Why does Kontakt first instance take 45 seconds to load?

[gamma-ut]

The NI ones need to stay: I pretty much trashed anything that looked out of place such as synths or clearly not Kontakt-related, like as you say, Waves. I think all the NKS files are in User/Library/Prefs.

The authorisation files have moved around a bit over the years but I think at least some of those NI plists will contain the Native Access data. But I don't think it's a major deal to reset them - I didn't take detailed notes but I think I managed to avoid nobbling Kontakt libraries while doing The Purge.

I honestly don't understand why Kontakt scans the NKS files. My best guess is that using that plist format was a shortcut they made while writing KK, not taking into account the fact that Kontakt scans that folder to check for new libraries.

 

[charlieclouser]

Well, I tried letting Komplete Kontrol and its Scan Tool background app scan everything, and it keeps locking up on random plugins, like Softube Statement lead, Arturia Solina, etc. And when you force-quit and begin again it doesn't pick up where it left off, it starts again from the beginning. Sheesh.

So then I moved every single one of the com.native-instruments.XXX.plist files out of both the main Library and the User>Library folders, and...

BOOM. Both versions of Kontakt launch in 3 seconds.

BUT. Kontakt said it's not authorized. So I moved the .plist files for Kontakt, Kontakt5, Kontakt Factory Library back into their locations and now it's authorized again, but no libraries showed up in my Libraries tab.

So I guess the next multi-hour-long step is to gradually move .plist files back into their locations until all of my Player libraries are authorized. I will start with the NI Access .plist and see if that re-authorizes the libraries, and go from there.

But it looks like it's definitely a .plist issue over here.

 

[charlieclouser]

SOLUTION FOUND!!!

So I went in and moved every single com.native-instruments.XXX.plist file from both the Library>Preferences and User>Library>Preferences folders, stashing them on another drive. There were about 500 in the main Library folder and about 700 in the User Library folder, many of them were for non-NI products, like Waves plugins etc.

• With none of those .plist files in their normal locations, Kontakt launches in 2 seconds (!!!) - but it says it's not authorized.

• Moving just the .plist files related to Kontakt, Factory Library, and Komplete Ultimate back to their normal locations re-authorized Kontakt, but none of my Player Libraries were shown, and NI Access showed them as being "not installed". Kontakt launch time was 3 seconds.

• Moving all of the .plist files related to items shown in NI Access as "not installed" back to their normal locations re-authorized all of my Player Libraries. Kontakt launch time increased to 7 seconds. Tolerable I guess.

• Many .plist files existed in both the main and User locations. I noticed that items in the User folder got re-built when Kontakt was launched with the corresponding item in the main folder. So I let it rebuild them and threw away the ones I had dragged out to a safe place.

• I have not dragged back to their normal location any of those com.native-instruments.XXX.plist files that seemed to relate to Waves or other plugins, assuming that they're related to NKS and / or Komplete Kontrol.

• I never got Komplete Kontrol to finish scanning, it kept locking up on random plugins and since I don't have an NI Kontroller, don't use NKS, and abhor the idea of a "shell" like Komplete Kontrol, I'm leaving those .plist files in the stash location for now.

So... if you're experiencing ridiculously long Kontakt launch times, get into those Preferences folders and get started manually dragging them to a safe location and then put back only the ones that relate to items that show up in NI Access as "not installed".

Seven seconds is still way too slow for me to feel good about, but it's not "smash guitar through monitor" level slow. I am going to try moving a bunch of those .plist files, for libraries I don't need on this project, over to the stash point and see if I can get the launch time back down to around 3 seconds.

Freakin' hassle.

 

[easyrider]

SOLUTION FOUND!!!

So I went in and moved every single com.native-instruments.XXX.plist file from both the Library>Preferences and User>Library>Preferences folders, stashing them on another drive. There were about 500 in the main Library folder and about 700 in the User Library folder, many of them were for non-NI products, like Waves plugins etc.

• With none of those .plist files in their normal locations, Kontakt launches in 2 seconds (!!!) - but it says it's not authorized.

