Hey there Kontakt experts.
I'm sittin here jammin with the Neo-Soul Keys lib and friggin LOVE the sounds.
But I'm gettin some disturbing sound drop-outs now and then, typically when I'm pushing 6-7 keys at once or holding down basic chords while simultaneously trying to play fast melody lines.
Seems kinda strange since I have piano lib's that take up 6-7 times as much memory that I can use with no problems at all.

Normally I would just trash anything that doesn't run smooth, but these sweet gospel sounds has got me hooked like a smiling redhead in a vodka bar. Can't just walk away without givin it a serious try.

So what I wonder is if other people also experience this with this particular lib, or have some idea about why it would happen?
I'm using Kontakt 5.3 standalone, Mac OSX 10.6.8, 4GB RAM.
I've checked with activity monitor and neither my RAM or my processor is pushed to the limit.

 

Check the maximum voice limit, and set it to minimum 128. The Kontakt default is 32. That might solve it

 

Nope Andrew, that's not it. When I load the Neo-Soul Keys patches they are all preset to 200 voices.

But I tried another thing. I still have an AU version of my old Kontakt 5.0.3 by R2R, so I fired up my DAW and loaded Neo-Soul Keys into that instead.
Now in the 5.0.3 the drop-outs appear much less even though I'm using more memory cause the DAW is running, and the problem seems to happen only with some patches and only when I make rapid switches from soft to really hard velocity.
How random is that

 

Well there is another matter. Where are your samples stored? Is it SSD or mechanical HDD?
Maybe the prebuffer is too low.

Open up instrument setting (that little wrench), click on Instrument Options and select DFD. Try to set it above 120KB and see if that fixes the problem.

About 5.0.3 - I did numerous tests on Win (not sure about OSX) and 5.0.3 clearly uses less CPU than 5.1.0 and newer. The difference is only marginal, about 5-7%, but it's there. That's why I still don't have 5.3.0 as primary. *yes*

 

Hey man, that did the trick.
Global prebuffer setting was at 30 kb and designated to override individual instrument settings. Pushed it up to 120 kb and all problems are gone.
Just the sweeet unbroken sounds of 'Psycho-Chorus', 'Meditate on Jesus' and 'Spongy Keys' rolling out of my monitors now

Thanks Andrew.
You really are a great guy, I wish you were here so I could buy you dinner and talk about orchestral arrangements

BTW, SSD is pure sci-fi for me, still squeezing the last drops of life out of an old iMac here.

 

I'd love to talk about orchestral arrangement.

 

i really suggest buying a large ssd...i just bought a samsung 840 evo 512 gb and now the big patches on major libraries like cinematic strings load within 2 seconds - thats pure fun!