# Why do people sometimes use Kontakt as a multi-output?



## Ray (Jun 18, 2020)

What are multi-outputs used for? 

Many thanks!


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## Rob (Jun 18, 2020)

if you want to treat different channels with different fx, that's what I do at least...


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## Jay Panikkar (Jun 18, 2020)

So you can have one instance of Kontakt with multiple patches, each routed to individual channels in your DAW. Atleast, that's the primary use case.


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## Rory (Jun 18, 2020)

This question was discussed in a thread a couple of weeks ago: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/impact-of-several-instances-of-kontakt-on-ram.94128/

It allegedly saves RAM. It turns out that that is way overblown, and if you're using Logic it's a PITA. That said, it appears that if you are using a Linnstrument MIDI controller, which is not a common controller, it's probably necessary. See the Linnstrument site on using a Linnstrument with Kontakt if you are interested.


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## chrisr (Jun 18, 2020)

I have outs 1/2 dry, outs 3/4 early reflections, outs 5/6 hall(tail) and 7/8 spaceverb (blackhole at the moment but will try the free valhalla one at some point)

The reverbs are all in my daw - the routing is all done via kontakt auxes, routed to discrete outs.

The master out is turned right down, and aux 1 = dry, 2 = early etc....

The levels of dry/early/late/spaceverb (aux outs) are all on faders on a controlfreak. Same for all channels.


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## Diablo IV (Jun 18, 2020)

Because if you use drums, you want the kick, snare, hh, ride, toms, etc, routed to their own track so you can treat them properly.


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## Rory (Jun 18, 2020)

Diablo IV said:


> Because if you use drums, you want the kick, snare, hh, ride, toms, etc, routed to their own track so you can treat them properly.



Which you can do by opening an instance of Kontakt for each drum. That's the approach that Oliver Weder took when he showed how he made the trailer for Spitfire's Frank Ricotti Percussion library. He opens a separate instance of Kontakt for each instrument:





This is partly a question of personal preference, and @chrisr gives an interesting example of how he uses the functionality. However, the usual argument - that it conserves RAM - is basically rubbish unless you're under-powered in the first place. It also complicates things in Logic, including with automation, although it's possible to create templates to make it work.


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## X-Bassist (Jun 18, 2020)

Cinesamples gives you surround mics on their orchestral instruments, so you can setup for surround. Quad output can work for 5.1, and 6 channel output can work for a 7.1 mix. They even give you a sub channel on Percussion, which on many things adds a good beefy low.

Having a good mix on these things involves getting the seperate mics routed to the DAW, then figuring out what mix will sound best outside kontakt (I like Spanner for this stuff). As long as your in a DAW that can do surround, setup takes a little time but it's not difficult.

I assumed it would take more Ram to do separate outputs (or maybe it's just that I have every mic turned on and up) but if it's the same either way, then I'm glad.

The first time I set this up in surround room I was surprised at the difference. Really brings the instruments in the room, but also gives you a better sense of the Sony scoring stage, which sounds great when it's all around you. I'll have to try this with my spitfire libraries next (SSS,SCS)


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## Rory (Jun 18, 2020)

X-Bassist said:


> I assumed it would take more Ram to do separate outputs (or maybe it's just that I have every mic turned on and up) but if it's the same either way, then I'm glad.



If you look at the thread linked in post #4, two people say that an instance of Kontakt uses about 65MB of RAM. If you need to run multiple instruments in a single instance of Kontakt to save that, you do indeed have a problem


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## José Herring (Jun 18, 2020)

chrisr said:


> ..... (blackhole at the moment but will try the free valhalla one at some point)



Be prepared to experience a true transcendental experience.


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## Diablo IV (Jun 18, 2020)

Rory said:


> Which you can do by opening an instance of Kontakt for each drum



Errmm... nope...
Why would I want to do that?


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## TomislavEP (Jun 19, 2020)

I'm a REAPER user and I always use Kontakt with multiple outputs routing saved as a track template. I primarily do so for mixing purposes, as I typically use IZotope Neutron as a channel strip for every track. I also believe that this is a more resource-friendly way of using Kontakt rather than having separate instances. It also simplifies sending to reverbs and effects.


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## Diablo IV (Jun 19, 2020)

TomislavEP said:


> I'm a REAPER user and I always use Kontakt with multiple outputs routing saved as a track template. I primarily do so for mixing purposes, as I typically use IZotope Neutron as a channel strip for every track. I also believe that this is a more resource-friendly way of using Kontakt rather than having separate instances. It also simplifies sending to reverbs and effects.



Thanks 4 typing what I was so lazy to.