• Moving just the .plist files related to Kontakt, Factory Library, and Komplete Ultimate back to their normal locations re-authorized Kontakt, but none of my Player Libraries were shown, and NI Access showed them as being "not installed". Kontakt launch time was 3 seconds.

• Moving all of the .plist files related to items shown in NI Access as "not installed" back to their normal locations re-authorized all of my Player Libraries. Kontakt launch time increased to 7 seconds. Tolerable I guess.

• Many .plist files existed in both the main and User locations. I noticed that items in the User folder got re-built when Kontakt was launched with the corresponding item in the main folder. So I let it rebuild them and threw away the ones I had dragged out to a safe place.

• I have not dragged back to their normal location any of those com.native-instruments.XXX.plist files that seemed to relate to Waves or other plugins, assuming that they're related to NKS and / or Komplete Kontrol.

• I never got Komplete Kontrol to finish scanning, it kept locking up on random plugins and since I don't have an NI Kontroller, don't use NKS, and abhor the idea of a "shell" like Komplete Kontrol, I'm leaving those .plist files in the stash location for now.

So... if you're experiencing ridiculously long Kontakt launch times, get into those Preferences folders and get started manually dragging them to a safe location and then put back only the ones that relate to items that show up in NI Access as "not installed".

Seven seconds is still way too slow for me to feel good about, but it's not "smash guitar through monitor" level slow. I am going to try moving a bunch of those .plist files, for libraries I don't need on this project, over to the stash point and see if I can get the launch time back down to around 3 seconds.

Freakin' hassle.

PITA

 

[charlieclouser]

PITA

Yeah, pretty freakin' ridiculous. Especially because Logic can scan 32,000 EXS Instruments that take up 3 GIGAbytes of disk space in less than ten seconds when launching Logic, and then never needs to re-scan them until the user tells it to refresh the browser. Meanwhile, NI takes 45 seconds to scan 900 .plist files that occupy less than 8 MEGAbytes on disk.

I realize it's getting hung up somewhere, and most of that 45 seconds is NI sitting there scratching its head, but still.

It looks like the only way to refresh those .plist files is to re-install all of those NKS-compatible products, or maybe use Komplete Kontrol's Scan Tool to refresh them... but Scan Tool kept hanging on random plugins and I had to force-quit after waiting a half-hour to see if it was moving or not.

Urrrgggh.

So for the moment, only the .plist files relating to NI products and third-party Player libraries are present in their default locations on my rig, and launch time is 5-7 seconds. The rest of the .plist files are stashed in a folder on my desktop.

Tolerable I guess.

 

[Kent]

Yeah, pretty freakin' ridiculous. Especially because Logic can scan 32,000 EXS Instruments that take up 3 GIGAbytes of disk space in less than ten seconds when launching Logic, and then never needs to re-scan them until the user tells it to refresh the browser. Meanwhile, NI takes 45 seconds to scan 900 .plist files that occupy less than 8 MEGAbytes on disk.

I realize it's getting hung up somewhere, and most of that 45 seconds is NI sitting there scratching its head, but still.

It looks like the only way to refresh those .plist files is to re-install all of those NKS-compatible products, or maybe use Komplete Kontrol's Scan Tool to refresh them... but Scan Tool kept hanging on random plugins and I had to force-quit after waiting a half-hour to see if it was moving or not.

Urrrgggh.

So for the moment, only the .plist files relating to NI products and third-party Player libraries are present in their default locations on my rig, and launch time is 5-7 seconds. The rest of the .plist files are stashed in a folder on my desktop.

Tolerable I guess.

FWIW I find that KK is not very ‘good’ at scanning and the process takes the better part of a day with quit-restarts needed every so often. Your experience sounds identical.

 

[KerrySmith]

FWIW I find that KK is not very ‘good’ at scanning and the process takes the better part of a day with quit-restarts needed every so often. Your experience sounds identical.

KK has been a blight on my otherwise happy workstation, and when they updated it to scan/include “non-instrument” plugins, it became exponentially worse.

