How Do You Guys Utilize Kontakt?

[waveheavy]

Hey Wave,

No the project files, etc are not combined on an audio drive.

Most likely that's one of your bottlenecks.

It's best to have the DAW software that's on the OS drive read and write audio to a separate drive just for audio and associated files. The idea is like separate highways, one for the DAW software, one for the audio, and one for the sample libraries. You get more data flow with separate highways instead of trying push the same amount of data through just one highway. More highways = more speed, less bottlenecks.

All DAWs allow you to assign the audio and picture cache directory of the audio wavefiles to a separate drive. That means the project files which is what contains the audio and picture cache, and bounced audio, etc.

[Danny]

Where's the bottle neck coming from?

All of my DAW files are on seperate drives.

[edmondredd]

I've once read somewhere (will try to find the link) that although it makes sense to load a multitimbral to minimize processing consumption, it's better to run single instances of Kontakt. Again it might sounds counter-intuitive, but apparently, depending on the core distribution, having them distributed would do a faster job.
My sessions are quite big, and I rarely use a multi timbral instance of Kontakt.
But then again, there's no right or wrong as far as you're being able to write, mix and deliver good music.
You could check this for a good overview https://youtu.be/4BJNRhZLZww
HTH,

[Len911]

Just a note, the purge video may have had 100 tracks, however he only showed 6 running at once, not 16. To truly optimize Kontakt, it probably helps to know the OS, the processor, ram, and even the actual library you are using, or multiple libraries at once. Much depends also on the number of tracks whether they are all playing at the same time, or a only a few actually playing at the same time. I made an assumption you were using a fairly recent computer with plenty of ram, mainly because of the 16 tracks at once and assuming they were all running most of the time. The number of disk drives are limited by the motherboard and how many you are able to plug in.

So much focus has been placed on the ability to have everything open and running at once, that work flow optimization, such as Cubase freeze track has taken a back seat. It basically renders an audio and releases your sampler, freeing up resources, and if a change is needed, you simply unfreeze and make the change, freeze it again and it renders a different audio file.

My original idea was about spreading the actual sample files over several disk drives. For example, if you had 4 hard disks, you used a massive orchestra library, we'll call "Orchestra Porkestra" for an orchestral piece. Because generally the string section is played at the same time, violins disk A, violas disk B, cellos disk C, and double basses disk D, rather than all strings on disk A. However, if you mainly used violin sections and hardly ever violas, you may want to put violin section one on disk A, violin section two on disk B. Basically it's an optimization of your work flow and spreading out the work load so that there isn't just one disk doing all the heavy lifting with the other three essentially idling in standby.

Having one hard drive for your OS, another for all of your samples, and possibly another for everything else, isn't necessarily, probably isn't, optimization in the sense of spreading out the workload amongst the hard drives. Just sayin'.

[waveheavy]

Where's the bottle neck coming from?

All of my DAW files are on seperate drives.

Your DAW software is operating on your OS drive, regardless of the type of DAW.

Which drive has your DAW's project files? Your audio and picture cache are in those project files. Audio and picture files are some of the largest type of files.
On a PC the projects are usually in a folder created during the install in the 'My Documents' folder on the OS drive.

When you do a first install of your DAW software, it automatically creates a folder for your project files on the same drive (OS drive), unless... you assign the projects to be stored on a separate drive folder.

The potential bottleneck comes from your CPU having to run the DAW software and push the audio and picture cache files at the same time on the same drive. The specific choke point is with the OS drive's speed, which is usually a lot slower than the CPU even with a solid state drive type. Might get by with it on a project with a small number of instruments, but as more instruments are used, and like Len911 said, if a lot of instruments are playing at the same time this can overtax the speed of your OS drive and the result is an OS system crash.

My recommendation is to find where your project files are being saved to, and make sure that project folder is on it's own drive separate from the OS drive.

[waveheavy]

This matter of why it's best to use separate drives for the DAW's operating system and another drive for the storage of project files (which contain the audio & picture cache of the wave files) and another or more drives just to store sample libraries, shouldn't be that difficult to understand.

The most multi-instrument setup in Kontakt I can get is 16 instruments per Kontakt instance. And that's what I have for a traditional orchestra setup. With full tutti (meaning all orchestra instruments playing at the same time), it's no problem, my computer setup and Kontakt handles it just fine.

The reason is because I have a powerful Intel quad-core CPU running at 4 GHz, a SSD for my OS system drive (Windows 7), a separate WD drive for the project/audio files, and two other SSD drives for my sample libraries. If I kept adding more instances of Kontakt with multi-instruments, at some point there would be a bottleneck in my system because my CPU would simply not be powerful enough to handle it all. But... I could get another computer with separate SSD's networked to the main computer for more sample library storage, and with more RAM on the main computer, I could probably add a whole another orchestra setup with the original with more Kontakt instances. The reason for the mult in Kontakt is to save CPU resources, so loading a separate instance for each instrument is the opposite.

But that's better than trying to push everything through one single drive, which us Southern folks call a 'blivet' (A blivet is like trying to pack 10 lbs of crap into a 5 lb bag).

[mojobone]

All good info here, but nobody mentioned RAM as a potential bottleneck. Should we assume your OS is 64-bit? And why not all four cores? They're usually better assigned in pairs, for I guess the same reason as RAM chips.