Action Woodwinds crackling on Mac Pro M1

Question

Hi, just upgraded to K26CE and tested out a  couple of patches on all my new instruments very briefly, excluding expansions.

Two of them I get crackling, Action Woodwinds and Erosia

Not too bothered about Erosia

My buffers at 256, upping to 512 made no difference, I had to go to 1024 to get the crackling to disappear from both.

Haven't really had this problem since getting this Mac 2nd hand in 2024, It happens both in Komplete Kontrol and stand alone Kontakt.

Libraries are on an external Thunderbolt SSD and again, not had a problem with anything else.

Macs only got 16GB ram, that might be the cause, although I'm led to believe RAM works completely differently on Mac than Windows?

I can have loads of tracks on Cubase including things like Diva with zero problems, since moving ton the Mac, this is the first time I've noticed this happening as bad as it is with these two instruments

In Action WW it seems to happen wherever a note is accented ( has > under it)

I suspect there's nothing I can do and when I use Action WW, I will just have to adjust the buffer size.

Just asking on the off chance someone has an idea

Audio interface is a Scarlet 2i2

Many thanks

Ojustaboo · Answer

@Jeremy_NI

It's not the SSD causing it, I moved it to the internal SSD using the instructions at

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005719829-Moving-a-Native-Instruments-Product-to-Another-Location-on-Your-Computer?

I did this correct (moved directory, not copied it), Native access came up with Repair … and it repaired fine.

Exactly the same, crackle just on those accented notes

As this made no difference, I put the directory  back to the SSD and did another repair.

I will be using Action Woodwinds (one of the things that got me to upgrade) so it's a bit of a pain, it's not too much hassle, I can simply up the buffer size when using it.

It just seems weird that (so far) only this and Erosia has this problem.

Buffer size at 256 (With Action Woodwinds I needed to go to 1024 to stop it)

I just put UHE's DIVA in Divine mode on one Cubase track, DIVA's manual states

Diva is rather demanding in divine mode, but that’s the price we pay to hear her wonderful voice in

top form! If your computer stutters while trying out presets, switch the accuracy mode to great, fast

or even draft. You will soon learn which one your system can handle

Then Zebra 3 on another

Absynth 6 through Komplete kontrol on another

Pianoteq 9 on another

Action Strings 2 through Kontakt 8, using preset Action Hooks (3-4) as that is one of the presets I remember trying with  Action Woodwinds which has the same accents etc.

I tried a few ransom presets on all (except Pianoteq)

Playing those tracks all at once, while it sounded a mess, even playing chords, there is absolutely zero crackling.

Pressing 5 notes at once Session Strings starts to crackle (oddly it's the same if I load Action Strings 2 through Kontakt stand alone, hence no other tracks playing), but in real life, I've never done that

But load just Action Woodwind by it's self and nothing else, using either Kompete Kontrol or Kontakt, doesn't matter whether I do this through Cubase or stand alone,  the crackling is there.

Just seems weird to me.  I'll be able to live with it, but still seems odd.

I thought that maybe the samples might be bigger in Action Woodwinds but the largest files, the .nks files are all 2.1GB in both Action Strings 2 and Action Woodwinds

Anyone else have Mac M1 Pro and Action Woodwinds that could tell me if they have the same problem please?

Anyway, enough messing around for me, now to make something with K26CE :)

Thanks

Ojustaboo · Answer

@Jeremy_NI

My external drive is a Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 4 housed in a ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure

My external SSD shows the following

whereas my internal drive shows

I've been putting all my music sw sound/sample packs onto my external SSD and keeping my internal drive as empty as possible, mainly as I have 4TB on the external and only 1TB internal, plus I've read advice about keeping sample/sound packs on the external, which could of course be stupid advice.

Can I have different NI instruments content in different Content Location?  It's set under NI preferences, Content Location to:

/Volumes/Main SSD Ext/Native Instruments

If I can, maybe moving the content of Action Woodwind to the internal drive might help?

Ojustaboo · Answer

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/261607#Comment_261607

Hi Jeremy, yes it’s APFS