Is It my CPU or is it RAM?

Hello All!
 
I'm using Kontakt more now and depending on the project size, I often experience stuttering on playback. My CPU runs at about 50% and my RAM at about 50% too. Is the stuttering due to insufficient RAM or my CPU ( system specs below)?
 
Thanks all for your insight!

Possibly a little of both. I5-650 is only 2 cores. 8GB with many Kontakt instruments may not be enough. Before throwing $$ at it. Go here and get Latency Monitor...
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
It will tell you if there is some latency hog in your PC and in general if your PC can handle the task.
Could be a video driver, network driver, audio driver, etc, since you only see 50% usage.
Follow Fabio's advice first.
 
 

microapp
Possibly a little of both. I5-650 is only 2 cores.

Actually, I have four cores.

Sanderxpander
Two cores, four threads (if your specs are correct). You can check for Kontakt disk streaming problems by increasing the preload buffer in your Kontakt instrument settings. If you load a larger portion of the sample in RAM, your disk will have more time to catch up. But I second the suggestion of trying latencymon. 50 percent CPU usage shouldn't cause a problem but if there's a driver that occasionally spikes it can push the system over the edge.

Ah thanks! I apologize for my misunderstanding! Loading latencymon as we speak! Just to be clear, I should run latencymon as Sonar is playing, yes?

If I was in Vegas and placing a bet on your DAW, I'd bet on disk I/O being the bottleneck. Of course, LatencyMon might well identify some other problem, but in the absence of DPC latency measurements my money's on RAM. But don't run out and buy more memory just yet.
 
Within Kontakt, watch the "Memory" window in each instrument's header. If you see that number incrementing, it means the instrument hasn't fully loaded yet. What I often see, especially when there are multiple Kontakt instruments, is hesitation during playback while samples are still loading. Once that "Memory" window stops changing, everything's fine.

Adding more RAM should not affect your PC's performance if you have 50% of RAM capacity unused. RAM does not add any "power" but instead works more like a hard drive for performed tasks. You should be good as long as you have some headroom.

I'd double Bit's bet....  FWIW, I feel the best investment when disk streaming Kontakt and other sample library players is moving your samples to an SSD.  Both cpu and ram are minimal on your system... SSD's are cheap.  Splitting your most use libraries across different SSDs is even better.
 
 

dlesaux
Hello All!
 
I'm using Kontakt more now and depending on the project size, I often experience stuttering on playback. My CPU runs at about 50% and my RAM at about 50% too. Is the stuttering due to insufficient RAM or my CPU ( system specs below)?

Perhaps Im misunderstanding, and not specifically familiar with Kontakt, (except I believe that it functions as most VI/soft synths do?), but for playback/mixing isn't having a the lowest latency possible not relevant, or should I say setting it as high possible not an issue or even preferred to avoid these issues?
 
In any case, even with my 6 cores/12 threads, 16GRAM and an SSD I had midi dropout issues, and/or "stuttering" issues (usually audio from number of FX/plugins) with playback, and when using lesser settings than mentioned below, at least on my larger projects.
 
So for playback/mixing, in ASIO panel in Audio Device preferences. I always have buffer cranked up to max, for me that's, 4096 samples (96K sample rate) and I can then "load her up" with FX's, so not sure benefit of going lower?
 
In Midi "Playback and recording" preference, Ive doubled the setting "Number buffers" to 128, and have Playback setting at 1000 ms, not sure if its conventional or correct but this seems to work for me, stopping those pesky and annoying random dropping outs of midi notes on playback. Your PC/AI system may or may not accept these settings but seems to work well for me. Also if Im recording, or just playing/monitoring live, through Sonar and soft synth (eg Rapture Pro), I dont seem to have to change/lower these "midi" buffer settings ever, or haven't needed to since I changed them, only lower the audio buffer latency, for proper key response time.
 
With these settings in playback and mixing there may be a very slight delay in transport control response time, and possibly in response time when manually changing an FX parameter, for myself this is not an issue mixing, and Im uncertain which may cause that, the midi or audio setting, but I no longer suffer from the midi dropout and audio stutter blues (hmmm, that could be a song), and I can pretty well use as many audio FX/plugin and VI as "Ive" ever needed or is allowed, at one time.
 
If your talking about playing-back many multiple recorded audio tracks, with FX and several midi VI's playing and also trying to record/monitor new VI tracks simultaneously, then you may or may not be able to find a lower latency that might work to suite both requirements, but you'd possibly have to resolve in other ways, likely by bouncing the existing tracks to a sub-project, 
 
Hope Ive helped and not caused more confusion.
 
Cheers  

Yep... John and Dave said it well... re: diff btw recording/playback
 
If you're getting garbage while recording, try disabling plugins and see if this solves the problem.  Still urge the SSD move if ur liking Kontakt...

Having more RAM can free I/O bottlenecks in a couple of ways.  One, less memory paging.  Don't forget your OS needs to be running below your DAW and it does a bunch of housekeeping, including keeping track of paged memory.  The second way it can help with Kontakt is that you can pre load more of the sample data into RAM instead of taxing your I/O chain.  This is a setting in Kontakt to increase the length of the beginning of the same that is pre loaded into RAM.
 
So, I too would try more RAM first and change the settings as suggested by most of the folks here.  RAM is really cheap now, I just purchased 16GB of MAC memory from Crucial for like $100 (this was not my DAW PC). I have 32GB in my DAW and when I load most projects, I see that 50% of the RAM is being used before I hit play.
 
These machines are amazing and have come a long way in the last 10 years.  One can do so much compared to just 10 years ago. (Is this redundant?)!

With reference to the performance chart linked to. Remember that these tests were all done more than 5 years ago. In that time the various devices and drivers have all been updated and today FireWire 800 and USB2 devices go head to head in the latency department performing equally well in real life circumstances.

Take the RME UFX, I have used this device extensively and it performs equally well in both Firewire 800 and USB 2. down to 48 samples.