# How low can you set Kontakt's Preload buffer with samples on SSD's?



## Will Blackburn (Aug 15, 2018)

Hiya folks.

So i switched over my C Drive to a Crucial Mx500. A performance gain for the computer in general which is great but not seeing much real time gains inside Cubase itself. Next step is to get as many of my kontakt libs on SSD's as they are still streaming from my WD 5tb External. Currently i have to set Kontakt's preload up to full (i think 234.00kb?) in order to maximise playback performance at the expense to my RAM. My question to you guys who already have your samples on SSD's is how low can you set your Preload buffers ? I've hit a brick wall really and need to release as much RAM as possible and im assuming a good SSD allows you to do that?

Also what happens when you have some of the libraries on your SSD's but due to storage limitation you have to have some on the older spinning drives? Does that then mean you can't lower preload buffer ? As far as i was aware that setting was global, or can you lower Preload buffer for certain kontakt instances?

Many thanks,
W


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## jcrosby (Aug 15, 2018)

I run it at 24 kb with no issues using SATA III. Could probably lower it on my desktop but haven't thought about it until now 

Always found Kontakt to be a bit more stable when using less of a RAM footprint. (That said haven't used it with the default settings in a few years so no idea if things have changed.)


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## EvilDragon (Aug 15, 2018)

With SSDs feel free to drop it to lowest.

Regular HDDs have no problems with 18-36 KB already (depending on how many voices you're running), but SSDs will easily gulp everything when DFD buffer is down to 6 KB.


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