Abbey Road / Studio Drummer loading time

particlestorm

I do like the sound quality and the GUI, but i have a hard time accepting the loading time of up to 1 minute when first starting it in my DAW project (Cubase) or around 10 seconds after that. I have to say, that it is the time before the library itself appears. By the way, i have a SSD.

It may sound like a minor issue but it really slows down my workflow. And, i don't really understand why this is happening, because all my other Kontakt libraries that have a good amount of samples (like Session Guitarist, etc.) load within 1-2 seconds.

Doing a bit of research i could not find any other solution than "live with it". So, maybe someone has an idea how this problem can be solved. Thanks.

Kubrak

What kind of SSD do you have? Type and which connection. Internal/external. What file system on disc. Windows/Mac? How much RAM memory?

SSD by itself may be slow, connection may be slow, filesystem may make disk operations slow, low RAM may slow down things considerably.....

Or if Session Guitarist is on the same disc, the Studio Drummer files may be partially corrupted and so loading takes time. Or antivirus scans it and not the rest.

Kubrak

@particlestorm

I have tried it. Studio Drummer patches load in under one second on my system. I tried Vintage, Modern, 80's, 70's, ...

But I have fast NVMe SSD, 64 GB RAM.

particlestorm

I have the latest Windows 10 on a Intel i7 (8 cores) with 16 MB Ram, internal SSD (would have to search for the specs...)

JesterMgee

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/10625#Comment_10625

Is that the patch + samples all loading in that time (sample progress is instant)?

Checking Studio Drummer which has kits of almost 1GB in size (not huge but a decent chunk of 1s and 0s) using Komplete Kontrol with the following 11 year old machine:

i7 4820K @ 4.6Ghz, 16GB DDR3 2600 RAM, Samsung EVO SSD

About 3 seconds to load Kontakt with the kit from "cold" and about 1 second when switching kits but a further 3-5 seconds to finish loading all samples into RAM

I am testing with all "FULL" kits

So if it is taking 60+ seconds on your end, something in your setup is way wrong.

Do a test using KK standalone and see if you have the same issue. There may be some limitation in how it works in Cubase or how the memory is managed. Could be your SSD, RAM or CPU. If you are loading a project that has to load both drums + guitar it could create a bottleneck as it loads and sometimes this is unavoidable so a controlled test to see what works normally is needed...

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/10645#Comment_10645

You need to quote the models of your CPU at least. The "i7" CPU has been around for 15 years. I have 2 of them here, a 980 and a 4820K and there is a huge difference between these, not to mention both these are very old. Also, knowing the speed of your RAM and SSD model is always handy. You shoudl research the components you have and note it down because trying to troubleshoot computer performance without knowing the parts running inside is like trying to troubleshoot engine performance over the phone when the customer doesn't even know what car it is.

Open Task Manager and watch the RAM size for KK when you do a test and check how fast/slow it is growing when you load a kit. Mine starts around 100MB and then increases to 990 after loading a kit within that 3 odd seconds. This is what you should see. If it ticks up slowly you have some bad performance of your SSD or RAM.

Kubrak

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/10645#Comment_10645

As Jester has mentioned more info is needed. Concerning SSD not only type, but also type of connection (NVMe, SATA, ...). SATA is way slower than NVMe.

But if I think about it, based on information other Kontakt libraries load fast, that there is some kind of problem with Studio Drummer installation on your computer.

particlestorm

Thanks for your input. Some more info on my hardware:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10510U CPU @ 1.80GHz  2.30 GHz (4 cores not 8)

SSD: It says "SCSI\DISK&VEN_NVME" so it has to be NVME - it is a Intel 660p series --> all other applications are pretty fast, i never had issues with SSD speed

Ram: Is 16 MB DDR4 SDRAM

@JesterMgee : I started Studio Drummer with my Task Manager open, for 3-4 seconds the upload in RAM was steady and faily quick, but after reaching 700MB it took about 30 seconds (or more) to open the GUI of the library...strange.

Fox

That sounds like you're actually hitting your swap file at some point while opening it. Even on an SSD, that's slower than RAM. 16GB should be plenty, so maybe you have a memory hog hiding out somewhere.

Kubrak

It might be reaching RAM limit and swapping memory to SSD. Or part of Studio Drummer files is corrupted and it takes many re-reads to get data.

And also. You have notebook and Intel CPU. CPU might overheat while loading SD and dramatically lower CPU clock...

Try to check, if you do not hit RAM limit. And also if CPU during the SD load does not drop CPU clock. Also some kind of SSD data integrity check might help, if first two are not the case.

particlestorm

Thanks i will check that out.