How many of you people use Kontakt? I get pops and clicks on some libraries (this affects my export too), I'm using FL studio by the way

My computer is an asus rog 501jw laptop and I run my libraries from my D drive on the computer.

Thanks

 

Your computer may not be able to run some of the more intensive libraries, or Kontakt itself may need to be adjusted. Watch the little CPU/RAM meter at the top of the Kontakt GUI -- if it's spiking red when you hear those pops and clicks, you're exceeding the RAM/CPU. Try increasing your buffers or hard disk streaming in your Kontakt prefs. If this doesn't do the trick, it may be your computer. You can either try increasing your RAM or investing in a SSD for your Kontakt "D" drive. A Crucial 1TB SSD will set you back about 289 bucks as of this writing, but it'll allow you to stream your Kontakt libraries a whole lot easier.

For the record, even with my computer (a MBP with a quad-core i7 processor), I was experiencing similar problems with my more-intensive libraries until I replaced my HDD with a SSD.

 

It's not Kontakt, it's you audio interface settings. You can't generally make music using the built-in audio driver of your PC (unless using minimal amount of tracks, instruments and effects). You need to buy a dedicated audio interface that essentially works as a dedicated sound processor that takes the processing load off your computer. It then allows you to reduce buffer etc without pops and clicks. This is absolute basics of making music using computer and you really should do some research before installing the likes of DAWs and instruments etc so you know what you are doing and what you need.

Based on your newbie status, having joined today and posted thread about what is best FL Studio and what is best Kontakt etc, it sounds like you are new to this World and I'd advise you to stop what you are doing and do some research before your go any further as there will be stuff you need and probably some optimisations you will need to make to your computer and such.

I've not watched these, and came up first in my YouTube search, but I am assuming they will know what they are on about. The second guy writes for audio mags (Sound On Sound, I believe), so should know what he is on about:

 

Sorry for not being clear, I have an audio interface which is a scarlett focusrite 2i2 gen 2, I'm also asking on these forum about best cracked version because this forum seems to know which cracked version is the best one. It's not like I don't know how to download a cracked fl studio and I even have one but there's seems to be a better version. However I needed some guidance for kontakt 5.6.6. but it's all good now .

So I'm wondering if it's my computer after all.

 

Oh awesome, yeah it's turning red, how do I increase hard disk streaming? Is it instrument preload buffer size?

 

Last edited: Jun 11, 2017

It'll be in your Audio prefs window: try increasing preload buffer size, the amount streaming directly from disk, etc. You'll have to play around with it until instruments can load and play without hitting the red, but also without lags when you're actually hitting the keys. You can learn more here.

 

By the way I just increased instrument preload buffer size to max and man it reduced almost everything, I still get some pops and clicks but it sounds more like vinyl. Is there something else a can do to reduce pops and clicks? I guess an ssd would help right? I just noticed that my c drive is an ssd but it's only 118 gb =/

 

@peshti
Hello and welcome to the best audio forum that there is.
Did you try increasing the buffer on your scarlett? Im always at max, which is 2048 for my device. Unless Im recording live or tracking midi. Then I jump it down to 128, but then put it back after.

Its not necessarily your computer. You have kinda decent enough specs, probably need to tweak your os some and stop all the unneeded background processes you dont need.

2.6 GHz Core i7-4720HQ, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, 512 GB HDD

CPU is a little slow. And computer manufacturers are notorious for putting 5400 rpm drives in systems. Slower memory than the local buss usually too. But depending on what your projects look like, as long as you freeze/print all the tracks in them to audio (which is a workaround P.I.T.A. with FL Studio) you should be able to get a decent track count going.

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2017

That setting is Kontakt is easentially 2 extremes and you need to find the middle balance for your machine. Put it all the way down and it will essentially be directly streaming from the hard drive, which is best for SSDs. Put it all the way up and you shift the load onto your CPU and RAM in loading samples into RAM and processing then from there, i.e. using the RAM as the buffer. The Kontakt default is 60kb I believe. Mine is set at 34kb using 7200rpm external drives in the main and never had any issues. The problem with cranking it up as you have done is that it will preload more samples and use up more RAM and will also use more of your CPU to read them from RAM than if you stream directly from disk. In my experience keeping this lower is better than higher and provides a better balance or you will quickly hit CPU/RAM limits. There is an option to save RAM though by using the purge function, but this will mean samples will initially load slower or appear to not load until they've been read.

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2017

um I feel dumb but I don't even know how to freeze/print tracks in fl studio. I tried to change the buffer size to 1024 which is the maxium and when I put on override preload instrument size and put it to max it reduces a lot of the pops/clicks. Now I get kind of like vinyl clicks/pops or that's how I can describe them.

