# VE Pro/ Kontakt 4.2 Glitches - why is the CPU usage so high?



## nickhmusic (Mar 22, 2011)

Hi, I'm having trouble with very high CPU usage in VE Pro. (64bit server) This is the latest version of VE Pro, VI and Kontakt 4 - and the meter at the bottom right hand of the instances is extremely high - registering 55-65% when only playing 64 or so voices? 

I'm not running any fx or inserts in VE Pro - just Kontakt instances and Vienna Instruments instances.

3 instances - 64 audio outputs and 8 midi outputs per instance.

I have tried changing threads to 1, back to 2 and I have Kontakt multiprocessor set to "off" - but I can't get the CPU usage down...

This is causing massive glitches in the playback.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips? 

Thanks in advance.

My setup is below:

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i7 930 2.8Ghz
24Gb RAM
Windows 7/64bit
Cubase 5.52 32bit (latest)
Kontakt 4.2 (latest)
VE Pro (latest)
Vienna Instruments (latest)


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## nickhmusic (Mar 23, 2011)

has anyone experienced this or can offer any suggestions/tips?

Thanks


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## reddognoyz (Mar 23, 2011)

I'm running a ton of Kontakt 4.2 in VEP, like 9 instances, on my desktop, but have limited the outputs to 4 voices per Kontakt. That might be your issue.


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## Saxer (Mar 26, 2011)

i have the same problem on my mac in logic 9 (64 bit).
when usin kontakt 4.2 cpu goes up tp 100% when playing about 20 simple voices without scripting, just a few notes! 

macpro (late 2007) 8x3GHz, 24gig ram, 10.6.6 and logic 9.1.3


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## José Herring (Mar 26, 2011)

I have 22 instances of Kontakt 3.5 running in VEPro server edition getting about 1000 voices before dropouts. I run Cubase in32bit mode. VEPro server in 64bit. 

So there's something drastically wroû    {     ¨v    ¨’    5þ    [email protected]    ¢Ø    £    ¤@    ¤    •¶    •è    =²    >¬     ¸4     ¸:     ¼ª 


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## nickhmusic (Mar 27, 2011)

Hi Jose,

I agree there is definitely something going wrong somewhere.

I'm using a Lynx 2 (B), running at 128 buffer size, VE Pro is set to 2 buffers, and 2 threads per instance. Kontakt multiscripting is set to off.

Thanks for any suggestions, much appreciated! 

--------------- 
i7 930 2.8Ghz Hyperthreading On
24Gb RAM 
2x7200RPM HDDs 32mb cache in Raid Performance mode (Samples Drive)
Windows 7/64bit 
Cubase 5.52 32bit (latest) 
Kontakt 4.2 (latest) 
VE Pro (latest) 
Vienna Instruments (latest)


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## Polarity (Apr 27, 2011)

I have a similar problem during this last week:
it is doing also with just a single instrument (violins sordino of LASS Lite for example) playing.
After various time consuming "think and try", I have perhaps found the solution now:
playing directly from K4 inside Cubase doesn't do that, so I realized could be the last two releases of VE PRO that introduced this pop/crackle/interruption.
Infact trying the latest one didn't fixed it, while getting back to 4.1.7644 release
seems to have fixed my issue.
Try it yourself if works.


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## JohnG (Apr 27, 2011)

Under "Preferences" / "Instances" have you tried reducing to less than all your processors the number of the "multiprocessing" threads per instance? I wonder if you have more than one instance and have assigned all processors to each instance?


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## José Herring (Apr 27, 2011)

nickhmusic @ Sun Mar 27 said:


> Hi Jose,
> 
> I agree there is definitely something going wrong somewhere.
> 
> ...



Well, I'm sorry I couldn't help. I hope you got it sorted out. It's a beautiful thing when it's all working.

The only thing that I can think of is that perhaps the buffer size of your card is a little too low to run all that you want to do, but honestly I've had mine that low before and can still get pretty decent performance from it.

