Komplete Kontrol/Kontakt crashes in my DAW when there's too many instances..

sleepson · 2023-06-13T06:16:13+00:00

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sleepson

I've tried multiple DAWs, and I get the same results.

It just crashes the DAW, instantly quits out, lose all progress if it wasn't recently saved.. no good.

It happens when there's maybe 4~ instances of Komplete Kontrol with Kontakt 7 loaded up, as virtual instruments.

Once I get there, I'm toast - surely this isn't ordinary behaviour.

I'm wondering if this is a RAM issue before I do much more troubleshooting - I have 8gb RAM.

No GPU - I use the integrated graphics from my CPU (i7 something or other).

I have a few of the instruments I want regular access to on my SSD, but it's only 500gb so the majority of Komplete 14 Ultimate is loaded onto a HDD.

I'm thinking it's possible that it's the HDD - I can't replicate the problem with instances that are only loaded with instruments from my SSD. So far, they've all got Strummed Acoustic 2 in them, and that's on the HDD.

My issue with this theory is it's still crashed when I've load Komplete Kontrol (within my DAW), and before I even load Kontakt 7 - so it has definitely crashed BEFORE I've been able to start loading up a HDD instrument. BUT, there was already an instance of Strummed Acoustic 2, a HDD instrument, on a different track. So the HDD idea can't be completely ruled out.

Before I spend money on RAM or an SSD.. I just want to know if others have had this issue, and what the problem might be. So I make sure to purchase the right thing to fix the problem.

Besides this problem, I am in love with the NI ecosystem. Absolutely everything has inspired me and I've lost way too many hours just exploring what I have access to. It's simply insane. Love it all.

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LostInFoundation

In both cases (RAM or HDD) it shouldn’t crash. Maybe work badly, but no reason should make the DAW crash

sleepson

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77098#Comment_77098

Interesting - any ideas on what I could do to provide some sort of error code or something?

It's happened with multiple DAWs - Ableton Live, Studio One 5 Artist and Reaper.

JesterMgee

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77098#Comment_77098

Incorrect. If the RAM is faulty it can cause crashes, or if the ram is exceeded and the page file is not sufficient (or the HDD the page file is set to is not fast enough or large enough) then this can also cause crashes. There are also additional more advanced cases (not applicable to this case) such as when using AMD processors and EXPO that is not functioning correctly can cause crashes of system freeze as the RAM fills up due to voltage drop issues (usually incorrect EXPO voltage settings by the MOBO manufacturer) so there are many factors around this and it always needs to be narrowed down.

Given you only have 8GB is a bit of a sign it could be the case RAM is your problem but before shelling out you want to do some more controlled tests.

Loading 4 instances with Kontakt can require a lot of memory if the libraries you are loading are rather large. I would suggest as a start to open task manager and check your memory usage and leave it open. Start loading your instances and see what the memory builds up to and if it crashes at any point where it maxes out then this could be a sign you need RAM. 8GB is barely capable of running Windows these days.

It is usually not normal tho, most people can run much more than that so likely it's a hardware problem of some kind

Brad Yost

@sleepson

Just FYI: I have templates with 100+ instances of KK wrapping Kontakt instruments + about 20 non-NI VST's with no issue. I9 CPU, 64Gb Ram, all SSD storage. No burps.

sleepson

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77283#Comment_77283

Thanks for the response.

I tested it and the memory usage seems to be a bit out there - it gets to this..

..very quickly.

That's Reaper with only 6 instances of Komplete Kontrol + Kontakt 7 loaded up, with various instruments - both SSD ones and HDD ones. It crashes when I added another one.

It crashes earlier than this if I am actually playing/recording and adding FX etc.. crashes at 3-4 instances, but when I load it back up, I'm able to add another one, and do what I want with that.. then it crashes when I add an extra etc.. but I did get it to 6 instances of Komplete Kontrol + Kontakt 7 (with instruments) when just testing it without playing/recording.

I don't think this is normal at all. Looks like I need more RAM.

