Kontakt's Preload buffer size

[Cat]

Here is a question for Kontakt users who have the samples stored on either Sata SSD (possible Raid 0?) or NVMe SSD: what is the instrument buffer size that you are successfully using? Anybody doing 12 KB - or even 6 KB with no dropouts?

 

[babylonwaves]

Here is a question for Kontakt users who have the samples stored on either Sata SSD (possible Raid 0?) or NVMe SSD: what is the instrument buffer size that you are successfully using? Anybody doing 12 KB - or even 6 KB with no dropouts?

I do 12, 6 is working as well in many cases

 

[Paul Jelfs]

Wow. That is low . Does that help for you by saving RAM , or are there other advantages etc to having a low buffer size- As it effects ALL kontakt libraries I believe.

Does it help in any way with running the library at a Low Buffer size for instance?

 

[Cat]

I do 12, 6 is working as well in many cases

Sata SSD or NVMe?

 

[Robert_G]

Wow. That is low . Does that help for you by saving RAM , or are there other advantages etc to having a low buffer size- As it effects ALL kontakt libraries I believe.

Does it help in any way with running the library at a Low Buffer size for instance?

I'm also interested in learning about this.

 

[Wunderhorn]

Even with NVMe - if you have enough RAM - I would suggest using larger buffers. RAM is still faster than loading from SSD.

 

[JamieLang]

Even with NVMe - if you have enough RAM - I would suggest using larger buffers. RAM is still faster than loading from SSD.

What do you mean it's "faster"? Are you saying you can get more polyphony? Because it's SLOWER by a LOT to load more buffers into more RAM. I've not noticed any difference in polyphony. 100% of notes you play on a disc streaming instrument will stream from the storage, no matter what buffer size in kilobytes is specified. Unless you turn the disk streaming OFF, that is...

OP: Mine (v6) is set on 6k. The samples are on a combo of SATA SSD and nVME.

I'm not doing "composition" with 900 disabled instruments in a template, so...YMMV.

 

[Daniel James]

What do you mean it's "faster"? Are you saying you can get more polyphony? Because it's SLOWER by a LOT to load more buffers into more RAM. I've not noticed any difference in polyphony. 100% of notes you play on a disc streaming instrument will stream from the storage, no matter what buffer size in kilobytes is specified. Unless you turn the disk streaming OFF, that is...

OP: Mine (v6) is set on 6k. The samples are on a combo of SATA SSD and nVME.

I'm not doing "composition" with 900 disabled instruments in a template, so...YMMV.

Cursory google search gave this:

SSD vs. RAM Speed​

RAM is orders of magnitude faster than an SSD. A SSD's theoretical maximum transfer speed is that of the SATA interface -- 6Gbps, which is equivalent to 750MB/sec. A relatively fast SSD may achieve real-world write speeds of 456MB/sec, though. The theoretical maximum speed of RAM is in its PC number, so a module of PC3-12800 memory can transfer 12,800MB/sec--roughly 30 times faster than the real world performance of an SSD. Directly substituting an SSD for RAM would end up significantly slowing down your system.

 

[Justin L. Franks]

I think Jamie meant that it takes longer to load an instrument when the preload size is higher.