Hope it all works out for you.


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## JohnG (Apr 27, 2011)

whoa -- 128 buffer? that is asking too much unless it's a small session. Suggest 256.


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## Polarity (Apr 28, 2011)

Sorry, after some time I realized that unfortunately my "vepro old release" did not fix the issue. 
It happens occasionally, yesterday probably happened less frequently for some time, then it happened... and inspecting more I realized that's just not within VEPRO,
it does also inside Cubase.
I don't remember doing it months ago.
I'll try to reinstall Kontakt 4 now, but I doubt I'll get a success.

(sorry for the double posting in the other thread, but the matter is the same)


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## Polarity (Apr 28, 2011)

JohnG @ Thu 28 Apr said:


> Under "Preferences" / "Instances" have you tried reducing to less than all your processors the number of the "multiprocessing" threads per instance? I wonder if you have more than one instance and have assigned all processors to each instance?



In effect I did some changes recently to the settings of my K4:
I had in past Multiprocessing to 4 cores and put it to None after I read here of someone who suggested it to avoid spikes.
Curiosly I thought it made the contrary now! Because K3 is still set on 4 cores and it seems having non problems.
I changed also the Undo set last week, because I was importing/editing some wav sounds and found useful to have it active.
Yesterday I deactivated it, but didn't fix.

I have since years my audiocard set on 22ms of latency, so I don't think it's a matter of latency also for who have a lower one.
It's an issue with Kontakt 4... because playing the same lines all the time in cycle with an Omnisphere orchestral strings patch doesn't cause any glitch to me!!
:roll:


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## JohnG (Apr 28, 2011)

I didn't know anyone was getting down to 128 except on slave machines; on those I've heard of people dropping all the way to 64, but I've never gone so far.

Good luck!


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## Polarity (May 16, 2011)

It's possible that I resolved my problem...
it's not a Kontakt problem (it was doing it with other plugins too),
but an issue with Cubase Multi Processing feature.

I went to look for and investingate about this matter onto the steinberg forum,
and found that this is an issue since some years with multicore CPU.

I tried disabling Multi Processing (in the VST Audio System of the Device Setup panel),
and in effect pops and glitches went away.
I was on XP today, so I tried only in it. Will try on Win7 now.

Another solution suggested that worked for someone was to change the affinity of Cubase with the CPU 0 (or at least one): you can do it in the Task Manager, right clicking onto Cubase in the processes list.
Someone change Cubase priority to realtime and worked.

I have still to try well these last two workarounds.

Anyway disabling Multicore processing inside Cubase would not be a big deal for me because using VEPRO you have to set how many cores to dedicate to its instances.
So Quadcore units are already shared among different audio software and its plugins:
with VEPRO, less plugins inside Cubase and more inside VEPRO...

SO, if you are using Cubase consider to try these workaround and don't waste time on fixing it inside Kontakt.

Hope it helps. 
Let me know.


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## Polarity (May 17, 2011)

Update.
Perhaps one guy on steinberg forum was right: beware of some 3rd party plugin also.
They can cause problems if loaded in Cubase.

In effect yesterday when I tried the workarounds in XP I removed the Antress plugins , 
but I didn't do it in WIN7 today.
Now I'm discovering that this makes a difference:
even unchecking Multi Processing Cubase sometimes makes pops and crackles.

Moving away the same plugins .dll from the VSTplugins folder before launching Cubase is making pops & crackles stop. 
Even if Multi Processing is checked.

To be updated while I try more.


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## Polarity (Jun 12, 2011)

After almost a month I still have the glitch/crack problem.
It's not so massive, very reduced, but still it does sometimes.
Even with Kontakt 4.2.3 update I didn't fixed it in full.
It's annoying.

Any have found a definitive solution, or found the cause?


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## Stevie (Sep 25, 2011)

I have the exact same issue. VE Pro shows 50% CPU load and Cubase 20%. With almost over 70% this makes my system unusable. 

