# Why are Kontakt instruments so incredibly slow to load?



## Grilled Cheese (Sep 9, 2014)

This totally baffles me...

When I load up Kontakt instruments, they load way slower than other sample players, like PLAY for example. 

Case in point. Abbey Road 60s Drums - Early 60s full kit. This takes 72 seconds to load up a total of 414MB into RAM. That means it's reading the data at a rate of 5.75 MB/s from a SSD that's capable of reading at 265 MB/s (tested on my Mac using Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test). 

Thats just 2.2% of my disk's potential read speed!!!

Some instruments are slightly faster. Embertone's Blakus Cello takes up 3.2 GB of memory when fully loaded. This takes just over 3 minutes to load. That's 18 MB/s.

I can load over 15GB of instruments into RAM via PLAY (like a collection of Hollywood Strings instruments for example) in around 60 seconds. That's 250 MB/s. About what I'd expect from my SSDs. 

I have batch resaved my Kontakt instruments. I have no other apps except for Logic running. I'm using the latest full version of Kontakt 5. I've been using Kontakt for ages and it's been like this for as long as I can remember.

I know that Kontakt does allow background loading of instruments, but let's be realistic - they are not really all that playable while loading. Projects therefore take ages to fully load and become usable. 

I just can't believe that this is how Kontakt functions. Am I missing something or doing something wrong???


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## mk282 (Sep 9, 2014)

It's totally the other way round over here.


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## adam_lukas (Sep 9, 2014)

I totally agree with mk282.


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## StatKsn (Sep 9, 2014)

Whoa. Have you tried cleaning up the database? (either removing the database outright from options, or trash "kontaktdb2" file under the Users/Library/Application Support/Native Instruments/Kontakt 5/Db). It may slow down the whole thing when there are so many files in it.

Also, if you have disabled the background loading, enabling it may improve the performance according to threads below:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... in.131470/
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... times.html


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 9, 2014)

Yeah... congratulations on getting the inverse of everyone else!

I just loaded a Sable patch of 342mb in 8s as a quick test. The first 6s of that was loading the instrument itself, not the samples (presumably because it's a heavy scripting patch). Also my background loading is seamless.

So something is definitely not working as it should. You've batch resaved, that's one common issue. Most of the other issues I know about are Windows, so looking to some Mac experts here.

One possible thing to test - EZ Drummer 1 used to be crushingly slow loading if set to a different sample rate to 44.1. I've not heard of it happening in Kontakt, but easy enough to check in stand alone. Speaking of which, presumably you get the same results in stand alone as in Logic?


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## constaneum (Sep 9, 2014)

Have you tried pinpointing your instruments' database directory to the shorted directory route?
For example, instrument A was previously located at c:/abc/def/ghi/jkl/<instrument A>... It's best to relocate the insturments to c:/<instrument A>/ directory. 

If i'm not mistaken, I read such tips from one of the online forums. Cant recall where. Anyway, it mentions that when you have too many instruments within the directory c:/abc/def/ghi/jkl/, Kontakt will take more time to search for Instrument A's directory.


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## Christof (Sep 9, 2014)

Do a batch resave!


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## handz (Sep 9, 2014)

Slow!! Try Play then you will talk different.


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## tabulius (Sep 9, 2014)

Good tips. I have also experienced very long loading times in Kontakt. Some libraries for example 8Dio's and Strezov Choir take up to few minutes to load. Whole daw freezes and all I can do is wait. Also it seems my computer suddenly started slowing down in many ways - opening Cubase 7, opening and closing Kontakt. Maybe one option for us would be to also clean unnecessary applications and background programs.

Sometimes when I close the Kontakt window it may freeze for 5-30 seconds(!) Sometimes it doesn't. It is really weird. However when using Vienna Ensemble Pro, instruments load up much faster. Maybe Cubase is the reason in my case? I have considered to re-install Cubase at some point. But I'll try clearing the Kontakt database if that is part of a problem.


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## mk282 (Sep 9, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ 9.9.2014 said:


> (presumably because it's a heavy scripting patch)



Err... scripting or complexity thereof has pretty much absolutely nothing with loading time. The number of groups, zones, effects and modulators in an NKI, on the other hand, has everything to do about it.


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 9, 2014)

mk282 @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> Guy Rowland @ 9.9.2014 said:
> 
> 
> > (presumably because it's a heavy scripting patch)
> ...



I'm talking about getting do the point before the samples start loading, always assumed that can only be the UI, scripts etc loading up before it gets to starting on the samples. It always seems to happen in the more script-heavy libraries, but maybe that's co-incidence.


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 9, 2014)

Thanks Blake, useful info!


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## ProtectedRights (Sep 9, 2014)

For me, loading times of instruments is very different depending on the instrument. Seems to depend on the file structure / sampler mode that is configured. 

Also guys, distinguish the time until the instruments shows up in Kontakt and the time it takes until all preloadbuffers are loaded. 

Sampletekk White Grand e.g. is very slow despite resaving it. Pretty much all other libs I have load faster, but there are a few slow ones, I would have to check to name them.


