# Kontakt optimisation? (SOLVED mostly)



## JohnG (Nov 4, 2015)

Hi all,

Having some trouble with Kontakt on a standalone PC slave running strings, particularly legato transitions, in both Sable and Mural. I have tried a number of remedies and getting same problem.

Computer: One year old PC 4.2 GHz Intel, 32 GB of RAM (of which using about 60%); host is VE Pro 5 standalone (latest) and Kontakt 5 (latest). Audio is going out via hardware (RME 9652; just updated driver). OS is Windows 10 Professional. Motherboard is ASRock z97.

I am running two lines in octaves on legato violin 1 Mural, (using V1 Legato performance Palette vol1+2+3) doubling it 8vb with V2. I have the microphones at their default (midway between Close and Far). While the passage plays, the CPU is less than 10%. The samples are playing back from a Samsung SSD (850 EVO 500GB) mounted internally on the computer's SATA interface on its motherboard.

I have VE Pro set to 8 cores (max) and multiprocessing in Kontakt switched off. I've tried other combinations (2 cores on Kontakt, less than 8 on VE Pro) but those haven't fixed the problem. Started with a buffer of 256 but raised it to 512, which should be more than enough, I'd say.

The same passage plays back fine on East West PLAY, actually with even more patches doubling the passage, so I don't think it's the computer as such.

Just to make sure I wasn't having problem interactions between PLAY and Kontakt, I deleted all the PLAY instances, closed and restarted VE Pro, and even with no PLAY inside the VE Pro instance -- Kontakt only -- I'm still getting the problem.

One last bit of info -- the PLAY samples are not streaming off the same drive. The Sable and Mural samples each are streaming off different SSDs (I forget what brand the Sable samples are on but it's "name brand").

The computer is not connected to the internet, and no other programs apart from Task Manager are running. Disk Management shows all drives as "Healthy." A separate disk check software program I downloaded from Crucial shows all disks with "Good Health" next to them. None of the disks is over 60% capacity.

what the heck???


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## germancomponist (Nov 4, 2015)

John, when u used Windows 7, did you get the same problem?


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## ysnyvz (Nov 4, 2015)

I'm not sure what is the problem but Windows Defender was giving me some problems. I excluded my libraries folder from its settings and now they load/play smoother.


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## JohnG (Nov 4, 2015)

I think there must be something I'm doing wrong or have set wrong in VE Pro or Konakt. At a buffer of 512 I should be able to run two lines of strings all day, even with fast runs and release samples.

@ Gunther, I actually never used Spitfire legato patches on Windows 7. 

@Yasin - I excluded the folders from Defender -- wish I could turn Defender OFF -- but of course it's possible there's still some kind of hit to the CPU going on. I also excluded from Defender (under "Processes") Kontakt, VE Pro, MidiOverLAN CP, and EW's PLAY software.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 4, 2015)

Did you check if the cpu or disk meter in Kontakt is peaking?


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## JohnG (Nov 4, 2015)

Yes -- they are not doing anything that suggests peaking.


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## rgames (Nov 4, 2015)

What's the max voice count?

A couple things you can try - turn off "external" on the Kontakt tempo synch if it's on. I've seen it cause similar sorts of issues. You can also try disabling DFD - i.e. stream everything from RAM - with just the strings patch loaded. If you're still having problems with DFD disabled then you know it's not a disk streaming problem (because it's streaming from RAM, not the disk).

I don't have any experience with that library but there are some libraries that are just poorly scripted and do poorly on some passages (fast runs that produce high voice counts are a good way to reveal poor scripting).

The next questions is: what voice counts are other people getting with that library?

rgames


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## JohnG (Nov 4, 2015)

Good suggestions Richard. I tried the tempo thing and unfortunately that didn't solve the problem. I like your DFD experiment too and will also try that. Because it's happening with two different libraries from two different drives, I am a little less suspicious than normally about the SSDs being bad, but you never know.

Theoretically it could be the library scripting but I've never heard of this problem with this library from anyone else. I am suspicious of Windows 10 / Kontakt / VE Pro combination more than anything; I turned off Defender from scanning the sample drives and from operating on Kontakt, VE Pro, and my midi program (midioverLAN CP). 

