Hi

Usually in my projects, I was used to load one kontakt instance for a group of patches (instruments) with different audio outputs.

For example,
let's say in my project, i use violins, cello, violas, flute, french horn , toms and gong
I would open :
1 kontakt for the 3 strings : violins, cello and violas ( with 3 audio outputs)
1 kontakt for the 2 winds : flute and french horn ( with 2 audio outputs)
1 kontakt for the 2 percu : toms and gong ( with 2 audio outputs)

Few days ago, I saw in an askvideo tutorial, a guy said that it depends on the DAW, how it works with the CPU cores ,
For some DAWs, it would better to load one instrument for one track for one kontakt instance .
Because ( for some daws) the CPU cores check more the tasks given by each track and not kontakt
(Kontakt standalone can be handled by multi-cores of the cpu but not the plugin version)
So it's like one track for one core (that's just an example)

Anyway, in many forums, it seems that people don't care and choose what they want ...it's just a question of workflow ( or maybe they do know how their daw works)

So I have made my own tests :
- The DAW : StudioOne 2.6
- 5 instruments from LASS2 : full cellos, bass, violas, violins1 and violins2
- a short midi file

I have checked the result with resource monitor ( windows tool) while playing the midi track in a loop

0) When my daw is opened with nothing :

average cpu : 18%
ram : 130Mb

1)Test 1 : 1 kontakt for 5 instruments

average CPU 35%
ram 468Mb

2)Test 2 : 1 kontakt for each instrument

average CPU 33%
ram 580Mo

So ?
- CPU : It seems there is no big difference
In my test, using many kontakts doesn't "kill" my cpu
in both test, there were some peaks around 40% for short moments

- RAM : 5 Kontakt instances requiere more RAM : about 120Mb
For info The samples takes 47 Mb ( I have used the purge option)

Of course, that test doesn't give the solution coz it depends :
- on the libraries (some GUI with animations takes more CPU resources)
- on the number of tracks ( and maybe the midi activity?)
but what I see is that there is not a big difference for that test
it can make a difference for 4 Gb ram users like me ( if we use much more than 5 kontakt instances, imagine 20 instruments ( = 20 kontakt instances)

Maybe with other daws it's different, as the guy said, how the DAW works with the cpu cores ...

Did u already try both methods ?

 

One Instrument and one instance per Track works best for me - gives you better flexibility - far easier to manage if you have to make changes (compositional or otherwise) - Better Mixing options. At the end of the day its not about CPU it is about flexibility.

 

i group like instruments together in one instance and have many instances of kontakt. for instance one instance for all cello articulations, another instance for violins and so one.

for me its better for organization and not a technical reason. i could easily load up 16 or more instruments in 1 kontakt instance.

 

this is why we freeze tracks so we can use unlimited of what ever you want

 

It also depends on a couple of other factors. Chief among them: what bit-depth and sample rate is your project at? I have an old black MacBook, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GBs of RAM and I'm running Snow Leopard, so no 64-bit processing for me. During the composition phase, I will run a project in DP at 44.1 kHz/16-bit, in real time (not pre-gen) with the buffers set as low as I can get them for being able to play VIs without a lot of lag. This allows me to load up as many and as CPU-intensive VIs as I possibly can (within limits). When I'm done with the MIDI parts, I then remove all the VIs and change the project's sample rate to 88.2 kHz and the bit-depth to 32-bits. I'll then reload all my VIs one at a time, tweak them the way I had them set up in the lower-rez version and bounce their audio to disk one at a time, then get rid of the VIs. Now, all I have to deal with is audio and audio processing, get pristine output from my VIs without glitches and I can just mix without the additional hassle of all the CPU and RAM those VIs eat up. I'd love to have a system that was powerful enough to have all those VIs loaded up and play them back in real time at a high resolution, but that's been the best workaround I've found for my system. For stuff that has to be delivered on a tight schedule without the luxury of getting to mix a lot of audio tracks, I follow the same steps, except I just lay off the really intensive stuff as audio tracks and bounce the rest of the project's audio in pre-gen mode.

 

With my Mac i can do separate Stereo instances of Kontakt with low CPU i can get about 10 to 12 tracks to me i have more control of Volume Panning and EQ

 

Thank you Toshfox for sharing your test.

As for me the priority is flexibility and liberty to compose and mix, I prefer 1 instrument = 1 Kontakt instance = 1 track.
So I can tweak its sound, edit the score, mute the track etc... easily. If my cpu could not handle this, I would change my computer or use Iggy's workaround.

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