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## proxima (Sep 9, 2014)

chrispire @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> This totally baffles me...
> 
> When I load up Kontakt instruments, they load way slower than other sample players, like PLAY for example.
> 
> Case in point. Abbey Road 60s Drums - Early 60s full kit. This takes 72 seconds to load up a total of 414MB into RAM. That means it's reading the data at a rate of 5.75 MB/s from a SSD that's capable of reading at 265 MB/s (tested on my Mac using Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test).


I don't know what the problem is, but you are not alone. This totally baffled me a few weeks back when I noticed a patch was loading slowly: I assumed something was wrong with my SSD or its (USB) enclosure. Sure, patches show up super fast, but some patches take a really long time to fully load the buffer. Early 60s full kit seems especially bad, trying it out on my 2013 iMac with Logic and Kontakt, I'm getting even worse performance than you (I'm not sure I did a batch resave on this patch though).

Like you, I find that some patches load much faster, but still well below even 50 MB/sec, despite batch resaving. 

Play instruments, though they take a crapload of RAM, fill that RAM pretty quickly. Speed tests on my SSD report over 400 MB/sec (I realize that these are ideal read speeds of contiguous files).

What made me think I wasn't crazy was going on youtube and finding demo videos of people loading large instruments (not trivial, since most video makers preload the instruments). This demo (around minute 6) says "now when you load a patch for the first time it may load very slowly. now see mine is nice and fast" - but if you look, even with his "fast" loading it's maybe 5-10 MB/sec. A spinning disk should be able to do roughly 75 MB/sec, and the demo video was well below that. Given that it's a developer video and only about a year old, I suspect the patch was hosted on an SSD as well.

I also tried moving samples to my hard drive (a hybrid drive, so it was probably loading from the SSD portion) and got no significant change in preload performance. I'm also pretty sure I tried standalone Kontakt. It was really that video that convinced me some patches just load much more slowly than the hard drive's theoretical transfer rate. 



ProtectedRights @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> Also guys, distinguish the time until the instruments shows up in Kontakt and the time it takes until all preloadbuffers are loaded.


Yes, this is crucial. 99% of the time on these slow patches is spent going from yellow to white in the preload progress bar. For some instruments, they're reasonably playable in the yellow portion. Certainly they don't slow down the system feel for me while they preload. Play instruments do fill up the RAM more quickly, but you can't do much Play-related while they load.

If someone has a trick that speeds this up though (besides batch resave, which was only a marginal improvement for me), that would be fantastic. 

2013 iMac, Mac OS 10.9.4, Kontakt 5.3.1.37


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## germancomponist (Sep 9, 2014)

I never cared about loading times... . Great to have time for a tea, for a phone talk, e.t.c. ... .


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## jtnyc (Sep 9, 2014)

I experience the same loading time problems with all of NI drums. Abbey Road and Studio Drummer. It's brutal. I hate it. Superior Drummer 2 loads a 500mb kit in 5 seconds, 100% ready to play. NI drums take anywhere from 50 to 70 seconds before you can start playing it. When your auditioning kits it's hell. The Ni drums are complex nki's. Lot of effects and routing etc..., but when you experience the speed of superior, it just makes it feel all the more inconvenient. I do love the sound of NI drums.... so I deal.

It's not the same with all libraries. Emotional Piano is over 700mb and it loads in 5 seconds. I do hope they can improve the loading times for their drums.


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 9, 2014)

proxima @ Wed Sep 10 said:


> What made me think I wasn't crazy was going on youtube and finding demo videos of people loading large instruments (not trivial, since most video makers preload the instruments). *This demo* (around minute 6) says "now when you load a patch for the first time it may load very slowly. now see mine is nice and fast" - but if you look, even with his "fast" loading it's maybe 5-10 MB/sec. A spinning disk should be able to do roughly 75 MB/sec, and the demo video was well below that. Given that it's a developer video and only about a year old, I suspect the patch was hosted on an SSD as well.


*YES! That video is an excellent representation of the problem I'm describing. *
Here's the video

I just don't get it. He says that his patch is loading "nice and fast" but 30 seconds after he drags it into Kontakt it's STILL loading. In fact, it's still loading samples into memory when the video ends.

As previously mentioned, I've batch resaved my instruments and this made no difference. I have background loading enabled. This makes no difference.

Check out the aforementioned video if you haven't already. I really want to know if this is how Kontakt operates for other people. 

*I should mention the following...*
When I load an instrument for the first time, it's slow just like you see in that video. For example, I just loaded up the Solo Legato Trumpet from Lumina. It has a 0.69 GB memory footprint and took around 25 seconds to load. If I then remove that instrument and re-load it, it loads in 3 seconds flat. That's about how I'd expect Kontakt to behave with SSDs.

But if I then quit Logic and restart my computer, loading up that Trumpet the next time takes 25 seconds again. 

Can anyone make heads or tails of this?


