That's actually a bug in Kontakt regarding looping and certain other conditions... It's a really nasty gremlin.
Yes... right - that's exactly what it appears like to me. In the end, it's enough of a consistent/intermittent problem to prevent me from reliably being able to use these lower buffers, no matter how many variances I've tried. Which is why I really do wonder... if anyone claiming such low buffer settings is actually able to use these settings in a
large real-world full-blown project? Perhaps everyone is willing/used to reloading their projects when these glitches happen; here that's just too much of a flow killer for me (and there's always a terrible shortage of any extra time for these sorts of "pauses" around here as well.
) Buffers back up at more forgiving settings, and I seldom see this issue. Except...
FWIW, I can tell you one scenario that will make it happen
reliably (at least here) at near any buffer setting. If you load say, four time-machine pro-based instruments with long samples (like beat-mapped transition effects that play over four bars) on the same midi channel in a single K5 instance, and trigger them as a layered patch, Kontakt will almost always exhibit this drop-out behavior. I can get away with three layers usually, but not four. I've got bunches of these custom effects instruments that we've made here, and with two+ instruments set up like this, it's really easy to quickly browse these "modules" and create a custom layered transition element that lands exactly where and how you want it to.
I don't have any issues with speed readings from the SSDs via BMD speedtest, or any other benchmark tools I've used; all report streaming speeds as near ideal for these drives. Also, this happens on
both the drives-via-TB enclosure on the MAC trashcan, and the slightly older cheese grater 12c - so I don't think it has anything to do with PCIe arrangement (but yes, we've confirmed that the the SAS card is in the best slot as well in the cheese grater).