 

[charlieclouser]

KK has been a blight on my otherwise happy workstation, and when they updated it to scan/include “non-instrument” plugins, it became exponentially worse.

FWIW I find that KK is not very ‘good’ at scanning and the process takes the better part of a day with quit-restarts needed every so often. Your experience sounds identical.

Good to know that my KK experience is not unique enough to be alarming or even surprising.

Hassle though that I need to get all cowboy in the Prefs folder just to manhandle the NI stuff into working order.

 

[JonS]

Well, I tried having standalone instances of v5 and v6 loaded already before launching Logic, and the slow load time was the same. I also tried having an instance of VEPro running with v5 and v6 loaded.... same result.

It seems that whatever caching is happening is separate for the Logic, VEPro, and standalone instances of Kontakt - like, they're not sharing a common cache of whatever it is that's slowing the first instance down. Also, v5 and v6 seem to keep separate caches, so having v5 already loaded doesn't speed up the first cold load of v6 for instance.

Once a single instance of either version of Kontakt is loaded in Logic (or VEPro), subsequent instances of that same version load lickety-split, and switching tracks while the plugin window is open with chain-link turned on also happens super-fast. It's just that first cold load that's slow. Of course, this also means that closing a Logic project and opening another has the same cold-load delay, since Logic de-instanciates all plugins in the outgoing project and then re-instanciates them in the incoming one. Another argument for using VEPro I guess....

VEPro decoupled solves this.

 

[Sunny Schramm]

Windows 10 here takes about 3 seconds

same here - 1-2 seconds max.

(i9 9900K, 32GB, RTX3080, WS Z390 Pro, Windows 11)

 

[samphony]

1-2 seconds on a fully fledged m1max in both logic and Studio One native silicon mode. @charlieclouser

Are you still on 10.14?

 

[MegaPixel]

same here - 2-3 seconds max.

(i9 9900K, 32GB, RTX3080, WS Z390 Pro)

Opening a blank instance can take about 7 to 12 seconds for all of KK13UCE + around 15 3rd party extras which install via NA... Anywhere up to around 30 seconds for large libraries, via direct NKS open (yes batch saved)...

i9 9900k [email protected] on all cores, 32GB DDR4 3600 XMP2, RTX 3080, NVME Boot, SSD storage (Kontakt & all libs)

It's made by NI, it's working as intended, sloooow and will lock up every so often...
Just go make a cup of tea, go out get a sandwich and when you come back you should be able to start up another instance of it.

Moral of the story... Make a blank project, create 10 instances of kontakt, save, then when you first start a project using kontakt open that then go out and get a cuppa and a sandwich

 

[charlieclouser]

1-2 seconds on a fully fledged m1max in both logic and Studio One native silicon mode. @charlieclouser

Are you still on 10.14?

Yes my main rig is still on MacOS 10.14.6 Mojave. I reduced Kontakt's cold load time to 3 sec by removing tons of .plist files for all the NKS stuff that I didn't need, but that machine shall remain frozen at Mojave.

I do have a new M1max MacBook Pro 16" but I've only fiddled with it and haven't even put Kontakt on it yet.

Waiting for the M-series Mac Pro replacement before I totally go all-in on Apple Silicon. If there's a Mac Mini announced soon I may get one, but I may just wait for the big boy if it's likely to happen within a year or so. By then everything that matters will be AS native I suspect, and the stuff that isn't by then will be end-of-life probably.

I have a lot of legacy tools that I still like to use, like ReCycle and other goofy stuff, so I'm gonna freeze my Mac Pro cylinder at Mojave and use it for all that old stuff. Redmatica KeyMap is on my ProTools cylinder which is still on Yosemite.

 

[samphony]

I do have a new M1max MacBook Pro 16" but I've only fiddled with it and haven't even put Kontakt on it yet.

Ha. Like Reinhold!

Totally understand why you froze the machine in time. I did so with one of the Intel minis in the rack. It’s practically a mirror of the trashcan mac before i sold it.