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 9, 2014)

jtnyc @ Wed Sep 10 said:


> I experience the same loading time problems with all of NI drums. Abbey Road and Studio Drummer. It's brutal. I hate it. Superior Drummer 2 loads a 500mb kit in 5 seconds, 100% ready to play. NI drums take anywhere from 50 to 70 seconds before you can start playing it. When your auditioning kits it's hell. The Ni drums are complex nki's. Lot of effects and routing etc..., but when you experience the speed of superior, it just makes it feel all the more inconvenient. I do love the sound of NI drums.... so I deal.
> 
> It's not the same with all libraries. Emotional Piano is over 700mb and it loads in 5 seconds. I do hope they can improve the loading times for their drums.



How interesting. I just tried this out and yes - the Emotional Piano master patch (400MB) loaded up in about 3 or 4 seconds. Nice and quick. In comparison, I just loaded Session Strings Pro Sections 1 & 2 Cellos, also 400MB, and it took 25 seconds to load!

The mystery deepens.


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## Guido Negraszus (Sep 9, 2014)

I also can load Abbey Road full in 2 seconds BUT the samples take around 70 seconds before fully loaded.

When you guys batch re-save, where do you point to? The main library folder, samples or instruments?


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## proxima (Sep 9, 2014)

chrispire @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> When I load an instrument for the first time, it's slow just like you see in that video. For example, I just loaded up the Solo Legato Trumpet from Lumina. It has a 0.69 GB memory footprint and took around 25 seconds to load. If I then remove that instrument and re-load it, it loads in 3 seconds flat. That's about how I'd expect Kontakt to behave with SSDs.
> 
> But if I then quit Logic and restart my computer, loading up that Trumpet the next time takes 25 seconds again.


Well, that's just caching everything in RAM. A second load should always be faster.


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## The Darris (Sep 9, 2014)

Batch re-save your libraries and set your anti-virus to not scan all Kontakt file types for starters. If you have multiple hard drives, try having Kontakt on a drive that isn't your sample drive. If you can afford Solid State, buy some solid states and separate out your libraries. 

If you are doing direct from disk sample streaming (ie; purging and playing samples in on the fly to save RAM usage) then you need to play with your pre-load buffer size. I have mine set to 24.00 kb as that seems to work pretty well for all of my libraries streaming from 1 single 7200rpm HDD. 

I'm sure others have said similar things but that is what helped decrease my load times. Just doing the steps I mentioned in my first sentence took my project load times from 25 minutes to 2 minutes. The anti-virus issue was the main problem, especially with high sample content libraries like Sable. 

Cheers,

Chris


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## proxima (Sep 9, 2014)

The Darris @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> Batch re-save your libraries and set your anti-virus to not scan all Kontakt file types for starters. If you have multiple hard drives, try having Kontakt on a drive that isn't your sample drive. If you can afford Solid State, buy some solid states and separate out your libraries.


Please note that both me and the OP use a Mac (typically no antivirus software), have SSDs, and tried batch re-save. These are not the issue.

Lowering the preload buffer certainly worked well for me, but just sidesteps the underlying question: what is Kontakt doing that it fills RAM so slowly? I don't see a CPU spike, and our drives are capable of significant transfer speeds.


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## jtnyc (Sep 9, 2014)

blakerobinson @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> Guido Negraszus @ Wed Sep 10 said:
> 
> 
> > I also can load Abbey Road full in 2 seconds BUT the samples take around 70 seconds before fully loaded.



What loads full in 2 seconds? The GUI? I don't get it. The instrument is not playable until all the samples load. So after 2 seconds I can stare at the pretty picture of the drum kit for 70 seconds, until it loads...


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## quantum7 (Sep 9, 2014)

I just went 100% SSD's on my DAW and went through a majority of my over 2 TB of Kontakt libraries. As far as I remember not even one of the heaviest libraries took over 2 or 3 seconds to fully load. Insanely fast!!!! :shock:


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## The Darris (Sep 9, 2014)

proxima @ Tue Sep 09 said:


> The Darris @ Tue Sep 09 said:
> 
> 
> > Batch re-save your libraries and set your anti-virus to not scan all Kontakt file types for starters. If you have multiple hard drives, try having Kontakt on a drive that isn't your sample drive. If you can afford Solid State, buy some solid states and separate out your libraries.
> ...



Hmm, are you specifically talking patch load times or samples? Batch resave only effect the patch load times (as well as my anti-virus issue) but as far as the time it takes to load the samples into RAM, that has always been fairly slow. 

I have the Blakus Cello (16-bit) version which All CC's Full is only 1.61gb which takes my system only 40 seconds to fully load. Seems like it might be MAC specific for why it takes that long. Perhaps it is the type of RAM you have installed. I am not a computer genius but I have 16gb of 1600 Mhz RAM installed. The speed of my RAM used to be at 1333 which actually was slowing my load times down. When I saw this I boosted it back up to that speed (via BIOS) and haven't had a huge issue. Maybe your MAC's RAM settings are quite optimal? I wish I could be more help but your issue sound more like your computer settings versus Kontakt. I don't know what RAM you have but some CPUs can only max at 1333 which might be part of your problem. I would talk with a MAC wiz about your system settings and how you can increase your RAM's efficiency. Good luck.


