How to let Kontakt use library on external disk?

Discussion in 'Kontakt' started by lovefish, Apr 24, 2019.

  1. lovefish

    lovefish Newbie

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    I have a clone of my macbook which has a big kontakt library, many libs in it, everything working great. How can I use that library with my desktop computer? Do I need to actually install everything onto the desktop computer, or can I make Kontakt read the external disk and not need any extra authentication for each library in it?

    Thanks!
     
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  3. Aileron

    Aileron Audiosexual

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    If your desktop computer is a Windows one (no Mac but a real computer :winker:) Kontakt will read libraries from an external disk provided the registry holds corresponding keys for each library and the drive/path they're located at. In your case the intended drive is local to a macbook which may prohibit slaving it to the PC as a remote (e.g. USB) drive. Not sure...
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
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  4. lovefish

    lovefish Newbie

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    Nah, both mac. Will it work?

    If not, are there some folders I can copy over to make it work? Or just use Kontakt to 'add libraries' to my system and still able to keep the actual library on the external?

    Really appreciate the help, thanks.
     
  5. belalugosi

    belalugosi Producer

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    Option 2 is the right one:
    "missed thumb down icon here"
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  6. nobodyspecial

    nobodyspecial Platinum Record

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    Aileron... you got your 5 secs of fame.... now go play with your pc and let us Mac users enjoy our beautiful machines
     
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  7. Mykal

    Mykal AudioP2P

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    for the record PC stands for "PERSONAL COMPUTER" by definition Macs are also PC's
     
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  8. Aileron

    Aileron Audiosexual

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    Hi, @nobodyspecial , I'll take that under advisement.
     
  9. lovefish

    lovefish Newbie

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    So, I ended up using Kontakt to add each library. I did it like this:
    -Used Reaper to open the file on the external of a track I'm making
    -It couldn't find libraries so had to show each each folder one by one for each library

    I'm using 5 instances of Kontakt, 12 instruments in total. Although the track actually only uses 11 - but I want to add maybe a few more. Plus Altiverb on the master channel. Strangely, when I switch the FX off on the master channel (turning off Altiverb), Activity Monitor shows no decrease in memory usage for Reaper.

    It opened fine, but playing was terrible, became very stuck, making popping sounds all the time. Even slower than when I had run it from booting from that actual external drive (it's bootable)!

    Right now I've opened it again and today it's running fine. Don't know how long for though.... oh yes, now it's glitching a bit when the track came to a bit of a peak. Activity Monitor tells me Reaper is using 7.59GB, and I do have 16GB of RAM but we'll see how long it keeps running for! And about 67% of CPU (though I sometimes see processes use well above 100%, something to do with multiple cores I think).

    Also, Activity Monitor says Memory Used = 11.62GB (out of 16). And that's with only Reaper (7.59GB) and Activity Monitor open (and finder which I don't think we generally quit anyway - I quite internet browser to get those figures). So that's 4GB being used up by... what I don't know. Is that normal? Maybe there are drains on my memory that I can get rid of to help this? Here's the top memory usage:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    You can see usage jumped down a bit when I quit Chrome. But still, it's a Macbook Pro (albeit late 2013) - I'd expect to be able to run two programs at the same time! And I want to be able to use a lot more tracks than than 11. Actually in this track most of the time it's only 4 instruments playing at once, maximum 6 at a time. So I don't see why it gets so stuck in glitching/stuttering it's unworkable.

    Is this situation so bad because the library is on the external drive? I'm using a Thunderbolt connection so I thought it would be ok. If moving the whole library to my computer would definitely make a huge improvement then I can do that, but it means entirely rearranging my computer, moving stuff out to another external.

    This is also making me wonder if when I upgrade computer I should get 32GB RAM - any thoughts on that?
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2019
  10. grdh20

    grdh20 Platinum Record

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    Could be a slow drive or TB connection speed issue. You might try the drive via usb3 if possible. It should work on a reasonably fast drive via usb3 or tb, of course the faster the better with regard to all those lib files. I'd get 32 gb ram anyway for min these days, but the drive speed is probably the biggest concern.
     
  11. DoubleTake

    DoubleTake Audiosexual

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    True, and the reason for the term "Windows PC"
     
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