Serious audio problems with Kontakt 5 & Strawberry Electric Guitar

[EvilDragon]

Did you try running Kontakt in standalone mode and see if the CPU usage is the same? If it's lower, then the issue is likely somewhere in the old AMD CPU (2008.) - Motif interface - Cubase chain.

[rangelot1]

Did you already try WASAPI instead of ASIO? Just trying to round down what might be causing the problem. :/

No I didn't try WASAPI. I'll have to look for some WIN7 drivers. I'll try to install this evening and let you know. I was also thinking about contacting NI. This is the first time I've used one of their products so I hope their tech support is helpful.

I want to mention a couple of other observations I made while experimenting. I noticed that the Rhythm samples are smaller than the Lead samples. So I thought maybe this was a "size" issue. So I loaded a bunch of different instruments from the Kontakt library and got the total memory size to around .83GB. I patched every instrument to omni and started playing. The CPU meter was high, but it didn't peg and I didn't hear any audio problems. I also loaded Kontakt into CUBASE and tested with some EEG Lead presets. The audio cracks and pops in CUBASE as well, but one thing I noticed was the ASIO activity meter was peaking when the audio dropped out. CUBASE doesn't have a CPU monitor and Kontakt doesn't have an ASIO monitor. So I'm wondering is it CPU or ASIO? Still my hunch is that it's CPU because I have also noticed the CPU peaking in the windows performance monitor.

[rangelot1]

Did you try running Kontakt in standalone mode and see if the CPU usage is the same? If it's lower, then the issue is likely somewhere in the old AMD CPU (2008.) - Motif interface - Cubase chain.

Most of my testing has been in standalone mode.

[standalone]

ASIO Setting:
Buffer Size=1024 Samples

Even if it sounds contradictory, have you tried a smaller buffer size? Under certain conditions, sample players can have problems with big buffer sizes.

[rangelot1]

Did you already try WASAPI instead of ASIO? Just trying to round down what might be causing the problem. :/

I don't know.. maybe it has to do with the way I'm playing. I can reproduce the problem if I use the sustain pedal. Also if I use the strum keys and say hold down the C1 while playing the triad simultaneously the problem is there. When I don't use the sustain pedal or synchronize my strumming and chord changes then I don't seem have this problem, although the CPU still reads pretty high ~80%.

Greg, should I be able to use the sustain pedal or not? I'm not 100% sure that this problem has gone away. I find my self being very tentative about pressing too many notes or not releasing keys and holding sustains too long. It's just not comfortable.

I couldn't find WASAPI drivers so I couldn't test that.

[Gregjazz]

You should still be able to use the sustain pedal. I just tested it in Kontakt 5, holding the sustain pedal down and playing lots of notes (including pretty much key mashing), and the instrument's CPU was around 1%--Kontakt showed the overall CPU usage in the engine tab to be around 8%. Not really any noticeable difference than playing normally.

Are there any audio drivers besides ASIO that you can try? Also, I'm not sure how big of an effect this might have, but are the samples stored on your system drive?

Which audio interface are you using? Is it the Steinberg MR816X? Just wondering so I can look around and see if there are any similar reports using that interface.

Man, I'm so sorry that the problem has persisted this long. Hopefully we'll be able to pinpoint what's causing it!

[rangelot1]

ok, here is something that may be significant. all of my testing so far has involved melody lines and chords with some notes above b2. but when I play using the sustain pedal or chords using the c1/c#1 strumming keys and use all notes below b2 everything sounds great. so if I play a cmaj chord voiced as c2, e2, g2 I can strum, hold down the sustain pedal and everythings sounds as expected. dmaj (d2,f#2, a2) same thing. but a gmaj (d2, g2, b2) the audio starts to break up. and it gets worse as I include keys above b2. in fact the lower I go as close to e1 even the CPU is less taxed. Is this normal?

Unfortunately I don't have any other audio drivers I can test with. I have a Yamaha Motif XS synth. it has an MLAN16E interface card that connects to my pc via FW (400 i believe). The interface is ASIO and I use the Yamaha/Steinberg FW drivers to connect the synth with my PC. Good luck trying to a similar user :/

[Gregjazz]

Yeah, it looks like the D2/G2/B2 uses a tiny bit more CPU than D2/F#2/A2, but only 1% more. I feel like there might be something exasperating the problem.