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 9, 2014)

Just to be clarify for everyone, there are two things that happen when you load a Kontakt instrument. First the GUI loads. This only takes 1 -2 seconds usually. Then the instrument's samples are loaded into memory. This is the part that I'm talking about. The instrument is not fully loaded and not fully playable until the preload progress bar goes from yellow to white. 




The Darris @ Wed Sep 10 said:


> I have the Blakus Cello (16-bit) version which All CC's Full is only 1.61gb which takes my system only 40 seconds to fully load. Seems like it might be MAC specific for why it takes that long. Perhaps it is the type of RAM you have installed. I am not a computer genius but I have 16gb of 1600 Mhz RAM installed. The speed of my RAM used to be at 1333 which actually was slowing my load times down. When I saw this I boosted it back up to that speed (via BIOS) and haven't had a huge issue. Maybe your MAC's RAM settings are quite optimal? I wish I could be more help but your issue sound more like your computer settings versus Kontakt. I don't know what RAM you have but some CPUs can only max at 1333 which might be part of your problem. I would talk with a MAC wiz about your system settings and how you can increase your RAM's efficiency. Good luck.


Your Blakus Cello is loading faster than mine. But 1.61GB in 40 seconds still sounds slow to me. That's around 40MB/s. A 7200 rpm hard disk should be able to read data at twice that rate. My SSDs can read data at over 6 times that rate. 

Before anyone else mentions batch resaving, I'll say again that I've already done this. I'm not using any antivirus software on my mac. And again, I can load instruments via Best Service Engine and PLAY at well over 200MB/s. Only Kontakt has this problem, so the problem has nothing to do with hardware.


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## The Darris (Sep 9, 2014)

Hmm.

Have you contacted Native Instruments about this? I mean, I am still loading faster than you with less superior hardware so it isn't a consistent issue across the board. That it why I feel it could be your setup. Or more so how Kontakt interacts with your MAC and Hard drives. My load times are slow because my samples are ALL on 1 7200 rpm Hard drive which is actually 90% full currently. Far from efficient yet faster than your setup. Again, just comparing me to you which the only difference if you are using SSD on a MAC and I am HDD on Windows. 

I would reach out to Native Instruments and be sure to take some screen shots of your kontakt's settings for them as they tend to not read all of the support ticket information. They really like pictures more than words.

Good luck!

Chris


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## StatKsn (Sep 9, 2014)

Have you posted this problem on the official NI support forums yet? Knowledgeable users there.

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/forums/technical-issues.128/ (http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... ssues.128/)


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## ProtectedRights (Sep 10, 2014)

Maybe it would be useful to gather some user data here? Loading time for a Kontakt/Komplete Factory Lib instrument, after a fresh PC boot and fresh DAW startup, first time load of the instrument.
Time for the GUI to show up, time for the preload buffers to go white.

This would give as some idea of how much it really varies between different systems. Currently everybody throws in some numbers which are not really useful to make more precise statements.


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## H.R. (Sep 10, 2014)

Only problem I have is with Blakus Cello, when I run it, it's like" OK, let's go to the woods, and chop off some tree and built a Cello and then make a sample library out of it"- It really takes that much of a time!


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 10, 2014)

ProtectedRights @ Wed Sep 10 said:


> Maybe it would be useful to gather some user data here? Loading time for a Kontakt/Komplete Factory Lib instrument, after a fresh PC boot and fresh DAW startup, first time load of the instrument.
> Time for the GUI to show up, time for the preload buffers to go white.
> 
> This would give as some idea of how much it really varies between different systems. Currently everybody throws in some numbers which are not really useful to make more precise statements.


I'm in. Here are the loading time for a few well known instruments. Fresh boot. Logic Pro. Kontakt 5. Boot drive and sample drives are all SSD. By dividing the sample load times by the time taken to load them, I've provided MB/s sample load rates.

Soundiron Emotional Piano Master patch. GUI load 5 seconds. Samples loaded in 3. Total: 8 sec. 405MB = *135 MB/s*

Lumina Alto Flute Legato patch. GUI load 2 seconds. Samples loaded in 20 seconds. Total: 22 sec. 454MB = *23MB/s.*

Embertone Friedlander Violin 1.5 Full All CCs patch. GUI load 12 seconds. Samples loaded in 1 minute 29 sec. Total: 1 min 41 sec. 2.17GB = *22MB/s.*

Native Instruments Studio Drummer Garage Kit Full. GUI load in 4 seconds. Samples loaded in 1 minute 9 sec. Total: 1 min 14 sec. 419MB = *6MB/s.*

Native Instruments Abbey Road 60s Drummer Early Kit Full. GUI load in 2 seconds. Samples loaded in 1 minute 4 sec. Total: 1 min 6 sec. 394MB = *6MB/s.*

Native Instruments Session Strings Pro Section 1&2 Cellos Performance. GUI load in 2 seconds. Samples loaded in 24 seconds. Total: 26 sec. 406MB = *17MB/s.*

*I have a hypothesis to share at this point. *
Instruments that consist of lots of small audio samples (like drum libraries) load much slower (measured in MB/s) than those that contain larger samples. For example, the fastest loading patch above was Emotional Piano. The audio samples in this library will all be relatively large (the sound of a piano key being played and allowed to sustain). By comparison, the slowest loading libraries were the drum libraries, which contain a much greater number of much smaller samples. Case in point: Emotional Piano Master Patch and The N.I Studio drummer kit are almost identical in terms of memory footprint, but the piano loads in 8 seconds and the drums in 1 minute 14 seconds.

