Can anyone get Kontakt working in 12.7.1 with a buffer below 128?

[weezul]

As title. I have an RME RayDAT and it's rock solid for everything, apart from Native Instruments Kontakt. I can use it at every setting lowest latency in standalone, while I have a million apps open all sharing the RME audio driver, internet connection constantly being hammerd etc, or in Reaper, but in pro tools my buffer has to be at 128 to avoid clicks and pops. Even if it's the only track, at 32 or 64 sample buffer it clicks and pops [well it more like cuts samples off and stutters] regardless of which memory manager I use, or if I load all the samples, or stream them etc.

So can anyone get Kontakt-AAX working below 128?
I'm on an i7 6700k, 16gb ram, Sierra. PCIe interface. I've had this issue since Pro Tools 12. In all fairness, I can play the instruments at 128 but just wondering if anyone has any information regarding why Pro Tools just can't seem to manage it like the others.

I can use 32 sample buffer with Guitar Rig, no problems. It seems to be an instrument thing.

Thanks

[Marsdy]

As title. I have an RME RayDAT and it's rock solid for everything, apart from Native Instruments Kontakt. I can use it at every setting lowest latency in standalone, while I have a million apps open all sharing the RME audio driver, internet connection constantly being hammerd etc, or in Reaper, but in pro tools my buffer has to be at 128 to avoid clicks and pops. Even if it's the only track, at 32 or 64 sample buffer it clicks and pops [well it more like cuts samples off and stutters] regardless of which memory manager I use, or if I load all the samples, or stream them etc.

So can anyone get Kontakt-AAX working below 128?
I'm on an i7 6700k, 16gb ram, Sierra. PCIe interface. I've had this issue since Pro Tools 12. In all fairness, I can play the instruments at 128 but just wondering if anyone has any information regarding why Pro Tools just can't seem to manage it like the others.

I can use 32 sample buffer with Guitar Rig, no problems. It seems to be an instrument thing.

Thanks

Many K5 instruments have got really demanding in terms of CPU usage, polyphony count, and disk speed. I never been able to get much done at a buffer of 128 even using Kontakt hosted in VE Pro. Most of the time I'm at a buffer of 256 and up to 512 with epic cinematic hybrid/orchestral music. Anything less than 128 has always been hopeless for me, even with a very fast Mac and streaming off an m2 SSD disk that is stupidly fast.

One thing you could try is turning multi-processor support on in Kontakt and set it to the maximum number of cores. Ignore Kontakt's warning not to do this. This has always worked for me in both the AAX and AU version on the Mac and VST version hosted in VE Pro on a PC. I get far fewer clicks and pops for any given buffer.

[TOM@METRO]

Not here. 128 is the lowest I can successfully run with Kontakt in HDX.

[dankin]

128 is the lowest I can go here as well. I mostly keep mine parked at 256 unless I'm tracking audio through Pro Tools but then I don't have any VIs active. Kontakt is all over the map though for CPU usage, on the lighter side stuff like the Alecia's keys and The Giant are pretty efficient. I've ran them many times while tracking a full band with the keyboard player sending midi to Pro Tools. But my Output libraries are almost unusable in PT. There are some patchs where more than one note, will cause a 9173 even at 256 or 512. I usually just use those heavy libraries in Logic. They take a heavy hit in Logic as well, but at worst it will maybe cause a few clicks while playing the part, and I'll just freeze the part or bounce it if I'm finished with it. The difference being that in PT, I might only make it a few bars before a 9173 happens and stops playback, making it unusable IMO.

[albee1952]

64 buffer on HDN here and it works fine with 1 or 2 instances.

[musicman691]

Many K5 instruments have got really demanding in terms of CPU usage, polyphony count, and disk speed. I never been able to get much done at a buffer of 128 even using Kontakt hosted in VE Pro. Most of the time I'm at a buffer of 256 and up to 512 with epic cinematic hybrid/orchestral music. Anything less than 128 has always been hopeless for me, even with a very fast Mac and streaming off an m2 SSD disk that is stupidly fast.

