Anyone have any ideas or experience with improving the load time of non-library instrument banks in Kontakt? I bought Anthology Strings from 8Dio (at a very nice discount), and it sounds good, with a greatly improved (IMHO) interface and overall usability.
 
But the load time is brutal. Basically, right now I click on a patch and then go for lunch while it indexes or organizes itself, or whatever it does. I'm not referring to the loading of the actual samples, which start to load up once the interface appears (although at 1.84gb for the Ensemble patch, that isn't a fast process either) but the time lapse between when I click on the patch and when the interface itself finally appears in the rack. That can sometimes take as long as 10-15 mins, and during this time, Cakewalk is basically unresponsive. This is really frustrating. I've tried "Batch Resave" and few other tricks and ideas that I got from other forums, including the NI one, but nothing has helped.
 
Anthology is a nice library, and I'm trying to explore it and get the hang of using it. But right now loading it up brings my workflow to a complete halt, and I'd really like to find a way around that. Does anyone else experience that with large non-Kontakt Player libraries in Kontakt? 
 
Of note: I'm using Kontakt 5.6.5, in Sonar Plat 64, and Windows 10 Pro 64.
 
This has been an issue with other instruments and libraries, but none as bad as Anthology Strings, I assume due to the size...
 
Thanks,
 
Rob

You MUST batch re-save even commercial products (even ones that appear to load correctly) or their load times in Kontakt will be extremely long.  It's really not that hard to do, and will vastly speed up libraries from 3rd parties like 8Dio.
 
Here's an article that covers it if you need help with the specifics:
https://soundiron.com/pag...-instrument-load-times
 
 

Go into Settings -> Load / Import and make sure the "Load samples in background" option is checked. This doesn't speed up the loading, but does make it seem faster because you see the UI and regain control of your mouse sooner. Samples continue to load in the background, and you can watch its progress in the "Memory" window at top.
 
If you've already done a batch resave, and have backround loading enabled, after that it mostly comes down to disk throughput. You might want to think about getting an SSD, which will speed it up a lot.
 
String libraries in particular can be very slow-loading because one .nki might include multiple articulations, mic positions and ensemble sizes. Some you won't even use. If your song doesn't require pizzicato, for example, it makes no sense to load those samples.
 
Take a look at the instruments. You may find that one of them has "All" in the name -- that's an instrument that'll load every single sample in order that you can switch between them on the fly. Often the devs will have provided smaller variations that don't use as much memory, perhaps separate .nki's for small, medium and large ensembles, or specific articulations or mic positions. Use those when appropriate for your project.
 
 

Thanks for the input, folks. Much appreciated.
 
In regards to the above:
 
1) Load samples in background is checked
2) The library is already on an SSD
3) I already did a batch re-save, to no effect.
4) The actual size of the patch doesn't seem to make a difference, in this case -- whether it's the full set of articulations, or one of 8Dio's customizable "Empty" patches that allows you to add only the articulations you need, the wait time between when I click on the patch and when the GUI appears is really long. Are the samples actually loading during this time? It seems that the samples don't really start loading into the system until the GUI appears and the memory counter starts to climb on the instrument header. The problem I'm having is that Kontakt simply goes unresponsive and just sits there for 10 minutes before it even launches the GUI and starts loading the samples. Once the GUI appears, the samples start loading in and I get control of Sonar back. I'm fine with samples taking a couple minutes to load in, as long as I can do other stuff in Sonar while I'm waiting. But right now, I get locked out of Sonar for 10 minutes waiting for the GUI to simply appear. It doesn't look like the system is actually loading samples during this time, so I have no idea what it's trying to do.
 
I have similar issues with other libraries -- Da Capo and Realivox Blue, in particular -- although the wait time isn't quite as long, and I can live with it. For Da Capo, it seems to make no difference at all if I'm loading one of the full patches with all mic positions, or one of the lite patches with just the Tutti mix.
 

