SONAR X3c audio engine crash with NATIVE INTRUMENTS Abbey Road DRUMMER !

Hello,
when I use all instruments Abbey Road Drummer with Sonar X3c they crash the audio engine. This happens, when I change the mix from one to another type of drummer sound. This problem is not noticeable with Sonar X2.
Have you a idea?
 

I do not have the separate Abbey Road Drummer product.  I only have the Abbey Road 60's Drummer library for Kontakt 5, that I got with Komplete 8 Ultimate.
 
Using that, I have no issues switching between kits.
 
Sorry I cannot provide additional testing or information - hopefully someone with that separate product can post on their experiences with it in X3c.
 
Bob Bone
 

I use 128 for my ASIO Buffer Size and have input and output latency values of 4.7 milliseconds each way, for a total roundtrip of 9.3 ms, and I the application never hangs, nor do I ever have crackles/pops/dropouts and such.  (sample rate is set top 48 k, as well)
 
Hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone

The on-board mixer in the Native Instruments "Drummer" libraries is a real CPU-hog, and it seems to affect the first core rather than spreading the load. The Kontakt options let you specify multiprocessor support (Options->Engine->Multiprocessor support) and if so, how many cores to use, but I haven't seen much difference. There have been quite a few discussions about this on the Native Instruments forums and I've seen people recommend both turning off multiprocessor support and turning it on with various numbers of cores selected. So it might be worth experimenting with this to see if it has any effect. Please note that when you change the processor options in the Kontakt VST, you have to restart Sonar for the change to take effect. A bit of a pain I know. 
 
I don't know why the Drummer mixer effects use so much CPU. I have pretty much all of those effects as standalones (Transient Master, Solid EQ, Solid Bus Comp etc) and I can use way more instances of them than you'd have in the Drummer libraries, with no CPU overload whatsoever. 
 
I'm not 100% that this is the root of your problem, but the chances are good. If messing with the processor options doesn't work then all I can suggest is that you ditch the on-board mixer altogether (select the INIT mixer option), route all of the drums to separate tracks in Sonar (plenty of tutorials online which teach you how to do this) and do the processing yourself in the DAW. 

BlackBird67
hello,
For information, the problem has been reproduced among developers, NI will try to correct the problem.

Can you point the source of this information please?
 

 Link please to source. Thankyou.

Pls keep us posted on what NI replies, especially what the say regarding a fix (best post the link to their reply).  K5 is causing occasional problems on my system as well. Hence, I'm interested in anything that could improve the situation...
 
Just yesterday I had crashes in a project with 5 instances of Kontakt when trying to freeze synths. I could sort that out by changing the K5 settings to use multi-processing (I don't know if that really makes much of a difference) and I increased ASIO buffers. Afterwards I could freeze all instances of K5 without problems and could continue working ...
 
When thinking of the (occasional) stability problems I had in recent weeks with X3c, there was always Kontakt in these projects and ASIO buffers were (most of the time) set to lowest latency. However, I want to keep working at these low latencies so anything to improve K5 @ small ASIO buffers would be great!

@FreeFlyBerti, 
 
Quick question - when you have these multiple instances of Kontakt inserted in your projects, are you loading multiple instruments into each instance?  Or, is there one instrument loaded into each Kontakt instance?  (just curious, wondering if you are using the multi-rack functionality in Kontakt).
 
Can you also list which instruments you happen to have loaded into these Kontakt instances?  I am wondering if there is something there I could try to replicate and look for a workaround (or confirm your workaround), as I too use Kontakt all the time.
 
Lastly, even though it worked in X2, it is quite possible that the X3 code is properly following the VST specs, but that some tiny discrepancy between how Sonar interpreted something in the VST specs in their X3 changes and how Kontakt code interpreted the specs is causing this error to be seen only when Kontakt is inserted into projects in X3.
 
Fortunately, the NI folks seem to have decided that they could and would do something at their end to resolve the situation, and that is a good thing.
 
