I find that for most multi-timbral vstis that the multiple instances offers quicker results.  Although one instance is more CPU friendly and sounds like a good idea in theory, getting around all the gotchas to get it working the way you want seems to take so much more time than just freezing multiple instances.  The only exceptions I find is if I am working with instruments like drumkits that are simple. 

wst3
Hello Noel!
 
Always nice to see you here, and Happy New Year.

But, I am going to take a tiny exception to your post... the last time I tried this experiment multiple instances of Kontakt took up a much larger memory footprint, which was a problem.

Now I may be using Kontakt and Sonar in an atypical manner, or my data may be outdated...
 
I am running a template that includes a little over 100 Kontakt instruments. Not all of them play all the time (in fact many are mutually exclusive). The idea here is to have all my 'tools' at my disposal. And this is not a large template by any stretch of the imagination, although it is probably reaching the point where a second computer will be necessary.
 
But right now, except for loading time, it works brilliantly. And I've tried several tricks (short of purchasing VSL VEPro5) to let Kontakt run outside Sonar. (BTW, track templates really are an amazingly useful feature!!)
 
So, since you know a thing or two about Sonar, should I revisit the one instance of Kontakt per instrument model now that I am using Sonar X3e and Kontakt 5?
 
Thanks much,
 
Bill

100 instances, hoo boy :) Oh year you could pay dearly for memory footprint in that case. So year its CPU usage vs memory use if you have multiple instances. Some synths reuse a lot of resources when you create multiple instances so its not always memory expensive however.
 

wst3
So that's why I have so many instances of Kontakt, and load them up the way I do. Make sense?
 
My goal, now that I've built up my libraries to the point where is to move a lot of this (all of it?) onto slave computers so that I need only build track folders to address the various instruments via VEPro. Several folks have warned me that Sonar X3 does not play well with VEPro, so I need to carve out some time to test it.
 
Take care, and I will be looking out for your results.
 
And Noel - it you are listening - any thoughts on the best way to do what I'm doing? Thanks!

The approach you are taking is fine but you are sacrificing performance for convenience. If you have a beast of a machine then its fine but if you are hitting the boundaries of memory or CPU then it might not be the best.
BTW I just bought a beast of a machine from [link=mailto:Jim@Studiocat,]Jim@Studiocat,[/link] a platinum studio with a haswell 2960x. That would probably handle your workload easily. Its far more than what I need but I buy once in 5 years or more :)
 
PS: CVEPro VST3 support is coming...
 

Now I may be using Kontakt and Sonar in an atypical manner..I am running a template that includes a little over 100 Kontakt instruments.

Atypical? Gee, do ya think?
 
Actually, I do see orchestrators who hang out in places such as vi.control listing similarly huge default setups. But I'd guess that most folks 'round here, including the OP (I wonder whatever happened to Tripecac?) don't load up anywhere near that many instruments. I don't think I've ever used more than 20 or so at once.
 
Kontakt is really quite good at managing resources. I think I once calculated its base memory usage at around 40MB per instance. That's a pretty small penalty, memory-wise. CPU's another story. There's no doubt that combining instruments into one instance of Kontakt is more CPU-efficient, but it's a tradeoff: you improve overall efficiency but lose the benefit of parallel processing.
 

(I wonder whatever happened to Tripecac?)

I'm still here, and am reading along!  It's an interesting discussion.
 
I definitely don't load up 100+ instruments or instances.  Maybe 8 drum tracks (separate one for kick, snare, etc.) and 5 to 10 other instruments.  I've been using 1 or 2 Kontakt instances from drums, and one instance for each other instrument.  Seems to work okay. 
 
If I had to create larger projects (with more tracks), I'd definitely need to think about optimising the routing, and the discussion in this topic is great for studying different people's technques, but for now, I'm just keeping it simple.
 
(To be honest, I've been so busy with kids and work that it's been hard to give music-making the same level attention that I used to.  I still crank out a song every couple of weeks, but I haven't been pushing myself to learn new techniques.  So basically, my Sonar habits are on cruise control.  I still grumble about Sonar's glitches every once in a while, but instead of posting on the forum, which takes time, I force myself to stop grumbling and get on with finishing the song, using workarounds if needed.  Time, time, time!)

Great discussion and useful ideas scattered here and there throughout.   Thanks.

To the problem with naming more than 5 or 6 instruments in an instance:  I wonder if this, from the Kontakt 5 user manual, might be a clue: 
 
Another caveat relates to the fact that the output configuration of each KONTAKT instance will
be saved along with your song; this can result in the rather unfortunate case of several loaded
KONTAKT instances with different output configurations. This can seriously confuse your host
and lead to unexpected behavior, so when you’re working with KONTAKT as a plug-in, we recommend
that you make all output configuration changes the default for that specific plug-in
type.

Good find there, William - I hope to be able to get back to testing and tweaking and trying and hoping with all of this and Kontakt - been pretty nutty here for the past few days.
 
I will want to additionally explore what you just found, as that doesn't really fully explain what is getting saved.  (numbers of output channels?, names?, both?, loaded instruments?, all of this?)
 
Bob Bone
 

This is a great discussion and something I have been trying to do for a while.  I am getting close to setting up my first template for orchestral stuff but my mind was blown when I saw this guy's and how he uses it, I would simply love to have that flexibility on hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IYYhS_fg0
 
I use VSL, Cine Brass, 8Dio adagio, Cinematic Strings, All 3 versions of Symphobia, All 3 versions of Albion, Hans Zimmer Percussion, Abbey Road Drums, All 4 versions of BML Sable, LA Scoring strings and various other soft synths such as Nexus and Omnisphere etc.
 
For the orchestral stuff I'd love to have what the guy in the video has created in his template although I don't see how any one machine could deliver it.  I know nothing about slaving computers which he surely must be doing to get 650 tracks and instruments pre loaded.
 
At the moment I use one instance of Kontakt per instrument I am using simply because I like the flexibility it provides me and I have a very powerful machine and it saves me messing around with midi channels which to be honest I have never even tried and just set the midi channel as omni within each version of Kontakt.
 
How do I say put 12 articulations of LA strings into a single instance of kontakt and then use midi channels to flick between them?  Sorry if I am behind the door on this I'm, just learning about all this orchestral stuff

P_Theory, what I've been working with is loading, for instance, your LA strings 12 times into one kontakt instance, and assign 12 midi tracks, one per instrument: then you can set the articulation (by keyswitch or whatever) one time, label the sonar track as "pizzicato", eg., and have your pizz notes in one midi track, your staccato notes in another, your sustain non-vibrato in another, etc etc.   Fixes the problem of keyswitch look back (chase back) not being feasible.   Also do robert_e_bone's output mapping, which was a new thing for me.