Hello all. Hope you have had a grand week-end.
Here's the rub. I'm working on an orchestral template. So far I have 18 instances of Kontakt "16 stereo out".
With all the instruments' samples purged, with the performance meter showing zero ram usage in all instances, just by loading the template it reaches a mind bogling 31GB (out of 32). What exactly is going on here?...where's all this RAM beeing used at?
Any ideas? Is there a way to resolve this without getting more RAM? Maybe I should think on a modular "as needed" aproach? How do you guys deal with these large templates having only 32GB of Ram?
Thanks

 

Not sure what is going on there? What DAW are you using? I use Studio One and my template has about 12 instances of Kontakt, all purged, and though my system has 64GB RAM I don't get what you are experiencing. In some DAWs, most nowadays, you can also totally disable tracks so they are essentially unloaded to not use resources and you might want to look into that. I used to be OTT and had tons of instances, but recently moved to a more stripped down version because I was finding myself not using most of my template and it was just sat there cluttering up my DAW and using system resources.

Have you tried to open your computer's Task Manager and performance meter within your DAW to try and gauge what is going on?

 

Last edited: Jun 19, 2017

I think hes using reaper @Bunford

 

I'm using REAPER. I'm using mostly Berlin stuff, I know the capsule scripts can tax a system but this much? Here is some hard data as per performance meter: One Kontakt instance. 14 tracks of "multi" instruments, full loaded 7636MB leaving free 19896MB.
Now, I purge ALL samples: RAM use 3161MB, available ram 24316MB. That single instance with all samples purged still comes weighing 3+GB

 

I had a lot of problem building my Orchestral templates as I would run out of ram and mostly the CPU usage was so high that it was unusable until I did this. In all my Kontakt instances I disabled the reverb in the master FX section and use the sends on each channel to a global reverb for all my tracks instead. It is the reverb that is taking all that precious RAM and CPU. Now no more problem. In one of my template, I have " 32 instances " of Kontakt with " one " orchestral instruments loaded in each of them. That is super because each instrument in the orchestra has it's own Kontakt instance and it is so much better to manage.

I am using Logic Pro 9 and as you may know, software instruments while monitoring are dedicated to only use one core. Before when the reverb was on, the CPU on the core would hit 100% instantly and it was crackle and pops galore. Now, it barely goes up to 25% on the same one core. I can have all 32 tracks playing their part and the load is distributed to my 8 cores and CPU usage is very low like 40% more or less overall and Logic is using 4.2 GB of RAM for all 32 loaded instances, not bad. It took me a long time to figure this one out and no need to purge samples in Kontakt, all instruments are loaded in full in ram.

I hope this helps you and bring some light on the Kontakt problem, it did for me.

Old 2006, MacPro 3 Ghz, 8 cores, 24 Gb of ram, 256 Gb SSD Drive, Logic Pro 9, Mixbus 4, Reason 8.3, Cubase Elements 9.

 

Realistic workaround at least for me. My orchestral template consists of ONE kontakt per instrument which goes beyond imagination that how many instances of kontakt I have. This could only be possible by offline fx. Each kontakt instance is routed to it's stem track. As soon as I record midi and finish cc tweaking, I render the track/part of the track on its respective stem track. And as soon as stem track is recorded, I offload the Kontakt instance with offline fx. Barely any crackles unless I go nuts and start mixing with reverbs or Acustica Audio stuff . So I end up doing only gain staging as primary mixing and leave everything else for realtime stem mixing.

 

Hi Omman...thanks for the prompt answer. I don't think I have any Kontakt reverb runing...I'm using the reverb burned with the samples in their studios, recording halls or whatever. If there is some oher reverb gobling ram somewhere it's unknown to me. Could you be more specific as to what reverb you're refering too please? And if possible how to go about "hunting the beast"? Thanks man.

 

dont load kontakt again and again......
load kontakt once , load all the instruments and then route the midi inputs....

 

I am talking about the reverb in the patches of the Kontakt Factory Library that come with Kontakt 5.
I am using the Orchestral instrument that are included.
They are VSL instruments and to my ears they sound pretty good if you are on a budget like me.