I've been reading up on related issues--would you mind checking something for me? Go to Kontakt's options, and then to the "MIDI" tab. Click on "outputs". Are all the outputs set to "off"? There are a lot of note events going on in Strawberry, and I wonder if that's bogging down the system, if those note events are also getting transmitted back through the mLAN16e.

I also have a Yamaha Motif XS, but I don't have the mLAN16e card.

[flugel45]

Two possible culprits come to mind.

One is you say you're using a 40 GB system drive. That's got to be pretty old. Is it 7200 or 5400 rpm? It's also possible the drive itself could be going bad. Check your system event viewer, for any disk-related errors.

The other "oddball" component that stands out is your audio interface. I've yet to see a non-dedicated audio interface that had decent drivers. All the ones that are part of a keyboard or mixer seem to be unable to operate at low latencies (translated: poor drivers). You might raise your buffer settings and see if that helps.

Another test would be to temporarily disable the Motif interface, and use your onboard sound card with ASIO4ALL. If that gives you significantly better performance then there's your answer. (You'll have to use that, or buy a better interface).

Take a look at these things, and let us know how it turns out. Good luck.

[EvilDragon]

Good points by flugel45, especially the latter two.

[rangelot1]

Yeah, it looks like the D2/G2/B2 uses a tiny bit more CPU than D2/F#2/A2, but only 1% more. I feel like there might be something exasperating the problem.

I've been reading up on related issues--would you mind checking something for me? Go to Kontakt's options, and then to the "MIDI" tab. Click on "outputs". Are all the outputs set to "off"? There are a lot of note events going on in Strawberry, and I wonder if that's bogging down the system, if those note events are also getting transmitted back through the mLAN16e.

I also have a Yamaha Motif XS, but I don't have the mLAN16e card.

I will do this tonight and let you know- thanks.

[rangelot1]

Two possible culprits come to mind.

One is you say you're using a 40 GB system drive. That's got to be pretty old. Is it 7200 or 5400 rpm? It's also possible the drive itself could be going bad. Check your system event viewer, for any disk-related errors.

The other "oddball" component that stands out is your audio interface. I've yet to see a non-dedicated audio interface that had decent drivers. All the ones that are part of a keyboard or mixer seem to be unable to operate at low latencies (translated: poor drivers). You might raise your buffer settings and see if that helps.

Another test would be to temporarily disable the Motif interface, and use your onboard sound card with ASIO4ALL. If that gives you significantly better performance then there's your answer. (You'll have to use that, or buy a better interface).

Take a look at these things, and let us know how it turns out. Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have two drives the 40GB(7200) and a 1 TB (7200). All of my programs and libraries are installed on the 1TB drive. Only the windows system and whatever else windows needs is on the 40GB. As far as the audio interface is concerned; the Motif XS pretty decent and beefy audio interface-especially when using FW. I've never had any issues with it in the past. I can use Kontakt and load over 1GB of NI library samples and everything is fine. In CUBASE I have had over 20 audio tracks with all sorts of insert effects and not snap, crackle or pop! I have tried ASIO4ALL and the same thing happens.

I'm hoping to sell my XS8 shortly and I'll be looking for a dedicated FW Audio interface. But I don't think that is going to solve my problem. I really think it's a problem with either K5 or my AMD machine.

[EvilDragon]

If suggestions by flugel45 don't work, then I would blame AMD, yes. When you update your DAW PC, I would consider only Intel and nothing else.

[bigjerome]

You mentioned FW, is your FW card a TI chip-based card or something else like VIA?
TI chip-based FW cards are solid and problems have been documented using VIA chip-based and DICE-chip based cards.

[Gregjazz]

You mentioned FW, is your FW card a TI chip-based card or something else like VIA?
TI chip-based FW cards are solid and problems have been documented using VIA chip-based and DICE-chip based cards.

Not to go off-topic, but yeah, I've heard that the VIA chipset for Firewire is pretty much only good for external hard drives and the sort. I picked up a TI chipset PCIe Firewire card, and it's been working very smoothly!

I'm not sure if AMD is to blame. If everything else is running pretty normally, I think there's something else going on. Have you tried recording a MIDI sequence in your DAW, and then playing it back through Strawberry, and does it run into the same CPU issues?