Comparison with other sample players: 
PLAY. Hollywood Strings 1st Violins Legato Slur + Port sm Ni. GUI load 3 seconds. Samples load 7 seconds. 1GB = *142MB/s.*
PLAY. Custom patch - all MOR drums. 2 second GUI load. 2 seconds samples load. 207 MB = *103 MB/s.*
ARIA PLAYER: Garritan Concert Grand CFX Full Patch: GUI Load 0 sec. Samples load 16 seconds. 2.2GB = *137MB/s*

I'd love to see how long it takes other people to load their Kontakt instruments. I have a feeling that the results will be slower than many people expect.


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## mk282 (Sep 10, 2014)

Well, Blake told you that AR Drummer loads much faster from his SSD... so that at least doesn't seem to be much slower than one would expect.

Also he mentioned a tip you could try and see if it speeds up things...


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## ProtectedRights (Sep 10, 2014)

chrispire @ Wed Sep 10 said:


> *I have a hypothesis to share at this point. *
> Instruments that consist of lots of small audio samples (like drum libraries) load much slower (measured in MB/s) than those that contain larger samples. For example, the fastest loading patch above was Emotional Piano. The audio samples in this library will all be relatively large (the sound of a piano key being played and allowed to sustain). By comparison, the slowest loading libraries were the drum libraries, which contain a much greater number of much smaller samples. Case in point: Emotional Piano Master Patch and The N.I Studio drummer kit are almost identical in terms of memory footprint, but the piano loads in 8 seconds and the drums in 1 minute 14 seconds.



THanks for the numbers! I will come up with some later. We should stick as much as possible to Komplete stuff I guess to have the most users be able to compare. Don't know which instruments are large in Komplete other than the drums though?

As to your hypothesis: that is definitely true, I observe that as well. Funny enough it doesn't help saving a thousands-of-small-samples-instrument in monolithic format, the loading speed is even a little worse then.

Since you are on SSD also, I wonder how user quantum can load any of his instruments in 2-3 seconds. He must be talking of the GUI load time and not the all samples loaded instrument ready to play load time.

Still, we should also make these numbers available to NI. If other sample players are so much better (in fact I own Independence which is also way faster) there got to be room for improvement!


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 11, 2014)

This is turning into quite a useful thread, eh?



chrispire @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> Lumina Alto Flute Legato patch. GUI load 2 seconds. Samples loaded in 20 seconds. Total: 22 sec. 454MB = *23MB/s.*



This is the only one I have that took you a long time to load and I have on SSD ready to go. I just tried it on Win 7, K 5.3.1 standalone, Crucial M500 SSD, 18k preload buffers, And I got GUI load 5 seconds, samples load 0s (I couldn't meaaure it anyway, it was effectively instant). Total 5s for 211mb.



chrispire @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> Native Instruments Studio Drummer Garage Kit Full. GUI load in 4 seconds. Samples loaded in 1 minute 9 sec. Total: 1 min 14 sec. 419MB = *6MB/s.*



I have this streaming from a 7,200 drive. GUI load in 2 seconds, Samples loaded in 6s. Total: 8s. 254mb.

I then tried it in Cubase, and it loaded in 3s (I've noticed this - when you reload a patch it is much quicker). So discounting that result (which more or less eliminates the DAW as significant) although my preload buffers are lower than yours meaning my footprint is 60% lighter, my sample load time even off a 7,200 rpm drive is 8% of your figure, over 11x faster.

!!!

Now, I might be wrong but it looks like all the people with the slow load times are Mac-based. I think your hypothesis that it's patches with very large numbers of small files might be partly true, but on this evidence I think that it maybe only applies to (some? all?) Mac users.


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## ProtectedRights (Sep 11, 2014)

I am on Windows and also have slow loading times. So that throws out the Mac supposition I guess.

It seems we really have to be careful to monitor the important things. 

Currently I see:

- system (Mac/Win, processor)
- HDD (SSD/regular)
- preload buffer size in Kontakt (check if global override is active, or configured per instrument)
- sampler mode of instrument (if anybody fiddles with that)
- it has to be the first instrument load after PC boot.
- nki resaved?

@Guy, did you reboot your PC before taking those times? Did you change the sampler mode in the instruments? Preload buffer of 18k means 18kb?

Also it may have to do with the database settings of Kontakt? Samples included might make a difference? Don't know. I disabled the latter because people say it increases RAM footprint.


