and not just for some window dressing.

Once DP is free to access as much memory as it wants, and Kontakt Server can be turned off perhaps this very serious issue will be resolved. Because this is the kind of issue that forces hands to switch platforms. I currently have no real choice but to use Kontakt. However I'm already creating new sessions in 64-bit Logic (not without it's issues either) and keeping a blind eye on Cubase (it's MIDI features are quite good).

DP8 is make or break time for me and MOTU. I hope they know what they're doing.

Just get Vienna Ensemble Pro and be done with it bro. It really helps and it has saved my butt.
When DP 8 comes out, it will be VERY interesting.
One thing I will be doing is to push DP 8 as hard as Vienna and see who or what crashes.
With added RAM and Vienna Pro, I ran a ridiculously large amount of plugs, especially plugs like east west "pain in the butt" Piano, and I could NOT get Vienna to crash.
I could get things to crackle when I had about 20 gig of RAM in use for the multitude of VIs I had running, but no crash. I even went CRUEL and put the buffers to 64!!
Crackle yes, crash no!
Speaking of MOTU knowing what they’re doing, they will not be able to avoid this A-B comparison when DP 8 comes out. There will be no hiding, no double talk, no deafening silence. The comparison will be done and DP will either win, lose or draw.
And for the endlessly optimistic DP defenders who think I have a tendency to be a bit of a critique re: DP, it WINS, if it handles VIs better than VE Pro 5, you will hear my praises indeed!
I have been waiting to praise DP in the areas of stability, (when coupled with 3rd party plugs and VI’s), and memory management for 15 yrs...lol...

Wibe · Post by **Wibe** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 2:47 pm

Hey Jzilla.

Any luck solving your problems? I´m still struggling, trying out all sorts of things but nothing helps. The only way I´ve managed to get the CPU down is by deleting my main output track. Just wanted to know if you found any solution to this.

pencilina · Post by **pencilina** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 10:01 pm

Hi,

I use K5 a lot. I've got it working great with lots of samples and low latency.
Things that worked well for me:

-Turning off spotlight . I use a utility called Spotless. Makes a big difference on my pokey laptop.

-Make sure Time machine is off

-Putting Kontakt instruments on an SSD. This has been AMAZING. Everything works much better. You can also decrease the instrument preload size using a lot less ram for the Kontakt memory server. Sometimes its possible to go all the way down to the lowest setting (6k). This seriously cuts the memory server's ram usage. This is a huge benefit of using the SSD. Before I had the SSD I read that an SSD would only help sample load times and not streaming but I think the CPU load is much less maybe 30-50% since using the SSD. It makes sense- less data bottlenecks.

-The next one is a little crazy and might be voodoo. But when things started to go south (pauses, beach balls and misc. freezes) I'd usually check the activity monitor and the console. I noticed in the activity monitor that the longer my machine is on the more memory kernel_task seems to eat up. It has something to do with cacheing- I don't really understand but I would reboot and projects would play better until kernel_task started eating around 700MB of ram. So I did an experiment and pulled memory (4 of the 16 gigs that are in my machine). Kernel task now seems to limit its diet to 400MB or so of ram and DP rarely glitches. This might sound silly I haven't had a pause or a freeze in a long time. Too much ram could be a bad thing. Again using an SSD can seriously reduce the amount of ram you need for streaming.

I've also played around with turning K5's multiprocessor support on and off and the number of cores it uses. So far I can't really determine if this changes anything but I'd be curious to know how this might relate to CPU hit.

Also when recording MIDI drums for a mockup or something else that needs really low latency I decrease DPs buffer and I make sure DP is set to pre-render plug ins and that no VI or plug in windows windows are open.

Also, be aware of innocent seeming instruments using lots of resources. Some instruments are hogs based on the way they're programmed- like vintage organs that uses a stereo voice for each drawbar.

Hope this helps someone.

B

toodamnhip · Post by **toodamnhip** » Thu Jul 19, 2012 3:34 pm

The SSD drive is an intriguing idea.
Having solved much of my problem with VIenna, thus bypassing inefficiency in DP, the next improvement could indeed be SSD.

It is truly amazing how often a crappy system is solved not “all at once”, but one little tweek at a time. This also has held true for crashy DP problems.

A computer system can be equated to a well cared for lawn.
It takes time and attention and grows well slowly...

The problem is, with computers being updated, once we get a well cared for “lawn”, it’s time for DP 8 or a new comp, and it all starts over with new strains of “weeds” needing to be pulled

pencilina · Post by **pencilina** » Thu Jul 19, 2012 7:28 pm

Ya! the SSD is the silver bullet for sure. Less ram and CPU hit. Its a wonderful improvement. I picked up a 128 gig for 80 bux. Check dealmac for bargains. Let us know how it goes.

stubbsonic · Post by **stubbsonic** » Thu Jul 19, 2012 7:46 pm

I just read this whole thread, as I am using Kontakt and just updated to v5.

