Kontakt playback crackle/overload question

Maarten Franken

I have Kontakt and the Factory Library, which I use for orchestral purposes. I keep having problems with clicks and crackle and on the performance display, I can see the Disk level is going into the red zone, so it's clear what the cause of the unwanted sounds is.

So I thought to fix this by moving the Kontakt Factory Library to its own drive. The Factory Library is one product, it installs into one folder by default, so I assume it's meant to be used as such and run from one drive. This library exists for quite a few years (the manual's copyrights are from 2016), when transfer speeds were lower than they are today, and I assume it was meant to work properly in those days. I'm using Samsung T5 external SSD (540MB/s), over a USB-C/Thunderbolt connection, for both drives of my sample library, on a Mac Pro 2019, 12-core, with 48GB RAM. Both drives are connected to their own USB port, directly on the computer, no splitter is used.

I dont have the idea I'm overdoing it with what I ask. It's mainly an orchestral library and I use a pretty standard orchestral setup: 5 string sections (violin 1, violin 2, viola, etc), 4 wind sections, 4 brass sections, 1 percussion and 4 choir sections. Everything else is on the other drive and is used with, at most, 5 or 6 instruments at a time, and I havent noticed any overloads for the Kontakt instance running these additions. There's nothing to take away resources from the Factory Library drive, so I assume that the conditions should fine for the Factory Library to do what it's intended to do: play the orchestra.

Could someone advise me on how to get rid of the overloads problems?

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45151#Comment_45151

Please reformat your drive to APFS, ExFat can be a source of performance issues, among other things: Notes on Hard Drive Formats on Mac Computers

Blindeddie

what version of Kontakt, and how is the Drive you moved the library to formatted (ExFat or a Mac native format)?

Gee_Flat

You did leave out an essential part of your setup which would be sound and drivers, but I'm guessing you feel that it's all working properly. The wrong drivers and/or buffer rate can cause a problem, but I think you know that.

The VSL has a fairly small pootprint compared to large scale libraries so it should be fine. However it could be just one or two of your instruments that are causing the problem.

I would try process of elimination or start over and add instruments one at a time until those crackles start. Also, do it without too many DAW effects running.

I have an old piano(35 MB) from K2 that sounds good but will cause problems once the project gets big. I freeze it and the problem stops. I find it starts to crackle when my project gets a lot of effects running on my i3 with 8GB.

All that said, it could be something totally unrelated, like a process in your system running in the background.

Maarten Franken

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45145#Comment_45145

I'm still using Kontakt 6 in this project and the drive is formatted in ExFAT

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45147#Comment_45147

I'm using a Presonus Quantum 2626 and I only installed what's handed to me by default, I'd say it's the Presonus driver. It always works fine, so I had no reason to look into it. Buffer size is 'low', minimum doesnt give me any real benefit, so I didnt want to push it. At medium the latency is noticeable when playing through the system.

I'll have a look, see if it's a specific instrument.

Thanks guys!

Gee_Flat

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45151#Comment_45151

I'm an old school believer in using internal drives for the best performance and throughput, but what I have read around here, it seems that those days are in the past. But that gives me another thought.

You could eliminate external drive for testing purposes or regular use, by running the instruments in sampler mode rather than using DFD.

In settings there is the preload buffer size that can be played with, but I think the manual recommends using its default setting.

Maarten Franken

I understand where you're coming from, I've been recording with the computer since early '90s. I've build this system with help of a real wiz-kid and very experienced Mac specialist and I trust him when he says this combination should do the job

I can always give it a try, of course

Thanks, mate

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45151#Comment_45151

Please reformat your drive to APFS, ExFat can be a source of performance issues, among other things: Notes on Hard Drive Formats on Mac Computers

Maarten Franken

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45277#Comment_45277

Thanks for the tip, Jeremy! :)

Gee_Flat

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/45523#Comment_45523

So did that fix it?