Hey Guys, my system (mac osx, running 10.8.5 etc), has 32GB of ram. I in the past used to use Kontakt's memory server, ... and would turn "multiprocessing" support on in he preferences of Kontakt. Running Ableton 64bit, is this a bad idea? The manual is sketchy at best, I know I don't really need the memory server with 64bit Ableton obviously, (unless I am switching sessions with similar samples I don't want to reload), but am I best with multiprocessing off? and letting Ableton handle that? I have seen other people post about this at other sites, and I have never gotten a clear answer from them, NI, or Ableton.... anyone have any wisdom on this?

thanks!

 

you are right about kms. you won't get any benefit except for previously loaded samples loading faster. enabling multiprocessor support in kontakt can go either way with ableton. you'll have to try it. you probably won't even see a difference. whether enabling multiprocessor support makes a difference really depends on your daw, your system and your usage of kontakt. in some daws, disabling it has better performance, in other others kontakt performs better.

multiprocessor support has gotten better in ableton live 9 so i enable it there and disable it in kontakt. i also do the same for logic pro x.

really the only rule is that you should enable multiprocessor support either in kontakt or your daw, but not in both.

 

thanks for the advice franknitty69! Does allowing multiprocessor support in Ableton help with other things though as well, ? so thus, disabling in Kontakt, and enabling in Ableton….


appreciate your thoughts and advice!

 

This might not be related to your issue, however Kontakt in REAPER is best to run multithreaded (set to 2 for Hyperthreaded CPU) and in REAPER have Allow live multiprocessing enabled.
If you enable it in DAW and disable it in Kontakt, overall CPU usage might be lower, but your NKI loaded inside single Kontakt instance is limited to one thread. The other way around - Kontakt on multithread - single instance is no longer limited to single thread, but since Kontakt handles CPU affinity worse, you might experience dropouts before your CPU hits 100%.

 

I also use Ableton 64 bit and Kontakt with 32Gb of RAM. With a bit of experimenting, I noticed that multithreading in Kontakt can be beneficial if you use a lot of instances of Kontakt.

- If you like to use one instance of Kontakt per instrument and end up with a gazillion instances of Kontakt in your projects => enable multithreading. On my old projects I used to do this. If I open them now with multithreading disabled, I get choppy audio and notes get "swallowed".

- If you group your instruments into just a few instances of Kontakt => I found that disabling multithreading in Kontakt and letting Ableton take care of it works best in that case.

Note that I only really noticed a difference on extremely heavy orchestral projects. You won't notice any difference in lighter projects.

 

Thanks so much for your advice guys... I generally tend to use many instances of Kontakt, as the memory footprint isn't that big (if you don't have the database, which I believe is included in the instantiaion ram, which we all know can get pretty big with some of our libraries etc)....

So : 1. if I am working my normal way, say 10 instances of Kontakt, with say different styles of instruments, Multiprocessor ON in Kontakt and ON in ableton...

2. If I am doing more orchestral type stuff, where I pile on many instruments on a single instance Multiproccessor OFF in Kontakt AND ON in Ableton....

Thanks so much.... yesterday I decided to see if working with the memory server off would help out Ableton, but wasn't using Kontakt, so haven't been able to see any results yet.

But again, sincerely appreciate you insight guys!

 

Multiprocessor support in Kontakt should be enabled, but limited to 2 threads if you have Hyperthreading capable quad-core (all i7 support HT) and .
It's the other way around
- single Kontakt instance - multiprocessing in Kontakt enabled
- multiple Kontakt instances - multiprocessing in Kontakt disabled or limited to 2 threads

Multiprocessing in Ableton should be always enabled.

 

Gotcha Andrew, THANKS! I just cut and copied your post to a sticky on my desktop until i beat it into my brain…. I switch from traditional productions to orch stuff on occasion, and I think this will help me a great deal. Thanks so much for taking the time to properly explain! And I have a 2009 4,1 2 x 2.6 Intel Xeon, so no i5ori7, and the prefs give me options for how many "cores" I want to use (from none to 16, I assume that's what you are talking about right? 2 cores enabled? and does that only apply to standalone? (the prefs make it look like that…not sure why)

thanks again!

 

Standalone is best to keep running at all 16 threads - nothing to slow it down. It's the VST that's rather 'poorly' implemented.