I was wondering if DP does some kind of pre-buffering. I know there is that setting, but perhaps with some VI's it has to pre-buffer -- which would explain why enabling outputs bumps the CPU load (i.e., DP won't pre-buffer a VI with no output assigned). But maybe that doesn't explain the way the numbers were changing.

There are other settings in DP that I need to read up on and experiment with.

CONFIGURE HARDWARE DRIVER:
Host Buffer Multiplier
Work Priority

CONFIGURE STUDIO SETTINGS:
pretty much everything on that page

And in Kontakt, I don't know what to set anything to in there. From what I've been seeing folks say to turn off Kontakts Memory Server. It seems like there might be some other counter-intuitive settings. I guess I'll have to do a little research on this site.

toodamnhip · Post by **toodamnhip** » Thu Jul 19, 2012 8:23 pm

Memory Server really helps if you don;t have a program like VE Pro.
It allows Kontakt to grab ram above the 4 gig limit of DP.
Thus, if you have a machine with 8 gig of ram, and you use mem serv, you can use that ram instead f wasting it.

It might not be a perfect solution as there are occasional glitches using Mem serv such as ram getting stuck or the mem serv quitting, but it definitely made DP crash less and run better for me when I used it.
If you eventually get VE Pro, don;t use the me serv in VE Pro.

stubbsonic · Post by **stubbsonic** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 8:13 am

I probably won't be getting VE-pro. Not in the budget. Though I might tinker with routing MIDI/Audio to/from MainStage2, to see if that might do what is needed. Sounds like that might be iffy though. Round-trip latency might be unworkable. Though I hear I can set MS2 buffers ridiculously low. Need to experiment with that.

toodamnhip · Post by **toodamnhip** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 7:19 pm

stubbsonic wrote:I probably won't be getting VE-pro. Not in the budget. Though I might tinker with routing MIDI/Audio to/from MainStage2, to see if that might do what is needed. Sounds like that might be iffy though. Round-trip latency might be unworkable. Though I hear I can set MS2 buffers ridiculously low. Need to experiment with that.

When I hear a few hundred dollars is not in the budget, which of course is your complete right to say, I wonder if that makes any sense to me?
With all the effort and care any person puts into their music, are the headaches really worht saving a few hundred dollars?
The only thing that makes sense about your point of view to me is that DP 8 is coming out..”someday”.
But if DP 8 doesn;t run like a top, spend the 300 bucks man.

I would recommend getting the demo and trying Vienna.
Unfortunately, you also have to spend 40 for the vienna key which is stupid, but that is the only thing stuoid about the program I assure you.
There is also that other program with the strange name that will work, and I think it is a free demo period.

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 5:29 am

toodamnhip wrote: There is also that other program with the strange name that will work, and I think it is a free demo period.

if you are referring to Plogue Bidule then I'm not so sure. I tried the demo of Bidule and it did nothing to relieve the CPU issues I'm having.
I haven't been bothered to try the VEP yet as I can't afford it anyway so holding out for DP8 before to see where the land lies after that.

stubbsonic · Post by **stubbsonic** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:42 am

You make good points about justifying the expense of VE-pro, and I do spend money when it counts. At the moment, I don't have high-pressure gigs and I don't run lots of Kontakt instances. I also have workarounds, and can do what is needed by jumping through a few hoops.

If I had clients and dollars hanging in the balance, I'd buy a known-working solution. In the meantime, getting the settings right and understanding the issues as best I can is all that I require right now.

Let's not assume Kontakt is completely innocent here. I have another host that is broken by Kontakt -- Rax. Seems like they may be doing some things not-by-the-book. Probably unrelated.

BTW, Plogue Bidule seems cool for other reasons. And it is cheaper. Are folks generally getting similar results with PB?

toodamnhip · Post by **toodamnhip** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 1:27 pm

stubbsonic wrote:. Are folks generally getting similar results with PB?

There have been many that have praised it as invaluable just like VE.
By the way, this isn’t about Kontakt only, this is about ALL VIs that use RAM.
The one thing that has been AMAZING to me is NO MORE CRASHES!

Again, this whole experience has proven the instability came from DPs weak code that cannot tolerate large amounts of RAM and/or memory handling.

It doesn;t matter now if I use Kontakt or Omnisphere, Stylus, whatever.
I don;t crash anymore. DP WAS THE CULPRIT.

Digital Performer is now in RAM jail until it learns to get along with others....lol

ps.
I allow Magic Dave a visit once a month but we do not allow cakes or anything that could be hiding a file or saw.

MOTUnation.com