What could cause a voice playback limit with a Kontakt instrument?

Sycraft · 2022-05-09T04:59:05+00:00

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So I have a bit of a strange problem: One of the libraries I have and still use is NI Bandstand, I was recently using the timpani to emulate the sound of a roll as I've done in the past. Just having a number of rapid hits in succession, with a high voice count, gives a nice effect. However this time it sounded very wrong. Looking in Kontakt, I saw that it was never playing more than 4 voices at a time. I loaded up an old project that used it in the same way and it did the same thing. This is despite having the voice limit set to 128.

It didn't used to do this, also I have other instruments which do not have the same issue. So it seems to have changed at some point with a newer version of Kontakt. Any idea what changed, and how to fix it? It seems to be instrument specific, not an issue with the Kontakt engine in general.

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Accepted answers

EvilDragon

Yeah so it seems that Bandstand's polyphony handling doesn't allow stacking the same note over itself a lot, and that this is built into its scripting. This didn't change with versions of Kontakt, I just tried loading Bandstand patches in K5 and K4 and it's all the same behavior. So this is by design.

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EvilDragon

It's probably voice groups - you set this in Group Editor in instrument edit mode. Refer to the manual.

Sycraft

It does not appear to be voice groups. There is no voice group defined, when I make one it does apply the limits set in it, but even if I raise them it still limits to 4-5 samples when repeating notes. When playing multiple notes you can see higher polyphony but it won't do high polyphony on reptations of one note.

I don't see this happening with other libraries, but it is happening with all the instruments I've tested in Bandstand, not just the timps. The strange thing is that this didn't used to happen, it has only started with some newer version of Kontakt.

stephen24

Have you got it on tm pro? This has its own voice limit (Instrument Options) default 4/8 voices

EvilDragon

Bandstand never used any of Time Machine modes...

Sycraft

It is not on Time Machine Pro, I did check that and raise those limits. The samples are actually pretty simple and don't make use of a lot of features since they were made back in the Kontakt 2 days (it's a sample pack from 2005 but I still like some of the sounds). That is why I'm so stumped. It's pretty simple, and worked in past versions, but something has changed that is now causing it to work differently, and it doesn't affect other sample libraries.

EvilDragon

Sycraft

That would make sense... what I don't get it why it ever worked for me. I literally have a bounced track where it is working properly.

So no idea what is going on, but if it seems like it is working as intended I won't concern myself further with it and will not use Bandstand instruments in this manner.

Thanks for all your help.

EvilDragon

I'm not sure how you managed to bounce a track where it produced more than 4 voices per key. This is literally in the script code, I double checked it. It has always worked like that.

stephen24

Easy enough to check - turn off the sript(s) one by one if necessary and see what happens.

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