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.

There was a neat system monitor I saw a couple years back that highlighted choke points in the machine. I cannot remember the name offhand, but do not be surprised if disc access bubbles up as mentioned above. Streaming situations require more than RAM or CPU.

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.
 
 

Hi, in my experience, it is the sound card – not the computer itself. If all the valid points spoken about in the previous posts not solving your problem you should try out a different audio card.
You described the overall load from your computer. At 50% it starts to have drop outs etc. If you are able to bounce a song faster than the real playtime is, it is an indicator that the CPU and RAM is able to handle the load easily.
If DPC is not an issue, the configuration should be OK.
 
BUT: If the sound card, especially the driver, is not able to handle the load within the defined buffer time (e.g. 128 samples @ 44,1 = 2,9ms) you will get a drop out. Even worse: The minimal latency is NOT an information about how much the audio driver/hardware can process within this time frame. A lot of sound cards have incredible low latency buffer possibilities, but the DAW wouldn't be able to handle more than four tracks...
 
There is a detailed analysis of the performance of different sound cards at Gearslutz (https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/618474-audio-interface-low-latency-performance-data-base.html) where you can see that even high-end sound cards can have mediocre performance compared to the top ones related to processed plug-ins. This post is modiefied over the last five years, so you will get info about the newest devices, as well.
 
Since I switched to a pcie solution, I can handle at least four times more plug-ins than before – without touching anything else at the computer. By the way: Using RTL as low as 5ms compared to 18ms before!

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  

John Egan has a great point about buffer settings during record versus mixdown.  I do the same thing.  I lower the buffers when recording, but when mixing I set them a 2048.  If you need to during the recording process, you could freeze some tracks to take the load off the system.

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...

Question: Does soloing the recording track, with maybe one other track for reference, work for reducing CPU load & interface latency when recording?

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?)!

Muting or soloing tracks does not remove their data load from the computer. You need to bounce or freeze a track to get back the processing overhead.

It's common practice to set your audio buffers lower when recording and higher when mixing..