That's one suspect but Windows 10 is still pretty new and nobody seems to know with certainty exactly what's under the hood. As I said in another post, a knowledgeable guy at VisionDAW said MSFT had been releasing hundreds of updates every week.


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## samphony (Nov 4, 2015)

@JohnG i had the same problems although I'm on mac. I had to turn on multiprocessor support in kontakt and set it to 2 or 3. Eventually played around with the multi core setting in VEP. Also play around with the pre load buffer setting in kontakt. That helped in my case. Another issue I had with sable was that after an update of the library I forgot to reload my patches in kontakt.


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## Mr. Anxiety (Nov 4, 2015)

[QUOTE="

Theoretically it could be the library scripting but I've never heard of this problem with this library from anyone else. I am suspicious of Windows 10 / Kontakt / VE Pro combination more than anything; I turned off Defender from scanning the sample drives and from operating on Kontakt, VE Pro, and my midi program (midioverLAN CP).

I am having the same problem with Sable Vlns 1 & 2 (performance legato - fast) playing a similar line at the same time in K5/VEP. Separating them in their own Kontakt instance sorta solved the issue. Having learned how this solves it yet though.

Mr Anxiety


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## EvilDragon (Nov 5, 2015)

Separate instances of Kontakt - usually get assigned to different cores by the host. It's different from using Kontakt's own multicore functionality (which works per voice rather than per instrument loaded in multi).


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

SOLVED (at least enough)

Thanks to everyone -- this morning I took samphony's advice (and EvilDragon) and tried separate instances of Kontakt for V1, V2 and Vla. That improved things a lot, so I then substituted the "stereo" mic positions for the multi mic positions [edit: I mean I used a single mic position instead of the blend that is a base case in Mural for "main" mics] and that seems to have eliminated the transition glitches completely.

I still wonder if there's something going on with Windows 10 that keeps the CPU doing things in the background that we don't want / need. Windows 10 seems premised on the idea that the computer is constantly, permanently hooked up to the internet, which of course a PC slave doesn't need to be at all.

So maybe over time the geniuses around here will start sniping down Windows 10 issues (if indeed that's what it is) that free up more of one's CPU. Frankly, with an 8 core 4.2 GHz computer, playing a single octave passage should be a snap, especially at a 512 buffer, even with two mic positions on each line, but this is very workable for now.

Thanks again, everyone!!!


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## samphony (Nov 5, 2015)

@JohnG 

Great to hear. Let's see what K6 brings to the table.


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## Coldsound (Nov 5, 2015)

What is the "cpu % charge" on the VEPro instance at idle? 
I'm having Cracks and pops every time I hit more than 90% on one instance of VEPro. With project at 20% at idle it's usually OK. But I'm also struggling because on the template I'm building, some instance are at roughly 45% at idle, so they go pretty fast over 90%. I'm changing my template right now, trying all different possibilities: Cubase 8 DAW on Mac, with 1 slave on PC (4 or 5 VEPro instance) and 1 other on Mac. almost all SSD drive (system and sound bank) , 32 Go Ram.


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## samphony (Nov 5, 2015)

Coldsound said:


> What is the "cpu % charge" on the VEPro instance at idle?
> I'm having Cracks and pops every time I hit more than 90% on one instance of VEPro. With project at 20% at idle it's usually OK. But I'm also struggling because on the template I'm building, some instance are at roughly 45% at idle, so they go pretty fast over 90%. I'm changing my template right now, trying all different possibilities: Cubase 8 DAW on Mac, with 1 slave on PC (4 or 5 VEPro instance) and 1 other on Mac. almost all SSD drive (system and sound bank) , 32 Go Ram.



I had that issue while kontakt multiprocessor was turned off. Make sure you play around with the multi processor setting in that particular VEP instance in VSL speech called project. Maybe raise the processor from 2 to 4 in that instance. Also try to put heavy scripted instrument patches in their own kontakt instance.


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## brett (Nov 5, 2015)

John, was the CPU load spread evenly across all cores when playing the problematic string lines?


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

I couldn't tell, brett. I am still figuring out Windows 10. It looked as though the overall CPU was quite low -- below 50% for sure.


