The reverb within Kontakt libraries, particularly orchestral stuff, is something I have recently been considering and just wondering what others do.

In terms of CPU and RAM usage minimisation, have you found any benefit to turn off the built in reverb within some Kontakt libraries?

And, in terms of the sound and placing the orchestra in one space, is there any benefit to turning off the reverb within the sample libraries and running them all to a reverb send(s) within the DAW instead?

I am just curious about what others do and how you approach this? I have my own thoughts, but will keep them back for now so I don't colour anybody else's views.

 

Kontakt reverbs are high quality. For Orchestra i use convolution----real rooms----concert hall A a lot, its as good as Altiverb stuff.
With your computer specs you wont see any problems when you jump to cubase, i assume you still worry from your S1 cpu overload.

 

You can't say turn off the reverb within the sample as obviously is sampled and therefore playback of recorded sample is going to have no effect on CPU usage at all.
Also reverb usage as far as I'm aware isn't going to affect RAM usage either. RAM predominantly used up by the loading of the samples themselves. Reverb in terms of a scripted control included within the GUI is predominantly achieved by say send either to Digital Reverb or Convolution Reverb within Kontakt.
In the Digital Reverb is going to have a very minimal effect on CPU and wouldn't think you would have to worry about that. However convolution of course can eat CPU.
Best way to test would be firstly to playback sample say in Kontakt with convolution enabled and monitor the CPU usage itself say from within Kontakt itself and then bypass which is going to give you a direct indication of CPU usage.
Then maybe try bypass of scripted reverb and monitor CPU usage through a convolution reverb in DAW on a send. That's going to give you a basic indication. It's quite possible I guess that you could achieve a lower overall CPU bypassing Kontakt scripted reverb and running them through Reverb on say various routings but that's something to experiment with.
Kontakts routing capabilities are pretty good really and also keep in mind that the Convo reverb in Kontakt itself can load a wide variety of Impulse Response formats other than stock library reverbs so that's also something to mess with

 

I didnt meant any reverb embedded in the sample itself by the way. I meant the sample libraries that have a reverb option/dial within the library's GUI. Just for clarification.

 

It looks like i am going to be waddling back off to Cubase with my tail between my legs with lavish apologies as it stands!

 

Weirdly though, maybe all is not lost.....yet! I've just realised that if I take 4 CPU cores from Studio One and double processs precision from 32 bit to 64 bit, it pretty much halves the CPU load at idle. Don't ask me why! I assume Studio One kind of puts CPUs it's not currently using in reserve of sorts, that was showing false load maybe?! Maybe with some more tweaking I can get it at the right balance, seeing that if I using VE Pro to host my Kontakt instances anyway, I may be able to reduce CPU cores needed in Studio One by another 4 cores and still handle the VST plugins I need to?!?!

 

You will still hit the wall fast during mixing. But yea, i agree, try to see if you can pull it off.
IMO 22% is still too much for a few libraries.

 

Hey bud. I'm assuming you went through your BIOS and Power settings settings like PreSonus recommends?
Windows Vista/7
Windows Vista/7/8

I would open Resource Monitor and see if the spikes are an actual representation of your system's performance or just the DAW itself.

Also, Kontakt has an option for Multicore processing and switching this off in the plugin but keeping it on in your DAW actually helps. Sometimes.

 

I hadn't seen them, but having gone through them they are default tweaks I've been making to my machines since WIndows 7, maybe even XP, as soon as I've installed the OS so cheers, but seems like I'd already tweaked them all to the recommended settings already, except the wireless adapter one as I don;t have one and my machine is wired, so to speak

Checked Task Manager in Windows too and kept an eye on Performance, and the Studio One representation does seem to be accurate, but is mostly associated with the DAW according to the Processes tab.

I've just tried turning multicore off in Kontakt to see if it will make a difference as that was my next step anyway, followed by the tweaking of the preload buffer slider in Kontakt as in the past I've been led to believe that this is essentially a balancing slider between putting the sample load more on the RAM or more on the hard/solid state drive and the CPU, though I don;t think that will make a difference here as I'm yet to load in any samples!

 

Last edited: May 22, 2017