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 11, 2014)

ProtectedRights @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> @Guy, did you reboot your PC before taking those times? Did you change the sampler mode in the instruments? Preload buffer of 18k means 18kb?



Rebooted - yes; Sampler mode - no; Preload 18kb indeed.

Curiouser then if some are getting these slow times in Windows. Mine is 64 bit, but I guess everyone's is? Anyone working at superhigh sample rates or anything? (Mine are variously 44.1 or 48k, doesn't seem to make any difference to load times here).

One other avenue to explore. For those with issues, perhaps the Kontakt / Play thing is a red herring, that the differences might be universal and more dependent on those large numbers of tiny samples or not. I'm just wondering if its more of a mobo / hardware controller issue - I've never fully understood those benchmarks except that the smaller file transfers are way slower than the larger ones. It seems unlikely to be that though, it would have to be really screwy to get an 11x worse performance from an SSD than my 7,200rpm drive.


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## mk282 (Sep 11, 2014)

I'm thinking OPs SSD(s) are messed up somehow or the other and he should replace them. If they are full to the brim they might exhibit reduced performance, too...


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## Simon Ravn (Sep 11, 2014)

I know on OS X using the Kontakt Memory Server seriously increases loading times.

I see some people here expecting Kontakt to load at SSD throughput speed. E.g. if they have a 400MB/sec capable SSD Kontakt should be able to load samples that fast. Of course it won't. Kontakt has to go through all the groups/mappings etc. when loading samples, so it also has to use some CPU and time doing this. Also, remember that reading a long list of samples is much closer to "random read" than a sequential burst read. So loading up the samples will take considerably longer than the equivalent of copying/reading one large file.


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## mk282 (Sep 11, 2014)

Random seek/read is really not supposed to be a problem with SSDs at all, since that's their forte compared to HDDs (typical HDD is around 10 ms, typical SSD is <1 ms random seek time). If there's an obvious problem with this, there's a problem either in the SSD itself (its controller might be acting up), or perhaps even SATA controller on the motherboard (if the drive is connected via SATA), etc.


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 11, 2014)

(forgot to say - I am running the database in Kontakt with all my libs and still get those fast load times).


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## Embertone (Sep 11, 2014)

It might be worth mentioning here, that our Friedlander Violin and Blakus Cello FULL patches take some time to load, because the bulk of samples must be loaded directly to RAM due to Time Machine mode (which allows the real-time stretching of samples). This is integral to our speed script, which compresses the transition samples as the user plays faster and stretches them for slower playing.

For those who own either of these libraries, loading the "Lo-RAM" patches results in a smaller footprint and a significantly faster load time (usually <10 seconds), because Time Machine mode is not activated, instead those groups are in DFD/Sampler Mode.

-Alex


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## Simon Ravn (Sep 11, 2014)

mk282 @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> Random seek/read is really not supposed to be a problem with SSDs at all, since that's their forte compared to HDDs (typical HDD is around 10 ms, typical SSD is <1 ms random seek time). If there's an obvious problem with this, there's a problem either in the SSD itself (its controller might be acting up), or perhaps even SATA controller on the motherboard (if the drive is connected via SATA), etc.



Try reading some actual reviews with benchmarks - random reads (4k blocks) from SSD's are at about 50mb/sec at best - many hovering around 20-30mb tops. That's compared to their 200-300-400mb sequential reads....


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## mk282 (Sep 11, 2014)

That's still a HELLUVA lot better than HDD random 4k block reads which are usually below 1 MB/s :D


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## Simon Ravn (Sep 11, 2014)

mk282 @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> That's still a HELLUVA lot better than HDD random 4k block reads which are usually below 1 MB/s :D



Of course - but a far cry from the sequential read speed.


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## Jetzer (Sep 11, 2014)

One 1.60 gb kontakt patch takes me about a minute to load. (SSD).
Some legato HS patches take a minute or so as well (SSD). 

My Full HS instance normally takes about 7 mins to load on a SSD (just strings). Had to do that several times today because I was testing some stuff. One time though, it loaded in under a minute. Completely random. 

Not to concerned with loading times though. Stability is everything. 

My day: 
Ve Pro crashes, Cubase works fine. Took half the day to fix Ve Pro, now Cubase crashes. 

Computers...


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## Christof (Sep 11, 2014)

Again, doing a batch-resave increases loading times incredibly!
In Kontakt just go to Files-Batch re-save and follow the dialogue, it takes some time, but when it's done you might be happier, no more time to get a coffee....


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 11, 2014)

Christof @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> Again, doing a batch-resave increases loading times incredibly!
> In Kontakt just go to Files-Batch re-save and follow the dialogue, it takes some time, but when it's done you might be happier, no more time to get a coffee....



Christof - Chrispire said in his OP he already batch resaved, AND spelled it out again in another post.


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## Christof (Sep 11, 2014)

Oops, sorry for that, seems that I went trough this thread too quickly 

Good luck anyway Chrispire!
May the speed be with you!