 

It should not pop and click at all if it is optimised and should most definitely not "sound like vinyl".

Sounds to me like you probably have your Scarlett's buffer set too low, as @subGENRE explained. Open up your audio interface's control panel and have a look. Sweet spot for most people yo leave it at permanently for balance is 256. However, like @subGENRE I reduce to 64 or 128 when recording live playing and use at max setting of 1024 or 2048 when not live recording, i.e. listening back or inputting by drawing into MIDI piano roll.

 

I guess vinyl is an exaggeration, too be exact the pops/clicks where all over the place before but when I override the piece is more listenable.

Should I copy this library to my c drive which is an ssd and just see if that works better? My c drive isn't that big though but if it works an external ssd drive should be all I need right?

 

You're going to have to learn to print the midi tracks to audio. streaming all the libs in kontakt will eat up all your resources really quick. especially if your using multiple kontakt instances instead of loading all the libs in one instance and using the multi outputs in kontakt

 

You can adjust your audio buffer setting in the audio settings in FL studio too, where you selected the ASIO driver for your device (not the FL Asio one) It might just open up your audio device properties when you click the button for it.

May I ask why FLStudio? if you're new to it all why not try something like ableton maybe? But really honestly its all just preference and what works and feels right for you. They will all do the same thing and get you to the same place. Ive made more than a few tracks in FL and it takes way more mouse clicks (and workarounds) to get stuff done than ableton. But I can understand how the sequencer grid can appeal to n00bs, just start clicking the little buttons and go. No manual required.

FL I learned quickly, ableton took a little longer, but was well worth the time I invested in it. There is no faster way to get the sounds out of your head and into your ear. Also, if you plan on performing your music, ableton is definitely the only way to go.

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2017

I love fl studio, I've used for a year or two, I'm not new to using a daw, I'm new to composing within a daw, I come from sampling and making hip hop beats. Meaning that I'm quite new to kontakt except for some libraries. I've also started using reaper a bit which I think is great .

 

@peshti
Ableton and reaper is what I use here. Cool. I feel you man. When I have to record any vox or instruments I use reaper. Ableton (and FL) dont have any form of comping the performances for the best takes. Its all good dude. Just trying to see where your coming from and where your at in your musical journey. But you need to learn how to bounce your midi to audio tracks. If you want to get the best performance out of your DAW

Then you can turn off the synths/kontakt (and or effects) so it doesn't eat up all your resources. And jsut use the wav. Ill bounce with eqs and filters, saturation and so on. But Ill leave all my time based effects live. Like reverbs and delays. Compressors too. Its just the way I do it, not a rule or method to it. Just makes sense to me.

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2017

Copy a library to "C Drive" (SSD) and try it.

It's asking a lot of an external IDE USB drive to run Kontakt.

Besides, your setup might only baulk at playing samples the first time.........and you can purge unused samples, right? FL will record your MIDI input not the (slow) response of Kontakt. And when you render too.

 

@gstring. He might be alright if he gets the right external enclosure/drive. It does have usb3 on it. usb3 enclosure with a ssd would be the best way to go. Enough bandwidth there. @peshti Does it really have 2 drives in it, or is it just a partition? It its really thin looking at the specs on the product page for this model. They usually dont put 2 drives in laptops because of overheating issues. I have replaced the optical drives on my laptops before with a HDD carriage and installed a second drive for dual booting different OS'es and had to keep them on a laptop cooler at all times.

 

Going to SSD solved the issue entirely for me. I've never streamed samples or audio tracks from an external drive, but swapping it out for an SSD (you could try a much-cheaper hybrid drive, but I'm not a big fan of those) shouldn't be a hardship. Do you know what speed your existing drive is? It might only be 5400 rpm -- even an upgrade to 7200 rpm might fix that. You're still stuck with however fast your connection speed (and the bottlenecks of that connection), which is most likely the culprit here. How about swapping out your C drive with a 1 or 2 TB SSD? That's what I wound up doing, but I likely have a lot smaller sample library than you, and can get away with running everything from my main drive. I have a secondary internal 1 TB 7200 rpm spinner for all my documents and audio projects.

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2017

@Iggy
According to this https://www.asus.com/us/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-G501JW/overview/

He has this
ROG G501 features PCI Express® x4 solid-state disks (SSDs) and Intel® Thunderbolt™ technology for faster data access and transfer speeds so you're not kept waiting by long game-loading times or large file transfers.

Which is Intel Thunderbolt with a 512g ssd

So I dont get it. Where is the bottleneck at? Maybe he just needs to optimize his OS for audio?