Notes getting cut off in Kontakt 4

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Any insight into this problem would be great. I am a user of this wonderful virtual piano from SampleTekk called Black Grand. It's quite a large library with lots of detail per note.

When I perform with lots of notes or with fast passages, some of the notes get "cut off" or "lost" (they sound shortened or not at all).

None of my other sample libraries behave this way. How do you think this problem can be fixed?

Macbook Pro
OS X 10.5.8
2 Gb Ram
2.26 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
Presonus Firebox on Firewire
Black Grand Samples on External USB Drive (7200 rpm)
Kontakt 4
Sibelius
Logic Pro 9

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2 Gb Ram
Well 2GB Ram is a little bit small for an extensive piano like this.
I have the Black grand (ambience) too and even with this single mic perspective i can only play arround 120-160 samples at the same time with 6GB Ram.

120-160 is the sample setting in the kontakt intruments, so if you play a 121 sample with the 1st sample still playing the 1st will be cut off/fade out to make space for the new sample in your ram. Playing fast passages with more then 180+ samples can get really glitchy becouse some smaples can be instantly killed of for your ram to handle it, and can even stop all samples played at once.

Maybe you should consider loading up a smaller patch?
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I doubt it's a ram problem, but you can easily check since Kontakt has a memory readout. Generally you get a pop up that tells your if you could do with some more ram.

I'd say you are either maxing out your CPU, hitting a voice limit, or has dropout protection turned on in the settings page.

Try turning off any reverbs and see if that helps.

Or, assuming it's a DFD instrument, you might be overtaxing your HD. You can hear this from how a note is laggy or off-beat at first, but tightens up as it's shifted into ram.

Edit >
If you select the Monitor tab in the left hand pane, and then the engine sub category, you can see exactly how much memory, DFD, CPU etc. is being used.

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That sounds like a Velocity problem to me.

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Thanks for the replies! Much appreciated.

For the hell of it I wrote the same text as my OP to Per Larsson at SampleTekk. I wasn't really expecting a reply. Within a few hours he replied by asking me to look at the setting in Kontakt under "Max".

It was set to 30. I bumped it up to 130 and opened the Monitoring view and not only did the stuttering problem go away, there seems to be plenty of Voice Memory and CPU power left.

I suppose the "Max" setting is the number of simultaneous voices allowed? I'll have to read up in my manual about this.

Anyway, I am really happy about Per and his little company. It makes me want to buy some more of his products. Gotta love the small companies out there that are still focussed on quality and customer support.

Something to watch out for with "The Black Grand" is that it is tuned to A = 442. I need to tune it down two cents to play nice with my other instruments. :wink:

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Ogg Vorbis wrote:For the hell of it I wrote the same text as my OP to Per Larsson at SampleTekk. I wasn't really expecting a reply. Within a few hours he replied by asking me to look at the setting in Kontakt under "Max".

It was set to 30. I bumped it up to 130 and opened the Monitoring view and not only did the stuttering problem go away, there seems to be plenty of Voice Memory and CPU power left.
Where is that setting located? I checked the Options menu but I didn't see anything there.

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In the Instrument header, between Voices and Purge:
Max Voices:
This is the maximum number of voices that the Instrument may use at any time. You can change this value by clicking on it, then dragging your mouse up or down. If you notice that the number of currently used voices rises to the Max Voices value during play and you hear that voices are being cut off, try increasing this value.
Also, have a look at the Voice Stealing Mode in the Instrument Editor >> Instrument Options >> Instrument tab.

And, there's another setting in the Voice Groups:
Voices: Adjusts the maximum number of voices that can be used by the Groups in this Voice Group. If a Sample is triggered and the maximum voice count has already been reached, voices of Samples that would otherwise still sound will be "sacrificed" and recycled.

Mode: This setting decides which of the currently allocated voices will be sacrificed and recycled if a newly triggered Sample would otherwise exceed the maximum voice count for this Voice Group:
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Oh, you are right, of course. Was looking at the wrong places. Thanks.

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I didn't think about that. I think mines also been set at max. I'll have to check it. Thanks for the heads up.

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