Hopefully a fix will be along shortly.
 
Bob Bone
 

They will probably charge for the fix...

OK here's a strange one. I loaded up Kontakt with just 1 stereo output in its configuration. I normally use the 8 in 8 out version. Anyway, my CPU usage for Modern Drummer was lower and more balanced across the cores than with the other version of Kontakt that uses multiple outputs.......discuss????
 

robert_e_bone
@FreeFlyBerti,
 
Quick question - when you have these multiple instances of Kontakt inserted in your projects, are you loading multiple instruments into each instance?  Or, is there one instrument loaded into each Kontakt instance?  (just curious, wondering if you are using the multi-rack functionality in Kontakt).
 
Can you also list which instruments you happen to have loaded into these Kontakt instances?  I am wondering if there is something there I could try to replicate and look for a workaround (or confirm your workaround), as I too use Kontakt all the time.
 
Hopefully a fix will be along shortly.
Bob Bone

 
Sorry guys for not responding in a long time. Been really busy with work and then suddenly there was Christmas ;-)
 
Bob, the way I (used to) work was to insert one instance of K5 with max number of OUTs (64?) and a template for routing all drums to separate tracks, then Abbey Road would go into the top of the rack and whatever is needed later (Alicia, Heaviocity, Session Horns, ...) goes into the same rack, feeding the remaining stereo OUT pairs ...
 
I am re-thinking this workflow as I run into problems again and again, not all the time, but usually when projects get more complex ... problems like not being able to freeze (just left a comment here), or projects crashing immediately after opening (which is not the case if it's the first project after booting, so there is something in the sample caching that's probably fishy)
 
I believe the troublemaker is mostly Abbey Road drums (as it is the common denominator in the troublesome projects), possibly in combination with the max OUTs version of the Kontakt dll because usually when problems start I end up separating the K5 instruments to separate K5 instances (which is relatively easy to do) and then allows me to freeze these new separate instances (but here I then use the K5 dll with only 4 OUTs).
 
Most of this has started with X3, but there was also a K5 update (in Sep?) ... don't feel like rolling back for just system tests (too busy + too dangerous as I need that system up and running + K5 seems to be the only thing causing hick-ups these days) ... so I'd appreciate any further observation that would allow me to get to the root of this or at least confirm what to avoid ...
 

emwhy
I'm following this thread as well, so please keep us up to date. I love Kontakt, but it has lead to almost all of my crashes in SONAR  X2 & X3 in the past 9 months. That's not to say I've had a lot of crashes, but the Abbey Road drums act finicky at super low latency, I also get the one core shooting through the roof at times while the others barely pop, plus I've gotten weird memory crashes with Alicia's Keys at times.
 
OK here's a strange one. I loaded up Kontakt with just 1 stereo output in its configuration. I normally use the 8 in 8 out version. Anyway, my CPU usage for Modern Drummer was lower and more balanced across the cores than with the other version of Kontakt that uses multiple outputs.......discuss????  
 

 
I'm quite thankful for this post as it finally confirms that it's not just me seeing these issues in a very similar manner (always ARD involved, crashes just occasional) ... let's discuss further ...

Alex,
 
I'm still on X3c until I finish the current project. My updates are usually downloaded via the NI service center on a 2nd PC and then manually installed on the main DAW ...
 
Not aware of the rescan issue (missed the thread???)

FreeFlyBertl
Alex,
 
I'm still on X3c until I finish the current project. My updates are usually downloaded via the NI service center on a 2nd PC and then manually installed on the main DAW ...
 
Not aware of the rescan issue (missed the thread???)

Robert please update your plugins via NI service centre, patch Sonar up to X3D, then reset and then rescan your plugins (to emphasise not just a rescan). Let us know if your issue is resolved or not when you are next able to do this.
 
Thanks..

So did you update your plugins via NI service centre and perform a VST reset?
 
Thanks..