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Free Kontakt player high CPU when playing one note 30%-99%

toomanynotes

toomanynotes

Senior Member
Hi,
I got a new laptop, everything working fine Cubase, Garritan Libs, Notion...but I downloaded this free 'Standalone' Kontakt start and loaded a sound, when I play one or 2 keys the cpu shoots up and hoover around 30-40%~ I can get it to shoot to 99% by playing 8 key chords.
Never had an issue on dual core or i5 2nd gen.

Have i missed a setting/tweak maybe in the bios???
I noticed the external SSD drive usb 3.0 Samsung evo 850 (sample) drive transfers at 30 mb/s which is a ball ache. Could that be the bottle neck?

Thanks any tips welcome, laptop specs in sig.
Click to read more...
 
I am not worried about your specs, but am curious about what sound or library you loaded. There are many libraries that are CPU hungry because of the scripting in Kontakt.
 
JonSolo said:
I am not worried about your specs, but am curious about what sound or library you loaded. There are many libraries that are CPU hungry because of the scripting in Kontakt.
Click to expand...
Just freebie bog standard synths that came with free 'Komplete Start', Hybrid Keys, Ethereal Earth & Analog Dreams
thanks
 
toomanynotes said:
I noticed the external SSD drive usb 3.0 Samsung evo 850 (sample) drive transfers at 30 mb/s which is a ball ache. Could that be the bottle neck?
Click to expand...

This is almost certainly what's causing it. Remember that with digital audio, the CPU % is simply describing how long it's taking your *entire system* to render the buffer expressed in a percentage where 100% means that it took 1 buffer of time to complete 1 buffer (example: it took 256ms to render a 256ms buffer). This means that some component in the chain is causing enough lag that your buffer render time is getting closer to the buffer size time.

Depending on what kind of patch you're playing, slow USB speed is definitely going to affect your playing performance. The first test you should try is moving the same patch onto your computer, loading it from there, and then playing it.
 
The SSD is likely the issue...but since much of it loads into RAM I was concerned about which libraries. Have you tried moving a library to you other drive and loading from there to see if it makes a difference.

Let us know what you have tried to do to rectify this so you do not get a ton of obsolete suggestions.
 
JonSolo said:
There are many libraries that are CPU hungry because of the scripting in Kontakt.
Click to expand...

Scripting itself doesn't really impact CPU that greatly. It's which features of Kontakt are used.

Geocranium said:
the CPU % is simply describing how long it's taking your *entire system* to render the buffer expressed in a percentage where 100% means that it took 1 buffer of time to complete 1 buffer
Click to expand...

That's how CPU meter works in Ableton Live, but not in many other DAWs, or Kontakt.


In this case, verifying the disk meter would give insight if that external SSD is giving trouble or not. If it goes into the red, then it is. If not, then CPU is underpowered. Since it's a laptop, make sure you're running the "high performance" power profile...

Mike Greene said:
My guess is that the instrument is using Time Machine Pro. That takes a lot of CPU.
Click to expand...

The libraries OP mentions don't use TMPro at all.
 
Thanks for the suggestions fellas! Here’s my laptop spec sheet.
(broken link removed)

I’m sure I’m not plugged in to a usb 2.0 slot, they both have SSD symbols
1.
Two USB 3.1 Gen 1 (one Always On),
one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1 (with the function of Power Delivery and DisplayPort), one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 2 / Thunderbolt 3 (with the function of PD and DP),

2 Yes same issue when moved the 1gb library to my internal NVMe drive!

3 I am running High performance mode BUT there is one more option that does not show up in the adv power menu and that is Min + Max CPU states. I read somewhere I can summon them up to show via some code in Dos? I might attempt that today.

4 I’ll try and make a video of the cpu/ssd performance as I play a few notes, not too many!

Thank you,
 
Evildragon,
It’s time to Rock n Roll!

I initiated the min + max Cpu states (took a few goes), turned off Network card power mangement in Devices, disabled selective usb in adv power settings - slight oversight shld have been done before.

Result!!

No CPU max outs or audio spikes, though for some reason the new kontakt 6 + freebie ‘play series’ sounds are still a tad CPU intensive, I was expecting some gigantic sounds for the CPU workout, but just an average gm synth sound...bad programming?
One note key sample hoovers around 7%-12% but never goes above 18% when im playing more voices, so thats ok.

Tried other instruments, kirkhunter, cineorch, chapamn trumpet etc and they all function on 1%-3% and im pretty sure they are more intensive than kontakts free play series selection!

Last but not least, my external samsung ssd data transfer increased from 30mb/s to 300mb/s! All is well again!

Still like to learn abit about how to take advantage of my i7 CPU quad core in kontakt and Cubase..I’ve never had a i7 before so hopefully i can utilise it more in software.

Also i hear its wise to tell win defender to exclude scanning samples or anything else audio. We’ll do that next if inrun into any problems.

Latency tool reports everything is tip top.

Special thanks for everyone’s useful input! It’s only taken 12hrs of my time, not a bad
round this time!
 
Last edited:
EvilDragon said:
The libraries OP mentions don't use TMPro at all.
Click to expand...
Sure, but having handled a zillion tech support emails with the words "I followed your instructions to the 't' and it still doesn't work!", I've come to learn that what people say they did isn't always what they really did. :grin:

In fact, my money is still on TMPro (7% to 12% is crazy high for a single note) and at this point, if this were a customer, I'd be asking for a screenshot of the edit page to confirm it says Sampler or DFD, rather than TMPro.
 
But Mike, those libraries that OP mentioned (Analog Dreams, Ethereal Earth, Hybrid Keys) don't use TMPro in any group. I have all of them installed. They're all DFD.

toomanynotes said:
I was expecting some gigantic sounds for the CPU workout, but just an average gm synth sound...bad programming?
One note key sample hoovers around 7%-12% but never goes above 18% when im playing more voices, so thats ok.
Click to expand...

The Replika delay effect that is used in a lot of the patches there is a bit of a CPU eater - that's the reason, not TMPro.
 
Simply CPU utilization. CPU doesn't care about audio buffer length or whatever, OS CPU meter doesn't know about that stuff either, they just measure CPU utilization.
 
Hah, it seemed so obvious that I kind of ruled it out. Seems weird for Kontakt to just mirror my system performance monitor when there are so many different ways to get that info already. I would at least expect it to put it in some kind of relative context to audio. Kind of a weird design.

Cubase's performance meter for example behaves the way I had mentioned earlier, which is a lot more useful than basically copying what task manager says, heh.
 
Well, it doesn't exactly copy what task manager says. I dunno what exactly it does, but I'm pretty sure it's not related to audio buffer size processing time.
 
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