As I have 8Gb of RAM on my 64bit W7 system, I fight with Kontakt memory...

If I run kontakt and load:

- Cinematic Strings 2 full ensamble
- Spitfire Mural - V1 with 3 mic positions and basicaly all articulations (*)

(*) this is mainly for the test purpose... in real situation we need only some of articulations

I constant have 5Gb of mem usage and it's impossible to work with it in DAW, if we add system usage of cca 1Gb I approx 6-7Gb.

Go to setup and global DFD preload buffer, it's been set to 120 kb and I set to 60kb, now samples is reloaded and total is cca 3.5Gb but CPU hit's harder as HDD too.

I don't get it. How to setup strings, per example:

* V1
* V2
* Viola
* Cello
* plus extra stuff

with 8gb of RAM ? Does anybody else dealing with similar situtaion ??? Those libraries are very huge, I use Mural, Sable, Albion 2 and Cinematic Strings 2.

edit: (note) Unfortunately my mobo is designed to fill up with 8Gb maximal, 4 x 2Gb slot so I can't expand to more. (it's DDR2)

I make one test earlier on 120kb buffer size:

- load CS2 - cca 3Gb
- load Mural V1 with all mic positions - 3Gb
- + system mem usage 1.5Gb

and I have error in Kontakt standalone, low memory, and also I watch at the Resource monitor how physical memory grow up etc... what about windows memory management and page file ?!??? I set it to 12Gb as I have 8Gb of physical mem.

Basicly with Kontakt running and this libraries I can cut of max 50% or RAM usage with:

- in CS2 just off all articulations I don't need
- with Mural, load special patches (economical) with just articulations I need

and that's all.

Is more RAM only solution ??? I see somewhere how to use USB memory as EXTRA ram on Windows, anyone using something similar ?

 

Too tips for faster loading and reducing RAM usage:

If you decrease the preload buffer size(like 12kb), loading time is shorter and uses alot less Ram.

To save even more RAM use the "purge all samples" option. After loading the multi / instruments, click on the 'Purge' icon and select 'purge all samples'. What Kontakt does is only load the samples on the fly when you play your notes.

If you can get your hands on a class 8-10(8GB-32GB) USB-Ready Boost Thumbdrive($30-$50) that should give you a significant boost and Ram resources. Also slap a SSD in and call it a night

 

Thanks Guru, yes I know about DFD and what that mean.... you can set to 4kb buffer size but for sure that can destroy my HDD in one month

Purge option is useless in this situation when you play violin per example because you get chopped sound etc...

That option with USB is worth a try for sure.

I'm intrested in how other deal with this problem, or all of you using 32Gb of RAM

 

Nah no 32GB Ram for me, but i do use 24GB lol if that helps

 

Back On Topic lol

If you are using Kontakt within a DAW, Don't enable the multicore processing let the DAW take of it. Also don't load tons of instruments in one instance of Kontakt. It’s better to have multiple instances of Kontakt so your can DAW can control the load

 

Yes, I know that too, cpu multicore is off and the myth of Kontakt threads is about CPU usage... It's practicaly the same if you use one instance of Kontakt with 3 library loaded or three instance of kontakt with just one library loaded, the amount of used RAM is the same and maybe more because of extra two plugin instances.
For sure it's important if you want more reliable and efficient CPU usage on multicores.

 

It seems like you don't have a choice if you're really into that vast orchestra stuff so you have to upgrade your system somehow, which that means you should buy a new mobo too as long as your actual system is DDR2 based. Just adapt to your actual computer and save some money over time for an upgrade, it will really significantly improve your DAW's capability.

 

I to have only 8gis ram my problems were solved when I bought 2 terabytes sata 6 HD . automatically increased the virtual memory size, and sped everything up alot
if your low on hd space this will bottle neck you Daw Plugs ect.... to

 

Also, one thing to do is to do most of the work using only one mic position ("mix" if available, "tree" for spitfire libs) then only mess around with multiple mic positions in the mixing phase where you can freeze all other tracks. But if you want to do orchestral stuff you're gonna have to upgrade to more RAM, i'm in the same situation and I'm upgrading soon.

 

How ? I have space more then enough, how do will I use this libaries if I have no space
I have 8Gb + 12Gb virtual memory on my system, but that's the catch, Kontakt use only physical RAM. In system only 414 Mb is paged.
Maybe you are on Mac, so Kontakt has memory server functionality.

 

This ready boost technology is new to me, Didn't know that there is such a solution to free up some load. What is the typical percentage of improvement on RAM can we expect from this?

 

They say it's best to use double the Ram you have in your system to use for Readyboost
For example:

8GB = 16GB Thumbdrive or 2 8GB Thumbdrives

The maximum cache size is 32 GB per device, Windows 7 allows multiple caches, one per device, up to a total of 256 GB.

The device must have an access time of 1 ms or less.

The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device, and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device.

Most thumb drives on the market let you know if it's readyboost compatible

For more info see Here ReadyBoost

I have reviewed various of sites about ready boost and Audio Production but nothing was really useful, so i plan on having a good friend come over and run some test on my Audio computer with different ram sizes(hopefully he doesn't break anything lol, im too busy right now)Hopefully shed some light on this subject.

 

Sorry for the off-topic question but is it still the best thing to do? Maybe it would be nice to have a dedicated and updated thread with Kontakt engine tips and tricks, eh Introninja ?

(just in case... I'm on win7 x64 i5 4690K 16G of ram and I use Cubase 5 32 bit and Cubase 8 Elements 64 bit)

 

One thing I learned...
For slower performance systems, use kontakt on each track and do a track freeze when things becomes slow Don't use templates!

 

My previous system was so slow that I couldn't almost do anything without freezing. A single 2.4 15 years old core and 2 gigs ram