• SONAR
  • Kontakt begins to freeze...then stops??!!??
2014/02/27 18:58:58
caminitic
OK...here's one for y'all.  I currently have Steven Slate Drums routed into my Kontakt 5 into separate outputs.  It's my default setup, saved to my template and really works well.
 
Today, I was trying to free as much RAM as possible before starting a vocal session, so I froze all of the soft synths/guitar sims/EFX I was using...last to go was Kontakt.  First I tried pressing the freeze button on the Kontakt from within the synth rack...came back a few minutes later and saw nothing was frozen.  Huh?!? I thought.  So, I tried going back over to the tracks and pressing the freeze button on the midi track containing the drum data.  It started to freeze the kick drum output, then halfway through the snare freeze, just stopped and went back to regular.  I tried it a few different ways using different freeze "starting points" and got the same result.  It never froze all the way through the different outputs.
 
Anyone ever been UNABLE to freeze a soft synth before and/or have any idea what could be causing this???  I'm stumped...
 
Thanks!
2014/02/28 00:51:50
Splat
Have you run NI service centre recently and installed X3D?
No harm in updating your sound interface drivers as well.
2014/02/28 07:14:19
emwhy
Which version of Kontakt are you using and by that I mean how many outputs? I normally use the 8 out version. I've never had the problem you're having, but I have noticed that when freezing it gets about halfway through the process on one track and before the wave is done being "drawn" it starts the other tracks, so I end up with a several wave files (in this case 8) that get half drawn and take a while before they finish. I guess my only suggestion to you at this point would be to clean out your picture cache, but that's a reach.
 
It wouldn't hurt to follow Alex's advice about seeing if your version of Kontakt is up to date, then maybe hit a forum or two on NI's website. They're pretty good over there, but not as awesome as we are here 
2014/02/28 08:14:27
Rob[at]Sound-Rehab
Kontakt is a bit of a troublemaker (when used with multiple-outs like I always do), but here are a few things that you could help you track down and fix your problems ...
 
... I know that if you have K5 routed to several Sonar audio tracks and you click the archive button for one of them, K5 will stop freezing track when it reaches the archived track and will throw away all freeze files (revert to 'no freeze' state') - I tried that to speed up the freezing computation without having to delete these tracks in case I need them later, but it could also happen in large projects when your routing becomes messy due to too many changes on the fly ...
 
... when you have cloned tracks with linked MIDI files and you route one to K5 and one to another synth like e.g. ZTA+3 or FF, then the freezing process might get messed up. I had it happen that it froze one FF track, then one K5 track, then repeated the FF track, ... sometimes it didn't do anything at all until I cloned the MIDI track without using linked clips and re-defined the routing ...
 
... generally, I now tend to use several instances of K5 instead of one large K5 rack with many synths (basically one per instrument type: drums, piano, brass, ...); this simplifies the routing, makes freezing much faster and is a lot less prone to funny routing issues that are hard to track down ... since sticking to that practise, in fact, Sonar has become a lot more stable and problems I had in fall when projects wouldn't open or randomly have basically disappeared (with no changes to system made or updates performed)
 
 
 
2014/02/28 16:34:01
Anderton
FreeFlyBertl
... generally, I now tend to use several instances of K5 instead of one large K5 rack with many synths (basically one per instrument type: drums, piano, brass, ...); this simplifies the routing, makes freezing much faster and is a lot less prone to funny routing issues that are hard to track down ... since sticking to that practise, in fact, Sonar has become a lot more stable and problems I had in fall when projects wouldn't open or randomly have basically disappeared (with no changes to system made or updates performed)



I second that approach, with rare exceptions (like wanting to have drums and percussion in the same instrument.
2014/03/01 08:21:06
emwhy
I love Kontakt, but every SONAR X3 crash I've had (I'm at 6 now since September...not bad) has been involving a project with Kontakt in it.
 
2014/03/01 08:50:36
Rob[at]Sound-Rehab
emwhy
I love Kontakt, but every SONAR X3 crash I've had (I'm at 6 now since September...not bad) has been involving a project with Kontakt in it.
 


same here. virtually no crash at all (i can't remember a single one since x3) when kontakt is not used in the project. but projects with kontakt drove me nuts for a while as they just kept on crashing when opening the project. never found the true reason for it, never got any feedback regarding the 20+ dump files I sent to cake and the small project i uploaded where everything was reproducible ... anyway, now i stick to multiple kontakt instances with lower load and freeze kontakt instances at the end of the session before saving and shutting down and this does the job ...
2014/03/02 02:12:30
caminitic
FreeFlyBertl
same here. virtually no crash at all (i can't remember a single one since x3) when kontakt is not used in the project. but projects with kontakt drove me nuts for a while as they just kept on crashing when opening the project. never found the true reason for it, never got any feedback regarding the 20+ dump files I sent to cake and the small project i uploaded where everything was reproducible ... anyway, now i stick to multiple kontakt instances with lower load and freeze kontakt instances at the end of the session before saving and shutting down and this does the job ...



EXACTLY what I was trying to do when I first posted (i.e. freeze Kontakt)!!!  Even the workaround needs a workaround perhaps!  ;)
 
Great suggestions -- many of which I'm already employing...thank you everyone,  I've had similar experience as previous poster re: K5 being responsible for X3 crashes.  It's crazy!  If not that...then my precocious Quad Capture, which I'm convinced is haunted...
2014/03/02 10:13:21
wizard71
caminitic
FreeFlyBertl
same here. virtually no crash at all (i can't remember a single one since x3) when kontakt is not used in the project. but projects with kontakt drove me nuts for a while as they just kept on crashing when opening the project. never found the true reason for it, never got any feedback regarding the 20+ dump files I sent to cake and the small project i uploaded where everything was reproducible ... anyway, now i stick to multiple kontakt instances with lower load and freeze kontakt instances at the end of the session before saving and shutting down and this does the job ...



EXACTLY what I was trying to do when I first posted (i.e. freeze Kontakt)!!!  Even the workaround needs a workaround perhaps!  ;)
 
Great suggestions -- many of which I'm already employing...thank you everyone,  I've had similar experience as previous poster re: K5 being responsible for X3 crashes.  It's crazy!  If not that...then my precocious Quad Capture, which I'm convinced is haunted...


Kontakt always crashes sonar for me if I'm using the asio driver for my octa capture. Using WDM makes kontakt completely stable.

Bibs
2014/03/02 11:36:21
caminitic
wizard71
Kontakt always crashes sonar for me if I'm using the asio driver for my octa capture. Using WDM makes kontakt completely stable.

Bibs

VERY interesting...I've only used Quad Capture in ASIO mode.  Are you still getting decent latency, etc.?
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