I've never had issues in the past with this - I've had games open, doing whatever else on PC and all that, and never had it crash on me. This is the first time I've ever had issues with my PC like this - but it does look like I need more RAM if I want to be able to use my Komplete 14 Ultimate suite.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77291#Comment_77291

I think I need to upgrade RAM before upgrading to all SSD storage. Seems to be more pressing - the SSD would help, but I think looking at the pic above shows there's a RAM issue. Could be wrong, I don't know - maybe drawing from the HDD has a negative effect on RAM, maybe upgrading to all SSD would fix it, I don't know.

I think both need to happen eventually if I want to be able to make the most of what I've got with K14 Ultimate.

JesterMgee

Can't say that RAM is 100% your issue, but if I was even getting close to being over 70% with anything i'd be upgrading it. Even if it is not the actual problem, in this day and age and with a memory usage footprint like that it would certainly be beneficial in how well things run overall. I am guessing your system is kind of old if it only has 8GB so likely is DDR3 memory which you should be able to find a 16GB pair pretty cheap.

Set about doing that and if you are still running an old mechanical HDD for your OS drive, definitely put some pennies aside to upgrade that at some point, you will likely find with upgraded RAM and SSD it will feel like a completely new computer and u'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

Brad Yost

@sleepson

@JesterMgee may have a good point about the MOBO voltages. A sag from 3.5v to 3.3v while parsing ram could cause a lockup or crash. Investigate that first. Also find a ram test and run it to see if you have any issues there.

AFAIK Win 10 at pretty much minimum desktop running configuration requires between 2.5 and 2.8Gb on most machines.

8Gb is a pretty thin margin.

BTW: sort Task Manager on the Ram column to see the full load.

JesterMgee

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77310#Comment_77310

I only mentioned it because of the EXPO feature (to "overclock" RAM so it runs at the actual speed it says it should on the tin for AMD boards) I have hit issues with having no prior experience with this on a new build I was able to run almost everything just fine but almost every game I tried to run would almost always just randomly crash after a few minutes of gameplay

After weeks of exhaustive tests and searches I found that because DDR5 was pretty new and AMD 7x processors were also new not all MOBOs had the correct profiling to set voltages correctly and from what I could gather, based on the fact most apps in Windows worked just fine but heavy resource apps such as games or video processing software would almost always crash like clockwork it pointed to a lack of voltage either in the CPU or in RAM and after checking crash logs and pointing to an access violation in memory, that is where I looked first.

Disable EXPO in the BIOS and like magic, everything was working fine. Only in the last month did MSI finally release some BIOS updates which address this EXPO problem and now pushing my memory back up from 4800 to the 5600Mhz it should have been running, it has been fine.

As I said, based on what I see in the OPs setup I suspect they have much older hardware and being Intel, would not have this possible issue but it was just part of just adding that yes, issues like crashes when using heavy amounts of RAM can become an issue if there are other underlying problems. Could also be incorrectly seated modules, faulty memory cell or a sign that the PSU is starting to die. In this case I am pretty confident it is the lack of suitable memory size for the demands.

sleepson

@JesterMgee - my PC is older but it's probably not as old as you think.

Motherboard is a z370, i7-9700 cpu 3.00ghz, 8gb DDR4 RAM.

DDR4 RAM isn't very expensive if you go with some low-end brand or whatever, I can see places selling 2x 16GB DDR4 sticks for like $59aud (I'm Australian).

I can also see some probably lower-end 2TB SSDs going for $119.. 4TB versions for $299.. not sure why it's cheaper to buy 2x 2TB ones than a 4TB, you'd think you'd save money going bigger, overall, guess not with what I'm seeing.

Either way, I can upgrade my system for like $368 on the 'higher end' (4TB SSD, 2x16GB DDR4 sticks - both low-end brands).. or do it bit by bit. I understand my system can have up to 64GB RAM if I want to upgrade my 2x4GB sticks eventually too.

Hesitant to say "problem solved" since I can't actually test to see if everything on SSD + more RAM will actually solve the problem but I suppose this is as close I can get, until I do the above.

I understand there are cheaper external SSDs but I would rather just upgrade the NVMe in my PC, happy to "start from scratch" on this machine like that anyway.

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