# Loops that sometimes don't loop



## Mike Greene (Dec 7, 2011)

On rare occasion, one of my sample loops won't loop. It's set to loop indefinitely, but when I play a note, it might loop just once, or might not loop at all. It just gets to the end of that yellow loop region and stops dead. These bad loops will be loops that worked just fine in previous days. They just suddenly stop working, even though visually, they look the same as always.

There's nothing unusual about the loops that sometimes don't work. They're right in the middle of the sample, not near the start or finish, and they're not unusually short or long. Completely ordinary, just like the 99.9% of my loops that work fine every time.

I can "jump start" them into working again by moving the loop slightly, or sometimes by just changing the crossfade setting. Since this makes it loop again, this would indicate that indeed my settings must have been correct. Like I said, it's rare, but I've had this happen in both Kontakt 4 and Kontakt 5.

Do other people have this happen?


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## ysnyvz (Dec 7, 2011)

open 'mapping editor' and 'wave editor' in kontakt
choose loop from mapping edditor than enable 'Sample Loop' in wave editor
it will play loop continuous when you press key or click with mouse


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## Mike Greene (Dec 7, 2011)

Right. I understand how to make loops. (I've made tens of thousands of them.)

My problem is that (on rare instances,) days or weeks or months after making loops that sound perfectly fine, one particular loop will all of a sudden cease to work. Kontakt will stop at the end of the loop, so it apparently does recognize that the loop region is there. Sample Loop "1" light is lit and "Count" is set to 0, which is the setting for indefinite looping.


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## gregjazz (Dec 7, 2011)

Check the DFD monitor in Kontakt's engine tab, and see if you're getting a DFD error there. You might also try upping the DFD sample buffer.


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## Hans Adamson (Dec 7, 2011)

Mike,

If the loops are embedded in the sampled wavs you can you re-read the loop settings if they have been corrupted. Select all samples, and in the loop editor choose "to all selected zones -> Restore loops from samples" (under the wheel symbol). Worth a try.
/Hans


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## Mike Greene (Dec 8, 2011)

Greg, I'll try that the next time I have the problem. (I already nudged the dead loop yesterday, so I have to wait for the next opportunity.) The DFD setting sounds like a possibility, because I do believe it's an overall setting issue, rather than a problem with any of the loops themselves. I actually thought it might just be a Kontakt bug, but it looks like no one else is having the same problem, so it must be something on my end. (The loop will be dead on all my computers here.)

Hans, I don't think the loops are embedded, but I'm not really sure. (Shows how much I know about this. :mrgreen: ) They were originally looped in KeyMap, so maybe that's how the loops got imported to Kontakt. Either way, I'll try your trick next time, although my bigger problem is how to stop good loops from going dead in the first place. My fear is customers start complaining that loops suddenly die on them.

<UPDATE> It turns out that the loops aren't embedded in the wave files. I clicked on one to reapply the embedded loop and it deleted my existing loop and replaced it with no loop. Oops. :mrgreen:


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## polypx (Dec 9, 2011)

Mike, something else to check is whether somehow the Amp Envelope got set to something less than 100%. I've found that if that's the case, then Kontakt doesn't loop properly. Why those things are even related, I have no idea. But it's come up several times in my work, and setting the Amp EG back to maximum solves it. cheers, Dan.


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## Mike Greene (Dec 11, 2011)

gregjazz @ Wed Dec 07 said:


> You might also try upping the DFD sample buffer.


Hmmm, that might be it. I got another dead loop just now and I upped the DFD preload buffer from 60kb to 80 kb and the loop worked again. But . . . then, just for the heck of it, I lowered the DFD preload buffer even lower than before to 48kb. Kontakt dumped a bunch of RAM, so I figured I get even more dead loops. Nope. All loops are fine, including the one that didn't work before I upped the buffer!

Weird. It really does feel like I'm just jiggling wires and it works again. :mrgreen: 

Dan, that's another interesting thing to look out for. I checked and the amp envelope was at 100%, so that wasn't it in this case. But it's something I'm going to watch for if this happens again. Thanks for the heads up.


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