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

samphony said:


> I had that issue while kontakt multiprocessor was turned off



This is interesting -- most advice is to leave this off inside a host such as VE Pro.


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## Coldsound (Nov 5, 2015)

@samphony Thanks for the advices, first trial seems to add improvement when raising the number of thread in VEPro instance...


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## brett (Nov 5, 2015)

While I'm not familiar with W10, you should be able to see desperate cores in task manager (performance tab) or resource monitor 

If one core is spiking you'll get glitches even if overall (average) is quite modest.


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## samphony (Nov 5, 2015)

JohnG said:


> This is interesting -- most advice is to leave this off inside a host such as VE Pro.


Yes I know. Even in logic when I turn off multiprocessor support I have issues. So I settled on 3.


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

brett said:


> While I'm not familiar with W10, you should be able to see desperate cores in task manager (performance tab) or resource monitor
> 
> If one core is spiking you'll get glitches even if overall (average) is quite modest.



Ok two things. First I finally found the graphic where you can see all 8 cores (though of course not all at once). It appears that the load is pretty evenly spread.

Second, however, I am still hearing occasional glitches, but not every time and there are not nearly as many.


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## brett (Nov 5, 2015)

Maybe I've missed this, but it might be worth, as an exercise, trying networking your slave (to exclude the RME) or duplicating the problematic VI frame locally (to exclude the Slave computer itself). If you start with an empty project (not your template but a truly empty project) and load the problematic VEP instance on your slave and play do you get glitches? Or go in reverse: load up your fully loaded project and start removing other VEP instances and plugins and maybe something will pop up

Lastly, is your slave optimized? In particular I'm thinking of turning off all that green stuff in the bios that has different names (speedstep, turbo boost, eist, various C-states)

Apologies if you've already mentioned or tried these above


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

Good suggestions, brett.

I only have one VE Pro instance. Testing with an "empty" instance -- I sort of did that by cutting out all the PLAY instances but of course could do it further. I will try that after while here.

I haven't touched the bios on this computer. It's a new OS and it's very hard to work out what depends on what with Windows 10; as I mentioned the guys at VisionDAW, who have touched up all my previous PCs (with significant reductions in CPU use) won't even touch Windows 10 for a while until it sort of calms down. They say hundreds of updates a week, so until that begins to abate I can understand their caution.

Because I'm only getting this with the legato transitions, I am very skeptical that it has anything to do with the RME card. It could be the SSD trying to stream too fast and I want to take Richard Ames' suggestion of loading all in RAM -- a good idea -- which I will do at the same time as I follow your suggestion about the "empty" instance.


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## brett (Nov 5, 2015)

Bios is independent of W10 though

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mus...-eist-speedstep-turbo-boost-core-parking.html

The above is an old thread but might be worth the read. 

Try loading VEP on your Master rather than Slave if you have the RAM for clues. 

Also download the free latencymon - it might help. 

Finally try turning multiprocessing on in kontakt. May be counterintuitive but I have it on here. Everyone's setup is different


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

I will try some of these ideas -- they also are good, brett. I previously tried the multiprocessing thing in Kontakt with 2 cores -- a total mess, unfortunately. I have seen a couple of posts like that though, so a good idea.

That thread from gearslutz is ancient, man! Vista? I don't know. I am reading through it and will have a peek at the BIOS. My Master computer is a Mac so that is probably not the experiment you had in mind.


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## brett (Nov 5, 2015)

https://www.native-instruments.com/.../windows-78-tuning-tips-for-audio-processing/

The above is a more modern, polished version. It mentions latencymon and speedstepping all with a eye to kontakt performance

For your PC slave of course


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2015)

brett -- thank you again!

I ran the test you suggested -- eliminated all but three Kontakt instances (v1, v2, vla) -- and ran the same passage. Crackles a-plenty, actually. So that didn't solve the issue.


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## samphony (Nov 5, 2015)

@JohnG could you try removing any fx plugin and east west play?

I had an issue of weird distortion and crackling once just to find out that virtual sound stage 2 was the cause of all this


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## brett (Nov 5, 2015)

JohnG said:


> brett -- thank you again!
> 
> I ran the test you suggested -- eliminated all but three Kontakt instances (v1, v2, vla) -- and ran the same passage. Crackles a-plenty, actually. So that didn't solve the issue.