I've seen the long pause before the patch actually starts loading with a few libraries recently, it does seem like it has gotten worse with recent versions of Kontakt.  Batch re-saving the instruments has generally removed that delay for me though.  If you have batch re-saved the instruments and are still having the long pause you might want to look into running Microsoft's SysInternals Process Monitor and see exactly what Kontakt is doing.   I recommend running the stand alone Kontakt for this.  You can get Process Monitor here:
 
https://technet.microsoft...ls/processmonitor.aspx
 

You might also want to make sure that any real time anti-virus/malware protection is not looking at the directories where your libraries are installed.  You might want to take a good look at any 3rd party system utility software you are running, which might not show up even in Process Monitor, but could kill your performance.
 
 

Yeah, I think recent updates to Kontakt may be a factor, because it wasn't always like this. For me, it's only the non-Player compatible libraries that are slow. The instruments in the Libraries tab all load without any real issues.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll see if they help.

DEFINITELY make sure you add the Sonar Content and Cakewalk Projects folders to the exclusion list of whatever antivirus software you use, and the same for your sample libraries.
 
Sample libraries in particular were already scanned during the download process, and are pretty much going to be read only, so there isn't a credible security exposure to keeping those from being scanned every time they are accessed.  That alone will GREATLY improve load performance for sample-based instruments/sounds in Kontakt, or Play, or whatever you are using.
 
There are also parameters in Kontakt that let you specify how much of a given instrument to load initially, and then the rest gets streamed from disk.  THAT can have a positive or negative impact on load times.
 
There have been additionally some discussions about leaving Windows Indexing on or off for drives - and that might be good to review.  I haven't kept up on the considerations for that, one way or the other, but others may have some thoughts on it for you here.
 
Also, if you are loading massive numbers of instruments into each Kontakt instance, you are also preventing the CPU from using multiple cores - and per Noel of Cakewalk, you might be better off to load only up to 4-6 instruments into any given single instance of Kontakt.  At some point, it helps performance to use multiple instances of Kontakt, versus a giant instance loaded to the gills.
 
I have over 2 TB of sample libraries, and I have NEVER seen any one instrument take more than a matter of seconds to load, and other than my C: (which has only Windows and applications - no content), all of my other drives are SATA III 7,200 RPM HDD's.  I have ZERO sample loading performance issues on my system.
 
I hope any of the above is helpful, as well as some of the other posts in this thread - the fact that there aren't screaming masses of complaints in these forums about this load-time issue you are having is actually GOOD news - as it means that most folks are not experiencing that issue, which means there is an OUTSTANDING chance your issues can be resolved through chipping away at potential contributing factors for why YOUR load times suffer as they do.
 
So, cheer up - I think - and between everybody there are likely some things that will help you resolve these issues.
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks for all the suggestions, folks. Some very good ideas, and some nice optimizations.
 
As per Bob's suggestion above, I put all my Kontakt libraries (and Kontakt itself) on the exclusion list for Windows Defender, and it has made a significant difference. GUI appears in a few seconds, and the samples load up nicely. No more 10 minutes of waiting. I have no idea why this just started a couple of months ago (I've never worried much about Windows Defender or exclusion lists before, and until recently I've had no issues like this at all), but I'm very glad the solution was so simple. I probably should have figured that out on my own.
 
So thanks for the help, it is VERY appreciated. :)
 
Rob

Amicus717
Thanks for all the suggestions, folks. Some very good ideas, and some nice optimizations.
 
As per Bob's suggestion above, I put all my Kontakt libraries (and Kontakt itself) on the exclusion list for Windows Defender, and it has made a significant difference. GUI appears in a few seconds, and the samples load up nicely. No more 10 minutes of waiting. I have no idea why this just started a couple of months ago (I've never worried much about Windows Defender or exclusion lists before, and until recently I've had no issues like this at all), but I'm very glad the solution was so simple. I probably should have figured that out on my own.
 
So thanks for the help, it is VERY appreciated. :)
 
Rob

Many thanks Bob Bone, bitflipper, msorrels and Amicus717 for uncovering a mystery I have had for quite a while !
(My software sample creator didn't have this information when I emailed for tech support about an unusually long load time for a very large Kontakt NKI guitar sample set  . . . it was the only library I have that takes at least 4-5 minutes to load up)
 
There is great and useful information in this thread about optimizing large Kontakt sample library load times, thanks again guys for the tips !