I noticed that a few threads have referenced crackle and pop issues with circumstantial evidence pointing to something Involving Kontakt. Last night I was working on a project with the delightful Scarbee Rickenbacker bass library in Kontakt. Everything had been working fine for the past couple days but when the project grew to around 24 tracks, I started hearing weird crackles and pops. I assumed that it was the additional tracks combined with VIs and sims, so I increased latency but that didn't help.
 
I checked the NI Service Center, and there was a 5.3 update for Kontakt. As soon as I installed it, the crackles and pops went away 100%. So if you have Kontakt 5 but haven't checked the NI Service Center lately, you might want to pay it a visit.

Ugh...I just had to update to 5.3 to use Action Strikes and got a crackling while using AS that I never had before...weird.

As a new Kontak user...  when one updates, is that for the standalone version and plugins at the same time?
 

stevec
As a new Kontak user...  when one updates, is that for the standalone version and plugins at the same time?

Yes.

Great, thanks Craig.