Great. So you know it's not another plugin or vi. 

Now to eliminate VEP or slave hardware issues...

1) run the 3 kontakt instances only in VEP locally on your master computer

Or

2) run the 3 kontakt instances in your host independent of VEP

Then report back


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## sleepy hollow (Nov 5, 2015)

brett said:


> desperate cores


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## brett (Nov 6, 2015)

sleepy hollow said:


>


 
Autocorrect shmautocorrect...


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## JohnG (Nov 6, 2015)

just ran Latencymon and have huge problems. brett I will PM you


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

Something seriously awry in CPU power management settings on the BIOS. If that sentence sends chills somewhere, it should. There appears to be mostly just hearsay, speculation, and voodoo out there when it comes to tweaking these settings.

Latencymon is saying my performance of CPU is 1 GHz instead of the 4 they are rated. Going to turn stuff off in the BIOS one at a time. If anyone has a guide to this that would be nifty.


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## samphony (Nov 7, 2015)

Also, anyone who is running into similar issues should check this option in Kontakt to check on CPU usage


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## chimuelo (Nov 7, 2015)

JG have looked at your ASRock BIOS settings?
Stock BIOS is not audio friendly.
I disable damn near everything.
If you post a snapshot of the main settings I can see if you have those useless Intel power saving and Turbo nonsense enabled.
Reboot while holding down delete.


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

will do -- I've just turned off a bunch of that stuff but I'm just guessing. Still pretty feeble performance -- will post pics shortly.


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

latencymon results:


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

BIOS pics 1:


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

BIOS pics 2 (press F12 to take them, with a USB attached formatted to FAT):


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## sleepy hollow (Nov 7, 2015)

JohnG said:


> Latencymon is saying my performance of CPU is 1 GHz instead of the 4 they are rated


Check your LatencyMon report again - it does not say 1GHz, it says 1Mhz.


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

sleepy hollow said:


> Check your LatencyMon report again - it does not say 1GHz, it says 1Mhz.



ha! Ok well that can't be correct. It's not playing back well but it's not that bad!


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## sleepy hollow (Nov 7, 2015)

JohnG said:


> ha! Ok well that can't be correct. It's not playing back well but it's not that bad!


Yup, your BIOS settings look good to me. I think it's an OS-related problem.

Do you have the chance to do a test on a different OS? Maybe a quick'n'dirty installation of Win10 on another drive?


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

I don't have the disks for Windows 10. This was an "upgrade" done over the internet.


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

turned off Turboboost and that seemed to help some. Still failing tests.


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## EvilDragon (Nov 7, 2015)

Try also disabling thermal throttling in the BIOS.

However it's quite apparent that the most DPC spikes are coming from the network driver...


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

EvilDragon said:


> However it's quite apparent that the most DPC spikes are coming from the network driver...



I will disable the thermal throttling -- how do I address the DPC spikes?


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

I agree with the above. The bios settings look pretty good.

Do you have wireless networking? This can usually be disabled in the bios

Otherwise networking more generally is a common culprit. Latest drivers (available from the asrock website if you don't have a dedicated NIC) may help. However often there are green settings in the properties of the network card that can be disabled, something that stopped spikes for me (I'm on windows 7 and so have no idea where this is on w10 - hopefully someone else can help)

Other common possibilities are graphics issues - disable graphics card in the device manager (does that still exist in W10?) and see if there is an improvement). Still others report issues with anything attached to USB so disabling unused USB ports in the bios have helped some (in fact any peripheral or port or anything else that is not essential can be disabled and may help - ymmv of course)


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

Another thought. 

I had problems with onboard networking which went away when I disabled the onboard and installed an old pci intel gt1000 NIC from an old system. I can't remember what the new pcie equivalent is but they're not too expensive. You may even have a friend or colleague who could lend you a NIC to try


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## chimuelo (Nov 7, 2015)

FWIW having so many attributes in the BIOS set on "auto" is wasting resources.
Similar to bacground processes on an OS running that have nothing to do with audio.
Disabling each one means one less set of instructions.


