Intermittent Latency/sampling rate Issue with knobs in Komplete Kontrol

Chewy

I have an S61 and have an issue where occasionally there will be about a second or so of delay in the knob actions and their response in Komplete Kontrol. The delay is seen on the screen of keyboard itself.

If this issue is happening, I also notice on synths like Pigments where I can see the knob movement in realtime, it looks like a staircase rather than smoothly moving up and down like normally.

The issue is fixed temporarily by closing and re-opening Komplete Kontrol, but it always pops up eventually. It does not occur in midi mode.

Is there a fix or a way to reliably prevent this from happening?

Sunborn

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/50224/intermittent-latency-sampling-rate-issue-with-knobs-in-komplete-kontrol

It sounds like you’re dealing with a classic buffer or data-bottleneck issue specific to the NI hardware service. Since the issue disappears in MIDI mode, we can safely rule out a hardware failure of the physical potentiometers.

The "staircase" movement in Pigments is the giveaway: your computer is receiving control data in "chunks" rather than a continuous stream. This usually happens when the background service responsible for the S-Series integration (NIHardwareAgent) gets de-prioritized or choked by power management.

Here is how to stabilize the connection and stop that lag from creeping back in. I see that you are on Mac, but i will also mention the steps for Windows, in case someone else have the same problem. 😉

1. Disable USB Power Management

Windows and Mac often have the annoying (for a musician/producer at least) habit to try to "save energy" on USB ports, which causes the NI hardware service to drop into a low-polling state.

• Windows: Open Device Manager, find Universal Serial Bus controllers, right-click every USB Root Hub, go to Power Management, and uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."
• Mac: Go to System Settings > Battery (or Energy Saver) and ensure "Options > Wake for network access" is enabled and any "Automatic graphics switching" is disabled if you're on an older Intel Mac.

2. Bypass USB Hubs

The S61 sends a high volume of "Screen Data" (the graphics for the keyboards) alongside the "Control Data" (the knobs).

• If you are using a non-powered USB hub, the bandwidth is likely saturated.
• The Fix: Plug the S61 directly into a port on your computer. If you must use a hub, it must be a high-quality, externally powered USB 3.0+ hub.

3. Reset the NI Hardware Services

Sometimes the background database that handles the "handshake" between the keyboard and the software gets bloated.

1. Close your DAW and Komplete Kontrol.
2. Navigate to the following folder:
   • Mac: Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support > Native Instruments > Hardware
   • Win: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Native Instruments\Hardware
3. Locate the NIHardwareAgent and NIHostIntegrationAgent.
4. Now, on Windows, you just need to ensure that these are set to "High Priority" in the Task Manager if the lag persists. On Mac, i have no idea unfortunately…🤔 but it shouldn't be hard to find out the appropriate setting!

4. Check for "Ghost" MIDI Ports

Sometimes, other MIDI drivers (like old Korg or legacy Roland drivers) conflict with the NI virtual ports.

• Open your MIDI settings in Komplete Kontrol.
• Ensure only the "Komplete Kontrol S61 is active.
• Disable any "EXT" or "DAW" ports if you aren't actively using them for deep DAW integration, as these can occasionally loop data back to the keyboard, causing the processor to stutter.

One of the above solutions or a combination of some, should fix your problem.