Komplete and/or Kontakt 8 Memory Leak?

FilmCompos3r

Using the latest version of Kontakt 8 / Komplete Kontrol 3 I'm finding that Cubase 13 will, upon being left alone, spike RAM usage all the way up to 125GB or so and then crash. This particular session only has about 50-60GB worth of samples loaded into it.

Anyone else seeing this?

Matthew_NI

Does this happen when using K8 directly and also when using K8 inside KK3, or just one of the two?

FilmCompos3r

I don't know, this particular session has a mix of Komplete Kontrol hosted Kontakt 8 instruments and Kontakt 8 standalone instruments.

DunedinDragon

I left my Ableton Live 11 running almost all day on a Windows 10 machine without messing with it that much (maybe two times for about 5 minutes each) and never had any memory problems or anything else nefarious happening. About 5 tracks which were a mixture of Kontakt 8 version 8.0.1 and KK version 3.3.3.

FilmCompos3r

Well, it's happening here consistently in Cubase. I'm running many more instances of Kontakt than you - in this "small" session I have 15-20. I just quit the session after its memory use in task manager had crept up to 82GB with maybe 15-20 instruments loaded. After reloading, the memory footprint was down to 18GB.

This has been such a hard transition for me. @Matthew_NI is this something you're already looking into or is it the first time you're hearing about it? If it's the first time please let me know so I can transition this project back to KK2 before I get too much further in it.

EDIT: Come to think of it it’s probably a kontakt 8 issue. It is the newer plugin, and I’ve mostly been loading new instruments into it to avoid KK.

DunedinDragon

Have you tried releasing unused samples? If you're exploring different presets that can be a problem as many libraries retain previous presets in memory to reduce re-load time. Of course this wouldn't apply if you're not actively using it and the memory footprint is still growing which I thought was the problem you were originally describing. But if this was an endemic problem either in the NI tools or the DAW it would show the same memory growth results regardless of the number of instances you're running.

One other thing that could play into this behavior is if you have some other process such as a virus program that intermittently goes through memory to detect odd behaviors which would cause a refresh flag to be set on cached memory segments and wouldn't allow normal operating system housekeeping to happen. This is why I disable my Windows Defender virus detection process when I'm working in my DAW (which also speeds up loading of libraries significantly).

FilmCompos3r

I’m not actively loading presets. The memory is simply growing on its own, possibly in coordination with Cubase autosaves.

It’s absolutely a bug.

Matthew_NI

I've forwarded this to the Kontakt team. Will report back if they have questions, or knowledge.

Tim_NI

@FilmCompos3r Would you mind sharing the Cubase session via DM? It isn't something that we are seeing with Kontakt in-house so we need to investigate further and trying with your session would be a good first step.

Jeremy_NI

@FilmCompos3r I've contacted you by email, we need to investigate the issue.

FilmCompos3r

Thanks for reaching out, I'll try and compile this for you over the coming days. It happened this morning but then not during the afternoon, so I have to catch it. At least the problem doesn't seem as all pervasive as I feared.

FilmCompos3r

Still compiling data. I am now thinking the culprit is Komplete Kontrol; switching all of my plugins over to Kontakt 8 seems to have solved the issue in the problematic sessions, but if I enable a track (I use a disabled tempalte) with Komplete Kontrol in the mix then the memory starts going haywire.

I'm on strict deadlines but will try and follow up when I have a moment.

Ziggles

I have a similar problem and Komplete Kontrol looks to be the culprit.

I'm on an i7 12th Gen running Win11 with 16Gb of RAM and embedded Intel Graphics. I use Studio One 6 and it is up to date (6.6.4.102451).

Recently I have been plagued with Studio One crashing due to graphics problems, but I think this is because memory usage ramps up pretty quickly from time to time.

To test I have opened an empty project and assigned only one track with Komplete Kontrol and one instrument (Noire - Big Bottom). I also purge all samples. If I press play (even without any midi notes to play) then memory usage starts to increase at a rate of about 1Gbyte per 22 seconds. This increase continues even if I press stop. The problem doesn't always happen, but I was able to recreate it a number of times.

Repeating the experiment using Kontakt7 with Noire did not produce the same result. Memory usage appears stable. Also tried it with a Presonus instrument (Presence) and no leak.

I was able to repeat the experiment between Komplete Kontrol and Kontakt7 a few times with the same results. I also tried Electric Mint and found the same result.

I did notice in Windows Task Manager that the Status was reporting "Efficiency mode". I searched "Win11 Efficiency Mode" and an answers.microsoft.com page entitled "Efficiency mode causing performance issue" was helpful. I had already applied the advice in "1. Power Settings", but the advice in "2. Graphics Settings" seems to have stopped the leak. I have not ventured into Regedit, and hope not to have to.

The advice on "graphics settings" describes how to set "High Efficiency" for graphics for the DAW app specifically.

Perhaps this information might help to discover the source of the problem.

Jeremy_NI

@Ziggles Thanks for jumping in the thread, I've contacted you by email, we'll need some more info!