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## pmountford (Sep 11, 2014)

In my case Batch saving is not the solution. Just built new PC and loading Sable Ensemble patches from an SSD is unbarable - taking way longer than the HD. So much so that I've had to go back to loading from HD - both the preload and sample loading stages. Interesting suggestion from Guy about MOBO combo as the culprit as I'm sure everything was working as it should in the PC that the SSD was taken from. Tried moving the libraries of and then back onto the SSD (as Blake suggested), formatting SSD again, copying just a few files over but still for some libraries from this SSD in this PC its slow. Maybe I've missed something. Will test SSD back in old PC when possible. I'm on Cubase 7.5 Win7 x64.

Reading this thread with interest as I thought it was just me going mad..


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 11, 2014)

Simon Ravn @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> I know on OS X using the Kontakt Memory Server seriously increases loading times.


You're onto something here. I just turned off the Kontakt Memory Server and this had a *MASSIVE* impact. Here are some instrument load times before and after turning off the memory server. 

Lumina Alto Flute Legato patch. 454MB.
Before: 20 seconds. After: 4 seconds. 

Native Instruments Studio Drummer Garage Kit Full. 
Before: 1 minute 9 sec. After: 6 seconds. 

Native Instruments Abbey Road 60s Drummer Early Kit Full. 
Before: 1 minute 4 sec. After: 4 seconds.

Native Instruments Session Strings Pro Section 1&2 Cellos Performance. 
Before: 24 seconds. After: 5 seconds. 

Embertone Friedlander Violin 1.5 Full All CCs patch. 
1 minute 29 sec. No change. I understand there are some important scripting requirements for the full patches for this instrument which mean that the entire instrument must be loaded into RAM. The low RAM versions are very quick. For example, The Blakus Cello LoRAM All CCs patch loaded over 1GB of samples in just 7 seconds.

Obviously these load speeds aren't utilizing the total speed potential of SSDs, but that was never the point of this thread. The point was to figure out why some Kontakt instruments only load at 5 to 25 MB/s, which is pitifully slow. With the memory server turned off, Kontakt now loads samples as fast as all my other samplers, like PLAY etc. 

So the questions is, what is the Kontakt Memory Server doing FOR me, because it sure is slowing down sample load times.


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## proxima (Sep 11, 2014)

chrispire @ Thu Sep 11 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Thu Sep 11 said:
> 
> 
> > I know on OS X using the Kontakt Memory Server seriously increases loading times.
> ...


Hmm, I wasn't using the memory server. As far as I know, it's not the default - you turned it on?

I'm curious if your times are after a fresh reboot, too.

For me, the mystery continues. No, my SSD is not too full. Of course none of us expect sequential read performance when loading samples, but we also don't expect 1-3 MB/sec. The point of reporting a speed test result is to rule out simple stuff like a USB2 connection or other fundamental problem that limits all read speeds. 

I tried moving some slow samples back to my hard drive (technically a hybrid) and did not get notably different load speeds, so I'm pretty sure my issue is not with the physical drives or their interfaces.


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 11, 2014)

proxima @ Fri Sep 12 said:


> Hmm, I wasn't using the memory server. As far as I know, it's not the default - you turned it on?
> 
> I'm curious if your times are after a fresh reboot, too.
> 
> ...



Yes fresh boot. I made no other changes. The only thing I did differently was to turn off the memory server before loading any instruments. Instant and dramatic change ensued.

Memory server is for mac only and Kontakt help docs recommend that it be turned on.


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## mk282 (Sep 11, 2014)

If it's working faster for you with KMS turned off, then leave it off. :D


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## Simon Ravn (Sep 12, 2014)

Chrispire, I used to use the memory server, because it would obviously make loading of new (or in the event of a crash) projects sharing the same samples faster. However, since Mavericks I noticed it had a very severe impact on loading times, so now I have it turned off.


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 12, 2014)

Yes. As far as I'm concerned this is problem solved. I just loaded an 8.18 GB multi into Kontakt in 1 minute 40 seconds. This would have taken almost 10 minutes with the memory server turned on. 

One of the reasons I started investigating this was because I'm about to upgrade from my 2010 Mac Pro to a new Mac Pro. This will lift the SATA2 bandwidth restrictions off my SSDs, and I'm interested to see how this affects sample load times.

All my samples will be stored on external SSD drives via Thunderbolt 2. So I'm also going to experiment with RAID0 SSD configurations for samples to see how this affects sample load times. I've read plenty of conjecture about this in various forums, but haven't seen the results of any real-world testing. 

I've created some big multis with PLAY and Kontakt instruments and will benchmark their performance in a 2010 Mac Pro vs 2014 Mac pro vs 2014 Mac Pro with at least 3 X SSD in RAID0 (thoroughly backed up of course).


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 12, 2014)

Well found, Chris - that's the kind of dramatic improvement that one would hope for. As a Windows guy, I don't know the ins and outs of the KMS, but I'm sure I've read many people saying its more historically useful than useful now. 