One thing you could try is turning multi-processor support on in Kontakt and set it to the maximum number of cores. Ignore Kontakt's warning not to do this. This has always worked for me in both the AAX and AU version on the Mac and VST version hosted in VE Pro on a PC. I get far fewer clicks and pops for any given buffer.It's the scripting in Kontakt that hoses cpu usage. Kontakt itself is fairly stingy with resources. Also turn on memory server in Kontakt - helps me a ton.

[Marsdy]

It's the scripting in Kontakt that hoses cpu usage. Kontakt itself is fairly stingy with resources. Also turn on memory server in Kontakt - helps me a ton.

Scripting definitely has a major impact on performance.

It's not one single factor though. I get occasional CPU overloads with instruments that have massive polyphony hits, for example 8DIo AGE, Spitfire harp, Imperfect Samples Steinway. These instruments can generate 100s of voices of polyphony very quickly. I've found that the faster the disk the lower the CPU hit. Some of us composer type dudes are using RAID 0 arrays. Two SSDs drives in a Blackmagic Mulitidock gives me around 740Mbps read times. You can go well over 1000MBps with four SDDs. I have my Kontackt libraries spread across three RAID arrays. A tad over the top now but it won't be in a year or 18 months. The thing is, I rarely get 9171 one 9173 errors and when I do it's almost always a genuine overload using an instrument with complex scripting and a big polyphony hit, not the errors many get on a virtually empty session.

Also there's a lot of DSP going on with convolution reverbs in some instruments. Personally I don't use them but out of the box, some sample libraries do.

As an aside, on my sample server PC, I've just one of these new fangled Samsung m2 SSDs. One of those reads at over 1600Mbps and that is held back by my PC not having a Gen 3 PCIe bus! It's an i7 quad core, a few years old now but it's a beast for Kontakt.

[Marsdy]

128 is the lowest I can go here as well. I mostly keep mine parked at 256 unless I'm tracking audio through Pro Tools but then I don't have any VIs active. Kontakt is all over the map though for CPU usage, on the lighter side stuff like the Alecia's keys and The Giant are pretty efficient. I've ran them many times while tracking a full band with the keyboard player sending midi to Pro Tools. But my Output libraries are almost unusable in PT. There are some patchs where more than one note, will cause a 9173 even at 256 or 512. I usually just use those heavy libraries in Logic. They take a heavy hit in Logic as well, but at worst it will maybe cause a few clicks while playing the part, and I'll just freeze the part or bounce it if I'm finished with it. The difference being that in PT, I might only make it a few bars before a 9173 happens and stops playback, making it unusable IMO.

It's odd that I seem to get a lot fewer problems with Kontak than you. I think you mentioned you got sloppy timing in another thread? It's sample accurate here at any buffer and as I said in my last post I don't get many 9173s.

Have you tried 12.6.1? I've found that rocks with both Yosemite and Sierra and I'm often really slamming it. Unfortunately 12.7.(1) just crashes far too often here with what I'm pretty sure is a conflict with Kontakt or possibly VE Pro.

[weezul]

glad it's not just me then! For those saying they can't get it down in pro tools, can you run at lower settings standalone?

[JFreak]

Runs just fine at 128 buffer (96kHz/32bit)

[jjnssn]

A video from Avid: https://youtu.be/cIbLEogQK4I

Start watching at 9:00 Minutes. Good Troubleshooting exercise with respect to the High and Low Latency Domains.

Basically I got the same results as they did using the same session setup. Also, I created a similar session with Plugin Alliance BX_console and MAAG2 and then Waves CLA76. I had to compensate because of HDX; I used a trim plug-in in slot 1, however, that is not of practical significance when gauging the CPU usage difference.

At 19 minutes, they talk about disabling Dynamic Plug-in processing to properly troubleshoot the CPU usage. I did this when testing as I had no audio in my session.

At 36 minutes they discuss Common AAE errors.