Pro Tools 10.3.10 with Kontakt 5.5.1 "sorry soldier, we're about to crash" messages

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by ThisIsNotMe

Under "system usage"/CPU (Native) it's mostly 30-40%, rarely hitting about 56%.
I've turned off multiprocessor support now (regarding the cores.)

HWBuffering at 1024.

Still crashing after 15 or so tracks, having to purge each instance of Kontakt upon loading just to get new tracks to record, it's a drag !

I hear ya, regarding RAM. VE pro is probably the cheapest option here. What's their base line player for Kontakt ?

VE Pro 6 is the one to go for. There is a lighter version called Vienna Ensemble but I think that only comes bundled with Vienna Instruments and isn't available separately.

There is a trial version of VE Pro 6 but you would need to buy an eLicenser dongle to run it which is annoying. It would be more annoying to buy VE Pro and find it doesn't help though because something doesn't seem right. 1.28 GB seems very low for PT to be giving up the ghost. Is this definitely the memory Activity Monitor is saying Pro Tools is using? It should also give a figure for Kontakt Memory Server (KMS.) I presume you've tried lower buffers and ended up at 1024. I have read some people saying they get better performance at lower buffers.

Also I think you were already asked this but Spitfire and most other modern libraries like fast hard disks, preferably SSDs.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by ThisIsNotMe

Under "system usage"/CPU (Native) it's mostly 30-40%, rarely hitting about 56%.
I've turned off multiprocessor support now (regarding the cores.)

HWBuffering at 1024.

Still crashing after 15 or so tracks, having to purge each instance of Kontakt upon loading just to get new tracks to record, it's a drag !

I hear ya, regarding RAM. VE pro is probably the cheapest option here. What's their base line player for Kontakt ?

Update time:
First off an apology of sorts. When I wrote earlier about the error message not being a Kontakt one I have to say that was a mistake. Before today I'd never seen that message when memory was at it's limits. Well - I saw it today.

I created a new session in PT10.3.1 running in OSX 10.8.5 (I have two boot partitions). Created an Instrument track with K5.5.2 in it. In K5 I called up the New York Grand with overtones piano sound. Played 16 bars of nonsense notes with each note held for a few bars. Saved the session. Kept duplicating this track; the last one before coughing up the 'sorry soldier' message had 32 tracks with 2.77 gb ram as shown by OSX system monitor taken up by PT. Go to add the 33rd track and the error message showed up and I had to force quit PT.

Being I had all the same instrument loaded in Kontakt the ram usage was only for one instance and all other instances of Kontakt drew from that ram that was loaded. So I started changing some of the instruments I had called up in each Kontakt instance to others to increase the ram usage. I left the 32 tracks intact and only changed the instrument in Kontakt. I finally got things to cough up the 'sorry soldier' message when the memory used for PT as reported in OSX activity monitor to reach just about 3 gb. Total memory used between what was reported for PT and what I had loaded in Kontakt was well over 4gb. My speculation is it's the 32 bit addressing that's hamstringing PT; not the track count nor ram used by Kontakt in those tracks (when using Kontakt memory server).

You asked earlier about number of processors to use in Kontakt - I have a max of eight possible as my machine is a dual quad core.

[ThisIsNotMe]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Update time:
First off an apology of sorts. When I wrote earlier about the error message not being a Kontakt one I have to say that was a mistake. Before today I'd never seen that message when memory was at it's limits. Well - I saw it today.

I created a new session in PT10.3.1 running in OSX 10.8.5 (I have two boot partitions). Created an Instrument track with K5.5.2 in it. In K5 I called up the New York Grand with overtones piano sound. Played 16 bars of nonsense notes with each note held for a few bars. Saved the session. Kept duplicating this track; the last one before coughing up the 'sorry soldier' message had 32 tracks with 2.77 gb ram as shown by OSX system monitor taken up by PT. Go to add the 33rd track and the error message showed up and I had to force quit PT.

Being I had all the same instrument loaded in Kontakt the ram usage was only for one instance and all other instances of Kontakt drew from that ram that was loaded. So I started changing some of the instruments I had called up in each Kontakt instance to others to increase the ram usage. I left the 32 tracks intact and only changed the instrument in Kontakt. I finally got things to cough up the 'sorry soldier' message when the memory used for PT as reported in OSX activity monitor to reach just about 3 gb. Total memory used between what was reported for PT and what I had loaded in Kontakt was well over 4gb. My speculation is it's the 32 bit addressing that's hamstringing PT; not the track count nor ram used by Kontakt in those tracks (when using Kontakt memory server).

You asked earlier about number of processors to use in Kontakt - I have a max of eight possible as my machine is a dual quad core.

Ok, gotta say a big thank you for testing that out - and if i do the same as you above, i get to 16 (Albion strings) tracks using random recorded midi, before non stop "error -9129/ HW buffer" messages, and the activity monitor shows that PT craps out at approx 2.89Gb So it's right i guess, in some respects, at least its dying at the same point every other 32 bit machine is !

so it must be the 32 bit/4Gb max ram allocation limitation.

i guess i have to learn to live with those limitations. but at least it can now load this amount of tracks, thx to your help, and everyone else, much obliged!

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by ThisIsNotMe

Ok, gotta say a big thank you for testing that out - and if i do the same as you above, i get to 16 (Albion strings) tracks using random recorded midi, before non stop "error -9129/ HW buffer" messages, and the activity monitor shows that PT craps out at approx 2.89Gb So it's right i guess, in some respects, at least its dying at the same point every other 32 bit machine is !

so it must be the 32 bit/4Gb max ram allocation limitation.

i guess i have to learn to live with those limitations. but at least it can now load this amount of tracks, thx to your help, and everyone else, much obliged!

No problem. Like I said I had a slow day and so I had the time and the will to do what I did. I never got a 9129 error; I run at max buffer setting unless I'm actually recording. My cpu number and percentage settings wouldn't mean anything to anyone but me as what I run at when in PT10 are specific to my system and where it's comfortable.

It's for things like this that I like PT11 and Digital Performer 9 - 64 bit addressing and essentially unlimited memory up to what the computer can handle.