When setting up Kontakt for something like orchestral use, does Kontakt behave better and more efficiently by:

1. Setting up an instance of Kontakt per instrument patch, so, for example, there are 16 instances of Kontakt with 1 instrument patch in each one; or
2. Setting up an instance of Kontakt and utilise all 16 outs, so to load in 16 instrument patches per single instance of Kontakt?

 

You can try the two options by yourself and stay with the one that`s better for you and then nobody can steal the knowledge that are in you head.

 

As @rudolph say there's no right answer. And this is not one of those "go try and figure yourself" easy exits.

I've seen this question asked several times over the years. For some using one Kontakt instance per instrument works better, for others using multiple instruments per instance works better.

PS. About the CPU/memory efficiency is still very close. It may vary between DAWs but it's less than one would think.

 

Last edited: Dec 6, 2022

Ok, I'll probably give it a whirl over next few days and see what happens then I guess!

 

BTW Bunford I left you some nicnts in that thread in case you still need them.
You know, the metropolis, true strike 2 and stuff

 

Yeah, I saw. Cheers @Xupito. I had already sorted it out though, thanks! The Metropolis Ark 4 one you gave me worked whereas the one I had didn't for some reason, even though I hadn't touched it. The True Strike 2 one is not actually official for Kontakt 7 as you suggest neither (it is for earlier Kontakt 6 (RAS2)). This is because the official .nicnt file for True Strike 2 doesn't actually have the required UPID in there, so even the official one won't authorise in Kontakt 7 (under RAS3) as I understand it?! Also, I edited the Albion Collection .nicnt to add in the UPID, JDX etc from the original Albion .nicnt and it worked, with Albio I, II, III, IV, and V all in the one custom collection working and recognised in Kontakt 7.

 

Man, what a mess... holy shit. Ok, as I understand it you fixed the Albion nicnt in a probably(?) similar way than mine when doing the nicnt.

So did you finally get some true strike 2 nicnt (or without nicnt) to work? Haven't really got that part.

It's surprising though. I thought as long it's in the NativeAccess.xml file you can get it to work under Kontakt 7 R2R. And true strike 2 is.
Then again, as I told you, I use the more permissive bobdule's version.

 

Last edited: Dec 6, 2022

Yeah. You just need to manually add the UPID to get the True Strike 2 one working as it should, but the official one won't work as is due to UPID being missing. Just open up NativeAccess.xml, search for True Strike 2, take out the <UPID> XML tag and data, and insert into the .nicnt file and then it works.

 

That's right. Many official nicnt's are outdated since the introduction of this new protection and data (UIPD, HUIX and stuff). Outdated might be the best word to describe it but whatever...

So I guess if you're full legit that's one of the things the Native Access program does for you automatically.

 

I did a little test, 11 brass thingies playing legato, plagerizing a song i like (shhhh). First one kontakt instance with 11 instruments, rebooted the computer because i can, then 11 kontakt instances with one instrument each. Same midi "master" file. rinse and repeat a few times to make sure nothing else was altering the results.

More RAM usage on the multiple instances version than in the single instances one (8,2GB vs 7,5GB) as reported by Reaper. Windows says different numbers but the difference is very similar. Very minimal (if any) CPU usage difference.

It would seem i'm with the multiple instruments per instance gang. I should get a tatoo, it shall say MIPI.

 

one instance of Kontakt for each patch for me. Easy to bounce in place and commit. Not confusing to tweak, purge etc. CPU is about the same for fast computer I guess. I think the most effective way depends on how you work, me i rather work with audio, commit as soon as I can. I like Diva too much and had to do this a lot to use more of it, so the habits developed from there, same goes to Halion, Falcon etc. The only thing I'll try to keep as MIDI until the very end is SD3 or EZD for strange reason, it is mainly to prevent myself for spending too much time on the sonics of the drum, rather than note/phrases, so the track can progress.

 

Interesting comments. BTW @mk_96 consider your post rated funny too, but I could only rate once

 

An advantage for cubase users if you use 1 for each patch, that in record mode when asio guard disables this happens only on one instance and not a fully loaded kontakt.

 

https://audiosex.pro/threads/single-instance-vs-multi-instances.19572/

 

I prefer multiple instances, because I use Reaper and have my articulations set up in Reaticulate. It's much easier for me to compose that way.

I would say that in general, it's up to your personal preference and your needs. Each solution has its pros and cons (multiple instances better handle multithreading, but use more RAM, for example).

The way I see it, it's basically this:

Spoiler

Versus this:
Reaticulate in Reaper

For me, personally, the first option seems like an absolute nightmare :D

 

I got your back Xupito added a funny for you

EDIT: if anyone reads this and it isn't a pain in the ass- I never figured out how to stream kontakt libraries straight off an ssd- I was under the impression there was a way to do that as opposed to load them into the RAM... but I could just be very confused. Probably am. I was using the portable version of 6 and could never find a setting for it, perhaps it needs to be the non portable version? or yeah, like I said i just don't understand the fundamentals.

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2023

What's loaded into memory is the start of the samples, when they are triggered the rest is streamed from disk.

 

sweeeeeeet - thank you! that helps with my next future studio rig build.

 

In Kontakt's settings, in the Memory tab, you can also change the amount of preload.

 

ahhhh- that's been the missing piece of me understanding. I think. so basically with an SSD I lower the buffer needed to stream off the drive and then I'm guessing lower the preload amount to lower ram usage. I'm going off memory (no pun intended - sold my studio rig recently so it'll be a bit before I'm back in action) but yeah- even if I don't have that right still super helpful when I build my next one someday. which-tbh I'll probably just buy the best shit I can afford anyways but maybe I won't pressured to get 128 gigs of ddr5 so I can run 1000 instances of 8dios slide whistle