i hope in the future.. native instruments somehow makes kontakt faster, supporting all the new CPUs.
i absolutely dispise the 20 minutes loading times on big kontakt libraries

this has been an issue for over 10 years now. no matter what PC i buy. its always the same. no matter what version of kontakt they release its always the same.. SLOW.

do you also feel this way?

 

Add an exclusion for your Kontakt bank folder in your antivirus software and in the Kontakt application. Perform a batch resave of all your libraries. This is a good starting point. And do some research on the issues you're having with Kontakt. HDD, SSD, NVME? Ram?

Mini PC Intel 13900HK + 64 gigas ram 3200. External drives on two usbc4 ports with thunderbolt 4 cables. No problems.
Of course, some sound banks take longer to load, but that's normal.

 

Last edited: Mar 16, 2026

I was having slower loading times with larger libraries on my M1 Mac, but on my M4 most of them load pretty fast. Even heavier libs that would take a while now just take a couple seconds.

 

I have more than 2,760 libraries stored on 25 external SSDs connected through self-powered hubs. My system is an Intel i7-14700K with 64 GB of RAM, an RTX 5090, and a MOTU 8pre audio interface.

When I load Kontakt as a VST3, it takes more than two minutes just to open. In addition, even after batch-resaving all the libraries, some of them — including relatively small ones — still load extremely slowly.

In my personal experience, Sample Logic libraries are among the slowest to load, and the same often happens with 8Dio and Soundiron. By contrast, UVI libraries load almost instantly, and the same is true for Decent Sampler.

 

How Can I Optimize the Performance of Kontakt?
https://support.native-instruments....How-Can-I-Optimize-the-Performance-of-Kontakt

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I'm not sure how many ssd's you are connecting simultaneously, but it sounds like enough where Kontakt could be going out and looking for every library you have listed in your kontakt-related XML files to verify it. It could be Windows registry, Registry XML metadata files (like NativeAccess.xml), Library folder metadata for libraries you no longer even use.

If it has to try validating your 2000+ libraries at load time, that might be what I would look into first. It's the easiest option to fix.
So which versions of Kontakt, and also do you have your GPU driver software up to date?

There is no way you should get a 2 minute load time without something very screwed up or unique to explain it.
Not with those system specs.

 

If it takes that long, something's not quite right. Implement the things already suggested, then:

Go into Kontakt options => memory => override preload size, choose minimum (left) and enable. Disable or increase preload if you notice instruments breaking.

If loading is still slow, load the original NKI, save the instrument patch as a new NKI file. Load from that file in the future.

If loading is still slow, load the original NKI, use the purge samples from memory button and save to a new NKI.

If loading is still slow, load the original NKI, use the reload all samples button, click the wrench symbol, enable the Group Editor, go through the sample groups and change the source mode (from "Sampler, TMPro, ..") to DFD (direct from disk) for all of them, purge all samples from memory, save to a new NKI.

If Kontakt won't let you change source mode to DFD because of purged samples, make sure to have all mic positions etc enabled.

If Kontakt still won't let you change source mode, here's a script you can paste into an empty slot in the Script Editor that should load all samples into memory.

Code:

on init
    declare $i
    declare ui_button $Purge
end on

on ui_control ($Purge)
    $i := 0
    while ($i < $NUM_GROUPS)
        purge_group($i,1)
        inc($i)
    end while
    $Purge := 0
end on