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## Rory (Jun 19, 2020)

TomislavEP said:


> I'm a REAPER user and I always use Kontakt with multiple outputs routing saved as a track template. ... I also believe that this is a more resource-friendly way of using Kontakt rather than having separate instances.



It is more resource friendly, but whether that matters depends on how much RAM you have. Each instance of Kontakt is about 65MB, which means that 15.4 instances/copies of Kontakt use one gigabyte.


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## Artemi (Jun 19, 2020)

chrisr said:


> I have outs 1/2 dry, outs 3/4 early reflections, outs 5/6 hall(tail) and 7/8 spaceverb (blackhole at the moment but will try the free valhalla one at some point)
> 
> The reverbs are all in my daw - the routing is all done via kontakt auxes, routed to discrete outs.
> 
> ...



interesting setup, so you are sending the reverb track to the 7/8 of the track with a kontakt?


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## chrisr (Jun 19, 2020)

Artemi said:


> interesting setup, so you are sending the reverb track to the 7/8 of the track with a kontakt?



Apologies Artemi, I'm not sure I understand your question.... but, working in stereo, I'm doing this:

Hosting Kontakt in VEP, with each 4 stereo returns per instance. I have 11 instances so 44 stereo audio tracks between VEP7 and my DAW.

Each set of stereo returns is : 1 (Dry) 2 (hall) 3 (room) 4 (bhole) (yes I called it bhole because it gave me a giggle... I should have called Hall "Tail" and Room "ER" really as well...

like this:





Then in my kontakt instruments I generally delete any built in reverb FX, and have my main output muted. I then use 4 x auxes to send to the outputs 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 - so that I can balance to taste. Like this:






If I want to eq or otherwise add fx to a particular instrument / slot in kontakt, then I'll often jump in to the instrument and do it there. If/when there are instruments that need a lot of processing - like drum kits / electric guitars etc... then I'll host them directly in my DAW as instruments. The setup described above is really for the orchestral instruments.

The aim is to have as few reverb fx as possible. At the moment I have just 3 in my default setup. When I'm bouncing stems I render offline using MEAP - so the reverbs are printed to the stems individually at that point. That make sense?


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## Artemi (Jun 19, 2020)

chrisr said:


> Apologies Artemi, I'm not sure I understand your question.... but, working in stereo, I'm doing this:
> 
> Hosting Kontakt in VEP, with each 4 stereo returns per instance. I have 11 instances so 44 stereo audio tracks between VEP7 and my DAW.



I thought your setup could clarify some things on the kontakt auxes for me, but it seems that the VEP is not something I understand.

But anyways, thanks for the long explanation! =)


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## chrisr (Jun 19, 2020)

Well you could take vep out of the equation, @Artemi . If you were hosting kontakt in your daw then simply enable 8 outputs (4 stereo outs) and assign the 4 auxes to these outs, and you're good to go. Do with the audio what you will.

Fire away with any questions if there's something you'd like to clarify about the auxes?


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## chrisr (Jun 19, 2020)

Sure - in my daw i have 3 fx send channels. You'll notice the aux outs are all at unity/0db. When these channels arrive at cubase there is no direct out (the fader is fully down) but the signal is routed via a pre-fader aux send (at unity) to the relevant reverb (tail/er/spacefx) - so in effect the aux outs of any/all kontakt channels just become reverb sends in the way that an aux usually is.

The signal from kontakt aux 1, on the other hand, arrives at cubase and just feeds the stereo out, again at unity gain.

So - the aux outs from kontakt relate directly to dry/tail/er/space.

It's the same for all my vep instances and the kontakt instances therein, and my vep instances are grouped by orchestral section and then synths/keys/ethnic/specialty etc...

There are non-kontakt intruments in my template too of course - in those cases the same cc's that control the kontakt auxes just control the vep aux sends. Don't think any of those instuments are multi-timbral though. I just do the kontakt thing because i want to fill kontakt with 16 instruments mostly - except for some kontakts that have multis (some p.sam and lass etc)


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## youngpokie (Jun 19, 2020)

Man, that's really interesting! I wish there was a diagram or a YouTube video that explains the complete routing path. I'm probably too dumb to understand it without it, but I'm very intrigued by the idea of using routing auxes as sends... Thanks!


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## Artemi (Jun 19, 2020)

big plus for that haha!


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## [email protected] (Jun 19, 2020)

Here you go!


This video helped a lot regarding setting up all my Kontakt instruments.


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## ProfoundSilence (Jun 19, 2020)

Often times to route microphones differently. I might for instance want to route all Tree mics together, and maybe apply a haas delay only to the close mic, ect.