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

@chimuelo yes but this is unlikely to be causing the problem. Squeezing a bit more out of the machine is separate. Other than disabling peripherals or turbo boost style 'features' I'd be nervous about advising someone to go deeper unless they knew what they were doing (and I count myself in this category!)


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

brett said:


> Do you have wireless networking? This can usually be disabled in the bios



I don't have wireless networking -- hardwired. I could certainly buy a networking card.

I tried updating the BIOS yesterday and had quite a time getting THAT undone.

[edit: There must be 20 bits of software offered by ASRock (some that are obviously dumb, some that seem very system related) that purport to be updates for Windows 10. I am going to look at a couple of those to see if they pertain to networking.]


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

I only ever install the basic motherboard stuff that I need. Chipset etc. But no onboard audio drivers or power management stuff

On pg 70 of your MB manual, try turning off all the power saving c-state stuff. 

On pg 72 disable the onboard audio

As for the networking which is the most likely issue, try turning off energy efficient ethernet found in power management tab of adapter advanced properties


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

brett said:


> On pg 70 of your MB manual, try turning off all the power saving c-state stuff.



Done



brett said:


> On pg 72 disable the onboard audio



Done



brett said:


> As for the networking which is the most likely issue, try turning off energy efficient ethernet found in power management tab of adapter advanced properties



Found it -- thanks brett!


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

I feel your frustration John. Everyone has a different system or combination of hardware and so as well meaning as we all are, inevitably what works for one of us is unlikely to work for all.

I've had problems with networking settings and graphics drivers and BSOD over the last few years and discovered solutions but there is a lot of trial and error (and patience!) required. Hard if you're in the middle of a job !


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

Thanks everyone -- things are much better! Still not sure what the bottom row on the last pic means but definitely this is better.

Quite a bit of trial and error on the network adapter; not sure if this is perfect, but it's the best I've found.


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

As long as the pops and clicks have stopped that's all that matters. I take it they have?


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2015)

runs with no pops at 512; still not perfect at 256 but an enormous increment better.


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## chimuelo (Nov 7, 2015)

Great to hear.
Just got back from work and stopped in to see if you started slamming shots yet...
The audio GuRu who handles some special clients in the industry uses an app where he moves his mouse around on my screen making adjustments.
I called him during intermission and he has time tomorrow if you are still in a pinch.
Pretty amazing chap.
If you want to OC your PC he can fine tune it online.
I tripped out when he readjusted my 48 inch LCD as I watched.
I needed my apps GUIs shrunk as they were suddenly gigantic.
I tried resolution Landscape latching....Zippo.
The guy dug into some cset.ini folder file and saved my ass just in time for the gig.
Let me know if your good to go.
Cheerz.....


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## brett (Nov 7, 2015)

JohnG said:


> runs with no pops at 512; still not perfect at 256 but an enormous increment better.


What's your VEP buffer multiplier?


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## synapse21 (Nov 7, 2015)

Interesting find, John. Only recently did Microsoft release a Windows Update patch that fixed a timing issue with Nuendo / Cubase under Windows 10, so it wasn't something on Steinberg's end. Perhaps this anomaly will disappear over time as well.


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## JohnG (Nov 8, 2015)

@chim -- sure -- would love to get your guy's info. Only caveat is that Windows 10 is updating so many things each week that I'm not sure (@synapse21) that things have really settled down yet.

@brett -- I'm using VE Pro in standalone (64 bit) and I can't actually figure out the buffer multiplier; I'm not sure there even is one when it's standalone.

[edit: updated bios on 2nd computer and used Windows Update -- helpfully, it keeps turning back on absolutely crucial music-related "background" apps like Store. You have to keep going back to turn them off.]


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## samphony (Nov 8, 2015)

JohnG said:


> @chim -- sure -- would love to get your guy's info. Only caveat is that Windows 10 is updating so many things each week that I'm not sure (@synapse21) that things have really settled down yet.
> 
> @brett -- I'm using VE Pro in standalone (64 bit) and I can't actually figure out the buffer multiplier; I'm not sure there even is one when it's standalone.
> 
> [edit: updated bios on 2nd computer and used Windows Update -- helpfully, it keeps turning back on absolutely crucial music-related "background" apps like Store. You have to keep going back to turn them off.]


There is no buffer multiplier because you are using standalone.  that's correct.


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