According to Laney, his problems with the Lap Steel have been satisfactorily negated by adjusting his velocity settings to a much lower setting than the Kontakt default [100], as were mine. 

Yet, I find that, even as this has effectively worked to resolve the Lap Steel issues, problems nevertheless persist with orchestral type libraries, and namely those particular patches that have longer sustains: particularly strings or brass, of course, among others. In stand alone, or within any DAW alike, the notes are even cut off as soon as an eighth note length, sometimes, or randomly, not at all, in other cases. The velocity setting-regardless of what it is- does not appear to remedy the issues with these. There is absolutely no problem whatsoever with shorter samples.

I have to wonder if this experience is isolated to only two people or if others have had similar results. 

Needless to say, I must find a resolution to these anomalies or forfeit the use of thousands of dollars worth of software because they have been rendered useless to me.

The reason I asked my question above was that you apparently have problems regardless of where/how you run Kontakt so yes it does not sound like a DAW issue.

I was just curious if the issue lies somewhere within the midi input chain? That is what you could see from checking the midi track within the Sonar PRV to tell if there were some problems there within the key on/duration times.

You never said if you are having problems using any other stand alone midi driven program so I was just taking a long shot. I can tell you that I have had intermittent midi issues occur due to a cord/connector that just went bad for no reason.

If nothing else, checking it would eliminate it from the equation.

Good luck,

Rick

Thanks Rick. I appreciate your input and kind consideration.

And I should add that the Kontakt DFD usage is never above 0%

I've never had an issue with DFD errors, despite having to lower the default preload buffer sizes due to limited RAM.

Could this be something as simple as the polyphony settings? 

Kontakt lets you specify the maximum number of concurrent samples, which you might keep low during the composition phase to conserve memory and then subsequently increase prior to bouncing the instrument. Kontakt also lets you choose how the engine should deal with too many concurrent notes (go to Instrument Options and select from the dropdown list labeled "voice stealing mode").

Another thing to try is purging samples. After playing the song through one time, under the "Purge" dropdown menu, choose "update sample pool". This will unload all samples that weren't played previously. It can reduce the RAM usage for an instrument by 90%.

Ah, never mind. I see that Greg has set the default polyphony maximum to 200, which is more than the total number of samples in the library. So if you're seeing this symptom with the Lap Steel, the polyphony setting is definitely not the problem.

Thanks for your input Bitflipper.

Even with polyphony kicked up to 128 voices, and using only a very small fraction of that actually being used, I still have voices randomly cutting out. This is all usually happening by playing  only anywhere from a simple 1 to 4 notes concurrently.This is happening in the Kontakt standalone. 

Computer science is turning into computer voodoo, it seems, as I try to deduct what might be a problem. Yet this only happens within Kontakt and its software. It certainly is a problem that I must find a solution to, or else I will have a lot of software that is virtually useless for musical purposes.

Maybe if I buy Kontakt six, I'll have the fix.

A new Kontakt update is being tested in beta. But I'm beginning to think that Native Instruments don't have their act together, and that I'm in Kontakt with an unreliable software company. I hope I'm wrong.

I've only seen one other person on the NI forums posting about this same thing - so far, and he got no answer also. But I'm posting all over to get a solution. I had to create 20 posts on NI before I could even PM the guy w/the same problem. I'm having fun. [This is what you can get done when your truck is broke down and you're out of work for a few days!]

The other thing is the CPU overload protection setting--maybe it's getting too enthusiastic about its job... You'll find the control in the "Engine" section of Kontakt's settings. Try disabling it to see if that helps.

Thanks, Greg, I'll see what I can find with that. 

I'll try and do all I can until I have a solution. Sooner or later, God knows, this will be resolved, I'm sure.