I'm using a single computer and am running Cubase with 35 VE Pro instances (1 MIDI port, 12 audio outputs). 

The same project without the use of VE Pro taxes the CPU with around 20%.
This pretty much renders VE Pro useless to me if there's no solution :/


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## JohnG (Sep 25, 2011)

Hi Stephan,

On my percussion PC, I use one VE Pro instance with about 14 instances of PLAY and Kontakt. Each of those is multi-timbral. I load the Kontakt instances last (PLAY first, of course) and get no problems.

This is more a memory thing but I am very surprised people are having these problems.

Maybe too many VE Pro instances?


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## rgames (Sep 25, 2011)

I also think it might be too many VE Pro instances. I used to run 7-8 instances but since adding a few new libraries I'm now up to 12 I think. I've noticed that the idle CPU usage has gone up significantly since adding the extra instances.

Can you reduce the number of VE Pro instances? You can add a bunch of Kontakt instances into a single instance of VE Pro then route all the outputs to separate outputs in VE Pro.

rgames


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## Daryl (Sep 26, 2011)

Stevie @ Mon Sep 26 said:


> I have the exact same issue. VE Pro shows 50% CPU load and Cubase 20%. With almost over 70% this makes my system unusable.
> 
> I'm using a single computer and am running Cubase with 35 VE Pro instances (1 MIDI port, 12 audio outputs).
> 
> ...


Why are you using so many instances? Each instance will add to CPU usage. Whilst it's certainly true that a large number of ports will also add to CPU usage, there is a happy medium between instances and ports, and I think you probably haven't yet found it.

D


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## Polarity (Sep 26, 2011)

To me it's doing it also with just one only VEPRO instance linked to Cubase 
(32bit versions inside Windows7 64bit)...
and no Kontatk inside VEPRO, just Omnisphere, Trillian (and other synths) playing from there...
and it seems that without VEPRO it doesn't do glitches &pops!!

I tried also the disable of Speedstep inside BIOS (I've a Quadcore 6600),
as suggested in other thread: but nothing changed.
The Hyperthreading option instead isn't applicable... it does not show in the BIOS 
(even if on the mainboard manual appears in photo of screen).


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## Stevie (Sep 26, 2011)

Hey!

I know exactly what you mean, guys. I tried so many ways to get a somehow workable solution. 
My first approach was to use 4 VE Pro instances (Winds, Brass, Perc, Strings).
Of course I had to increase the MIDI ports and audio outputs, then.
This results in a very long loading time. Which defeats the purpose of VE Pro.
Read here why (comment from the dev):
http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/296 ... spx#190841

I already limited the amount of ports to a minimum. But using more than 2 MIDI ports, causes Cubase to load very long. 

Any tips or help appreciated!


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## nickhmusic (Sep 26, 2011)

I realise it has been an age since I've added to this post, but I wanted to offer my experiences with Cubase, VE Pro, 3rd party plugins - all running on Windows 7/64bit (Cubase 5.3 32bit)

After NI updated their 4.2 - my issues started to disappear. However, I do raise my buffer in my Lynx 2 to 256 when not playing in performances. It just makes everyone behave better. When I am writing on the keyboard, I'm at 128 buffer - so the latency isn't distracting to the performance.

VE Pro seems to remain constantly in +50% usage - topping at around 80% - but I've managed to circumvent this by purging all unused samples, and only having things loaded as they are played/needed by the project.

I have also found Stylus RMX very unreliable in VE Pro in its current version - I get repeatable crashes.

My advice is to make sure Multi Processing is enabled in Cubase, but disabled in any other plugin inside VE Pro, (such as Kontakt) - and also make sure that you have no power saving features enabled. All power saving should be off, you need to be using all of your available cores all of the time whilst running decent sized VE Pro/Cubase projects. I also have "Disable CPU Energy Saving" unchecked and manage this from within the OS.

If you want a registry setting that will absolutely assure that all your cores are running all the time - I can help out. I'd have to dig up the youtube vid of the guy who helped me though.


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