Hi,
 
I have been using cakewalk sonar X3 with the most upto date path with no problems for the past few years. I have now got this issue.

I boot up the project and it works fine. If i try to adjust the buffer setting from 512 to 246 or 1024 and it starts crackling. At first i thought it was CPU but the CPU's are hardly doing anything. I found that certain Kontakt instruments are crackling (not all of them) when I change the buffer size. These range from 100MB to 1GB in size. I found that If I got to the problematic instrument and reload the saved file it solves the problem.

Why would this do this please? I don't particulary want to have to go through all the effected instruments and reload them because:  A - I have an awful lot to go through and  B - It may happen again :(

Any suggestions would be great :)

Thankyou for any help :)


Kind Regards
Joe

I have always restarted Sonar if I have changed buffer sizes - which I have done only a couple of times, in terms of the playback buffers.  Whenever I change ASIO Buffer Size, I power cycle my audio interface and then start Sonar - I do that type of change whenever I move from recording/tracking/editing to mixing/mastering.
 
I never have this issue you are reporting, and Kontakt is by far my most used synth.
 
Bob Bone
 

I see thanks for the reply :) 

Its strange as it has been working fine for ages and I  could switch buffer and not have to worry.  So what your suggesting is I change the buffer then reboot the computer (I have an RME AIO internal card) ?

Kind Regards
Joe

robert_e_bone
I have always restarted Sonar if I have changed buffer sizes - which I have done only a couple of times, in terms of the playback buffers.  Whenever I change ASIO Buffer Size, I power cycle my audio interface and then start Sonar - I do that type of change whenever I move from recording/tracking/editing to mixing/mastering.
 
I never have this issue you are reporting, and Kontakt is by far my most used synth.
 

this is probably the super safe way to do it.
 
FYI, I change ASIO buffers up and down (from very to reasonably large and back) whenever needed due to CPU load and starting drop outs and never had to shut down Sonar or even reboot because of that.
 
to the OP regarding "reload the saved file it solves the problem":
Do you have sufficient RAM to keep all samples in memory or do your Kontakt instruments get so big that the system needs to cache them? At what sampling rate is this happening? How fast/full/defragged is your HD which holds the samples?
 

HI, Thanks for the reply RehabRob
 
Yeh I used to be able to do what you did with no issues at all. 
 
Yes I have sufficient Ram 60 odd GB. The project runs stable on 512 but if I either Lower it to 265 or Up it to 1024 it crackles on both (1024 defiantly odd as if any thing it shouldn't crackle at all only create more latency) All of the drives are defragged on a weekly basis and the Drive has near enough a Terabyte Left with about 400gb of Samples on the drive. 
 
(Just incase this helps I am very computer literate I Build, Code, Do CGI stuff etc just incase you think of anything I can try that you wouldn't suggest for a normal user :) )
 
Thanks for your help
Joe
 

since you didn't list system spec in your signature ... what audio interface, sample rate and driver type are you using?

RME AIO,  48k 24bit and ASIO (have tried WDM with same results)
 
Will  also update my signature when I'm at the system so I  can get the specs :)
 
Thankyou

jmd87
I see thanks for the reply :) 

Its strange as it has been working fine for ages and I  could switch buffer and not have to worry.  So what your suggesting is I change the buffer then reboot the computer (I have an RME AIO internal card) ?

Kind Regards
Joe

Well, since I have never needed more than a single adjustment to the playback buffers (not the ASIO Buffer Size), the only time I currently adjust any buffer is the ASIO Buffer Size, and when I do that it is for a given project that is moving from tracking/recording to where I will begin mixing, or then moving it back again to a lower size when moving to a different project (or new) that will be in the recording/tracking stage.  So, while I will always be moving in or out of mixing and tracking, I will be in one or the other for  usually multiple hours at a time, so for me a power cycle to my audio interface and a launch of Sonar is not any kind of big deal.  I record with an ASIO Buffer Size of 128, and mix with it set to 2048.  That keeps latency low for tracking and really high for using mixing plugins and such.
 
Since you have an audio interface that is embedded as an expansion card in your PC, I would imagine you would likely have to reboot the computer after adjusting ASIO Buffer Size, though you might try a simply Disable/Enable of that audio interface through Windows Device Manager, and see if that then would reload its buffers.  It won't uninstall your drivers for it if you disable/enable it, and may perform with more stability and less noise if that works.  Otherwise, a reboot would obviously give you fresh buffers.  Again, this would normally only need to be done to switch between recording and mixing, so whether using reboot or disable/enable, it shouldn't add much more than a couple of minutes to do either technique.
 
I hope that helps further explain what I do, and that it fixes the issue for you.
 
Bob Bone
 
 

The dropouts are most likely due to I/O, not CPU. If you're like most users, you've got all your libraries on one drive, so Kontakt's having to stream data for multiple instruments from the same physical device. At some point, you can eventually exhaust the bandwidth of the drive and controller.
 
There are a couple of stopgap measures you can take. One is to purge the largest instruments' sample buffers, which will free up RAM. Click on the "Purge" dropdown menu in the instrument header and choose "update sample pool". Note that the memory usage drops, often by a great deal - large libraries with many articulations, round-robins and velocity layers can drop by 90%. You have to do this after you've played your project once all the way through.
 
Another thing is to adjust the preload buffer size. This is set by the developer, and the default is usually fine for single instruments but may need to be increased when you have many instruments. Click on the wrench icon, and then the Instrument Options button, then click the DFD tab. There you will find the DFD preload buffer size slilder. Increasing the preload buffer will lessen the load on your disk drive at the expense of RAM.
 
Some instruments offer one other trick for reducing both memory usage and streaming bandwidth, and that is to reduce the number of round-robins. My favorite bass library is a monster - over a GB of RAM used when fully loaded. But it lets you choose how many round-robins to use. Reducing them to 4 from the default of 32 (which is serious overkill for a bass) cuts memory usage in half.
 
String libraries are especially notorious for using memory unnecessarily. When using Multis, make sure you're only loading the articulations you're actually going to use. If your piece has no need for pizzicato, don't load it.
 
 
Afterthought: it's possible your I/O problems aren't entirely attributable to Kontakt. It may be competing with some other process for bandwidth. For example, you may be using the same drive for paging or Windows event logging. Or you could have a piece of hardware that's hogging the CPU, such as a high-end gaming video card or a network adapter.  It's probably a good idea to check your DPC latency, if only to eliminate that possibility.