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## Cideboy (Jan 29, 2022)

chrisr said:


> I have outs 1/2 dry, outs 3/4 early reflections, outs 5/6 hall(tail) and 7/8 spaceverb (blackhole at the moment but will try the free valhalla one at some point)
> 
> The reverbs are all in my daw - the routing is all done via kontakt auxes, routed to discrete outs.
> 
> ...


What’s your thoughts on instruments like spitfire in which the reverb is very much a character of the sound. IMO, it’s half the reason we buy so many different libraries - and why they are expensive. I find it odd that Spitfire even configured their defaults to use convolution reverb in lieu of the natural tail ( at least in the new plug-in). I re-saved all of my templates with the tightness at 0, the reverb at 0, and the release will vary based the performance. 

I have also have the same reverb setup using a convolution reverb that mimics the recorded environment if possible. For example I use waves abbey road series on anything I need to get to sit well with Spitfire ARO/T. What I don’t do is send the ARO/T through the fx chain or I would lose all that lovely character.

This is how I do it, could be the wrong approach and welcome the dialog


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## TomislavEP (Jan 29, 2022)

I used to think that using an instance of Kontakt with 16 MIDI channels and separate outputs is the way to go, especially concerning the "potentially wasted resources". For a while now, I've been using a separate instance of Kontakt on each track. I find this more intuitive, not having to worry about routing and outputs, as well as manually changing the settings should I need to modify the order of Kontakt instruments. It also simplifies working with mutis, especially when you use them as a sound design rather than an organizing tool.

Not that I did some precise measurements, but according to the performance monitor feature in REAPER, there doesn't seem to be a huge difference. I'm using an eight-core CPU and 64 GB of RAM. Of course, I typically don't work with those huge preloaded templates so my experience is somewhat limited in that respect.

Multi-output Kontakt instruments certainly have their uses, especially for some things that are handy to have pre-routed, such as drum kits, strings, etc. Having a smaller end FX chain on a track might also be helpful in some cases.


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## Cideboy (Jan 29, 2022)

VST3 is typically disabled when there is no audio going through it so you need to keep that in mind. As long as you use VST3 Kontakt then load up as many instance as you want. You don’t even need to bother disabling them anymore.


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## Cideboy (Jan 29, 2022)

Cideboy said:


> VST3 is typically disabled when there is no audio going through it so you need to keep that in mind. As long as you use VST3 Kontakt then load up as many instance as you want. You don’t even need to bother disabling them anymore.


They use the same memory space in ram so your not wasting ram either


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## chrisr (Jan 31, 2022)

Cideboy said:


> What’s your thoughts on instruments like spitfire in which the reverb is very much a character of the sound.


I don't think about it too much, and I don't have any Spitfire libraries except a handful of LABS and a freebie that Christian once gave away - I'm a total spitfire free-loader, shamefully!

But I do have other naturally reverberant orchestral libraries. I much prefer a drier sound - I rarely put extra hall on orchestral libraries except riding up the room at the tail end of a phrase to cover for any sudden loss of ambience.

I don't worry particularly about having a coherent room sound across all my instruments, but then I write for kids animated shows. A good example is that I'll often put a completely dry xylophone over the rest of the score (orchestra or band or whatever) in slapstick cues, where the instrument becomes more of a sound effect and it jumps right out over anything else that's happening (like overzealous sfx track laying, which I find often happens) - realism be damned!

I do think about the presence of each instrument, front to back - but if similarly present elements sound like they are sat in different sized rooms then that doesn't bother me too much personally.

Guess I might feel differently if I was scoring a period drama...? would be fun to find out.


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## Cideboy (Jan 31, 2022)

chrisr said:


> I don't think about it too much, and I don't have any Spitfire libraries except a handful of LABS and a freebie that Christian once gave away - I'm a total spitfire free-loader, shamefully!
> 
> But I do have other naturally reverberant orchestral libraries. I much prefer a drier sound - I rarely put extra hall on orchestral libraries except riding up the room at the tail end of a phrase to cover for any sudden loss of ambience.
> 
> ...


Thanks for taking the time to explain your process. There is a lot to be said about “realism” given we are working with samples in the first place haha. I’ll have to allow myself a bit more flexibility there. Thanks for the tip.


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## SamMarksMusic (Feb 21, 2022)

Great question! I think it comes down to some small variables in RAM usage. I am certainly not a computer whiz, but that's what I've heard. 

I compose frequently and I choose to open a new instance and track for every instrument. I think workflow is probably a big part of the answer


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