Does Anyone have an Answer?

I love the Kontakt approach to third party software. And I've tried to get some answers from the Kontakt forum, but with no success. I know that there are some of the smartest and most experienced people on this forum, and I'm hoping that someone can help me find a solution.  However, I'm having some difficulty with specific libraries, and primarily those from Orchestral samples or others that have long sustained notes, such as my new OTS Lap Steel Guitar. The difficulty is that the sustained notes sometimes randomly cut out on me while I'm playing [one or more, or all] and are truncated before completion. A sustained string sound in Orchestral Essentials, for example, a brass patch in Morphestra, a violin part in Dan Dean Solo Strings Advanced. If I use a higher velocity strike it is sometimes ok, and sometimes, not. It does not, of course, help me musically to have notes cutting short before I lift my finger from the key. I have plenty of polyphony, but my software is musically useless to me because of this random annoyance. I have this problem whether I'm using X1, the Kontakt standalone, or Studio One.


I've spent a lot of time and money on everything I have and this is just prohibiting me from enjoying or using what I have.  I have all of my libraries stored on a new Hitachi 2 TB eSata 7200 rpm drive. All of my drives are defragmented entirely. I'm not over using my system resources.


I would very much appreciate any responses that might help me to solve this puzzling situation. Perhaps someone here has had a similar situation. I've otherwise had no problems elsewhere with Kontakt or Sonar.

This happens in all instances of Kontakt, inside or outside of Sonar.

I think I've found a solution that is helping, and may be part, if not all of our troubles, Laney. I'm still troubleshooting to get a definitive answer.

In the Kontakt options dialog there is a setting for velocity, and I have changed this downward from the default of 100. See what happens and let me know. Play around with the numbers and see if that doesn't allow you to have a more consistent experience with your sustained notes.

Cool, I will try it tonight!

Thanks for your input, Greg. You're certainly knowledgeable about Kontakt and its specifics.

Well, I must be doing something right, because I'm totally grooving on the Lap Steel, and have got some good things going with it, now. The UberMod delays and some GR5 distortion have put me into high orbit. I just want to stay up all night and play! 

Do the notes exhibit cutting out right away, or does that happen after you've been playing for a while?

And its rather random rather than a consistent pattern. Sometimes I can complete my note(s) and sometimes not.

Hmmm, interesting. Just wondering because sometimes if I leave a sample library loaded up for a while, and start playing, the samples get cut off a second in for the first few notes. As I play, the samples get "reloaded", and things work smoothly again. So I'm wondering if it's some DFD/memory hiccup that's causing notes to drop out. When they drop out and go silent, can you see the voice/polyphony count get reduced, or does the number stay the same?

Hi Kreative,

Just curious here. If you're using Kontakt inside Sonar using a single midi and audio track and you record the midi notes. Have you went back to the midi track and looked at the PRV to ensure correct duration for the note and velocity events when these unexpectedly short cutoffs occur?

Kind regards,
Rick

According to Laney, his problems with the Lap Steel have been satisfactorily negated by adjusting his velocity settings to a much lower setting than the Kontakt default [100], as were mine. 

Yet, I find that, even as this has effectively worked to resolve the Lap Steel issues, problems nevertheless persist with orchestral type libraries, and namely those particular patches that have longer sustains: particularly strings or brass, of course, among others. In stand alone, or within any DAW alike, the notes are even cut off as soon as an eighth note length, sometimes, or randomly, not at all, in other cases. The velocity setting-regardless of what it is- does not appear to remedy the issues with these. There is absolutely no problem whatsoever with shorter samples.

I have to wonder if this experience is isolated to only two people or if others have had similar results. 

Needless to say, I must find a resolution to these anomalies or forfeit the use of thousands of dollars worth of software because they have been rendered useless to me.

Thanks Rick. I appreciate your input and kind consideration.

I've never had an issue with DFD errors, despite having to lower the default preload buffer sizes due to limited RAM.

Could this be something as simple as the polyphony settings? 

Kontakt lets you specify the maximum number of concurrent samples, which you might keep low during the composition phase to conserve memory and then subsequently increase prior to bouncing the instrument. Kontakt also lets you choose how the engine should deal with too many concurrent notes (go to Instrument Options and select from the dropdown list labeled "voice stealing mode").

Another thing to try is purging samples. After playing the song through one time, under the "Purge" dropdown menu, choose "update sample pool". This will unload all samples that weren't played previously. It can reduce the RAM usage for an instrument by 90%.

Thanks for your input Bitflipper.

Even with polyphony kicked up to 128 voices, and using only a very small fraction of that actually being used, I still have voices randomly cutting out. This is all usually happening by playing  only anywhere from a simple 1 to 4 notes concurrently.This is happening in the Kontakt standalone. 

Computer science is turning into computer voodoo, it seems, as I try to deduct what might be a problem. Yet this only happens within Kontakt and its software. It certainly is a problem that I must find a solution to, or else I will have a lot of software that is virtually useless for musical purposes.

The other thing is the CPU overload protection setting--maybe it's getting too enthusiastic about its job... You'll find the control in the "Engine" section of Kontakt's settings. Try disabling it to see if that helps.