The reverb is always "on", on each patch so that they may sound good on their own.
If you load 32 instances of Kontakt that have the reverb activated in each, you are in trouble and the computer will chock at some point.
I assume that it would be the same thing if you where using any orchestral library that have FX that can be applied on each patch/channel.
If FX where activated in each instances then the CPU can't keep up.

I understand in your first message that you have 18 instances of Kontakt that all have 16 channels activated and instruments loaded.
That makes 288 instruments loaded in all at all times, that could be it if FX are applied in each of the 16 channels X 18.?
But you said that you purged the samples so they should not be using RAM at all!!....weird because Reaper is normally very effective.

If you are on a Mac computer, launch Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and there you can visualize where and by which application or process the RAM is being used.I don't know if I can help any further, and I do hope that you find the solution to your problem.
Good luck Man..

 

I'm not using the Kontakt VSL Library, I'm using mostly Orchestral Tools Berlin stuff...but thanks for all my friend, Ill see if I can dig this out yet...

 

Even with samples purged, Kontakt still has portions of samples loaded in RAM - those are never wiped out unless Kontakt is fully unloaded.
That's why it's generally good idea to optimize the patches before loading them into template - I've removed all mics except for Tree for a "fast loading" nki set. And the overall RAM usage is 30% less compared to original nki even with only Tree loaded.
BTW I keep all instruments in my template always unloaded, otherwise those would need over 64GB RAM to fit in, and then load those on request (made a custom action on keyboard shortcut).
However recently I made big optimizations and I don't go over 6GB RAM requirements for project.

Not necessary a good idea - as then one loses the possibility to unload and freeze individual instruments. Best is to combine techniques and have one instance for several articulations, not use one instance for everything.

 

I think you have missed the point here. He is need more instruments that Kontakt can hold (16) as it the norm with orchestral pieces. For example, you can easily have one Kontakt instance for first violins between all the different articulations, solos, ensembles, different libraries etc.

 

Just done some experimentation in Kontakt using standalone 5.6.6 on my Windows 10 Pro 64 bit DAW machine. Note, my preload buffer size is set at 36.00kB in Kontakt (the default is 60kB):



Kontakt at idle
CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 194.3MB

I then loaded up the instruments 01. Finckenstein Strings (High) Multi.nki and 02. Wolfenstein Strings (Low) Multi.nki from Orchestral Tools' Metropolic Ark 1. The samples loaded were 0.59GB and 434.36MB respectively, but the Task Manager was reporting:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 1,648.1MB

I then purged all samples and teh Task Manager was now reporting:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 573.6MB

I then changed the preload buffer to 6.00kB, the minimum, and restarted Kontakt. At idle with this setting, Task Manager was showing:

Kontakt at idle
CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 194.3MB

I then reloaded the same two instrument patches. This time, upon loading the loaded samples were 247.22MB and 219.37MB respectively. Task Manager was reporting:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 1,153.6MB

I then unloaded all samples by using the Kontakt purgefunction and the Task Manager then read:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 620.9MB

Finally, I changed Kontakt's preload buffer to 240.00kB, the maximum, and restarted again. Now, at idle, Task Manager was reporting:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 195.4MB

I then proceeded to loading up the same two instruments again. Once loaded, Kontakt was showing the loaded samples as 2.08GB and 1.31GB respectively, with Task Manager was now reporting:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 4,079.7MB

Again I purged the samples and now it read:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 569.5MB

And lastly, once instruments are removed from the Kontakt instance, it is using the below at idel:

CPU = 0 - 0.3%
RAM = 303.7MB

This is obviously not conclusive by any means, but the fact that once everything is unloaded it is using 50% more RAM at idlesuggests Kontakt is caching something in memory and this may be what's causing the high RAM usage, even when purged, as Kontakt either installs something unseen to RAM orcaches something. What is important to take note of though is that it uses virtually the same CPU and RAM resources when purged no matter what preload buffer setting you use.

Also, when the preload buffer is lower it is essentially trying to stream samples direct from your drive,which can cause issues if you have a slow drive. Conversely, having it at a higher number is not streaming much directly and preloading most of what it needs onto the RAM, which will ultimately burn up RAM and CPU to read and process. The preload buffer is there because no two systems are identical and you need to find the balance for your machine, this is why mine is set at 36kB as I have fast enough drives to lowerit and it doesn't bog down my CPU and RAM resources for the rest of my DAW to use.