So hopefully that explains many peoples' problem, but looks like there might still be other issues affecting some mac and windows users. I just tested a 1.6gb non-streaming tempo-synced patch in Vivace, and it loaded in a few seconds, so I think we can rule that out as a universal issue, though clearly its affecting some. My own gripe (and this is separate, obviously) the issue with external tempo causing CPU spikes is maddening - roll on Kontakt 5.4...


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## mk282 (Sep 12, 2014)

Seems to me that KMS doesn't play well with the new memory compression feature that was added with Mavericks...


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## Simon Ravn (Sep 12, 2014)

Chrispire, instead of upgrading to a new Mac Pro (I am personally waiting for the next generation of it), you could for a little money get a Sonnet Tempo Pro PCI card - this stores two SATA SSD's onboard and will give you full SATA3 speed. I have two Samsung 840 drives on such a card and it works nicely. Not sure about any real world benefits though, I haven't done any tests, but at least it lets me put two extra SSD's in my Mac with full SATA3 speed.


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## proxima (Sep 12, 2014)

OK, I'm having substantially improved performance with a different USB3 enclosure; ironically, one that has significantly worse sustained performance (a non-UASP model). I'm ordering a third enclosure with UASP support to try to figure out if it's the UASP (and the Mac OS X implementation of it). UASP ought to improve both sustained speeds and random access speeds, but not in my setup, apparently. Disappointing. On the bright side, at least it's faster now - not quite the OP's speeds, but much better.

It's too bad that thunderbolt enclosures tend to be multi-drive units. I have one 750 GB SSD that fits what I need. One possibility would be to just connect the drive via eSATA to this Lacie thunderbolt esata hub.


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## Blake Ewing (Sep 12, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Fri Sep 12 said:


> I don't know the ins and outs of the KMS, but I'm sure I've read many people saying its more historically useful than useful now.


It's my understanding that KMS was mainly for use with 32bit machines/apps that could only access 3gb of RAM and that was a way around it (much like VE/VEP).

64bit machines/apps have no such limitation and having KMS running simultaneously can cause issues, as it seems to have here.

Of course, I may have it all wrong! :D


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## Grilled Cheese (Sep 12, 2014)

Blake Ewing @ Sat Sep 13 said:


> Guy Rowland @ Fri Sep 12 said:
> 
> 
> > I don't know the ins and outs of the KMS, but I'm sure I've read many people saying its more historically useful than useful now.
> ...


You're spot on Blake. I think that I turned this setting on a year or so ago after Googling "Kontakt Memory Server". This led me to a N.I Knowledgebase article (that still pops up on Google) that recommends turning it on. However, the updated Kontakt 5 manual goes into more detail and says you should turn it off if your system is 64 bit (which mine has been for around 3+ years).


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## kgdrum (Sep 12, 2014)

Blake Ewing @ Fri 12 Sep said:


> Guy Rowland @ Fri Sep 12 said:
> 
> 
> > I don't know the ins and outs of the KMS, but I'm sure I've read many people saying its more historically useful than useful now.
> ...




that's my understanding as well.
it was useful in the 32bit kernel in the 64bit world it's no longer necessary.


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## Simon Ravn (Sep 13, 2014)

Yes it was developed "back in 32-bit days", but as I mentioned, there's another benefit of using the server: If VEP crashes, or if you for some reason have to reload your template, using the memory server means that samples are kept in memory and will not have to be reloaded.

However, since Mavericks the memory server has resulted in huge loading times, so it is basically useless now unless you're on Snow Leopard.


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## Will Blackburn (Jun 15, 2015)

Chrispire so the KMS thing sorted all the hanged loading / glitching within cubase aswell? I have the exact symptoms you do but im on PC. 

I notice that when i load up some libs they take ages just for the 'loading window' to appear. 

I was getting a ton of bex64 crashes each time i quite cubase. Steinberg sent me this fix which i had never considered doing before. Interesting what he says about memory dumping and the gpu. I no longer get the BEX.dll crashes after the fix but still get the hanged loading with both Kontakt libs and opening a Cubase project.

------
'I have analyzed the crash dump you have sent us. The cause of the crashes
seems to be the component "D3D10Warp.dll" which it doesn't seem to be able
to clean up the information stored on memory when the program needs to be
closed.

That file was originally the "Direct3D 10 Rasterizer" for Windows system
but it could either be damaged or infected by malicious software. I
strongly recommend you to perform a full system scan of your computer
using an antivirus such as AVG, Avast, Norton, Avira or Kaspersky. Since
this component seems to be damaged, the meters and animations in Cubase
will probably move slowly while showing glitches or even freeze
completely.

Please note, in case your computer has been also used for gaming and you
experience poor graphics performance, I would take into account the idea
of performing a non-destructive reinstall of Windows 7.
'


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## mk282 (Jun 15, 2015)

Here's some more detailed info about batch resaving.

http://www.blake.so/blog/?17

Last two sections before the video are very important. Means that you should always batch resave the library before even opening it for the first time, because you cannot know if the developer created the library on a PC or a Mac, because of those differences in NKC files between the two platforms.


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