KVR Audio

sockofgold · Post by **sockofgold** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 2:39 pm

Hi guys,

I picked up Concert String 2, Concert Brass 2, and Diamond in the Kirk Hunter sale last month. For the most part, I am digging most of the sounds, but I am having major issues with load-times.

Now let me elaborate. I'm not talking about the usual behavior with large libraries in Kontakt, where, when you load it up, the channel shows up immediately in Kontakt and then loads samples for a few seconds.

When I try to load any of the KHS libraries, it completely freezes my system for about 60 seconds before it even begins loading.

I loaded up a Cubase project yesterday that had about 8-10 customized KHS patches in it, and my PC literally just froze for 5 full minutes before it even began loading samples into Kontakt. This does not seem normal at all. I use Kontakt a lot, and use a lot of big libraries, and none of them do this. They may take a while to load, but they don't make the system hang before doing so.

One more point: I am not using the full default KHS patches. I went through and purged everything I didn't need, so these sections I am speaking of are just single sections (usually "Half") with only the basic articulations (no tremolo, trills, pizz, etc.). This issue occurs with all three major libraries: CS2, CB2, and Diamond.

My system is plenty strong enough to handle these, BTW:
Win 7 64
i5 3570K
8 GB RAM
samples are on a secondary internal 1TB HDD

Is this normal with KHS libraries? I do not currently have an appropriate setup to test on another system, so I am just trying to determine if something is wrong on my end, or if people actually put with this.

Thanks for your help!

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 2:51 pm

I have found that same problem loading Kirk Hunter libraries namely Concert Strings 2. I timed one project and it took seven minutes to fully load. But that is after a fresh boot of the computer but if you close a project and reopen it you will find it loads a lot quicker.

Regards
Kraznet

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:05 pm

Have you done a "batch resave" of the instrument files? Usually speeds things up considerably - back them up first if you want to play it safe.

sockofgold · Post by **sockofgold** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:07 pm

Kraznet wrote:But that is after a fresh boot of the computer but if you close a project and reopen it you will find it loads a lot quicker.

Regards
Kraznet

Yes, to be fair, I have actually noticed that as well. It is still an unbearably long time, though, especially if I am auditioning a few different patches to see which sounds best, and is still significantly longer than any other library I personally have ever used. But again, that's why I asked if it's just me--maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.

I just can't figure out what the deal is. I wonder if it is the TVEC interface or something, or just tons of scripts that slows it down so much? I have never seen another library lag like this.

Thanks for the reply!

sockofgold · Post by **sockofgold** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:08 pm

egbert wrote:Have you done a "batch resave" of the instrument files? Usually speeds things up considerably - back them up first if you want to play it safe.

Is that any different than manually re-saving my own individual patches? Every patch I am loading is one that I have altered from the original and re-saved in Kontakt 5. Would a batch re-save still potentially help? I assumed that was only for patches created in older versions.

Happy to try anything that might help, though.

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:18 pm

Hi Egbert,

egbert wrote:Have you done a "batch resave" of the instrument files? Usually speeds things up considerably - back them up first if you want to play it safe.

I've never tried batch resave I will have to look into it.

Regards
Kraznet

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:59 pm

sockofgold wrote:
egbert wrote:Have you done a "batch resave" of the instrument files? Usually speeds things up considerably - back them up first if you want to play it safe.
Is that any different than manually re-saving my own individual patches? Every patch I am loading is one that I have altered from the original and re-saved in Kontakt 5. Would a batch re-save still potentially help? I assumed that was only for patches created in older versions.

Possibly not but I would give it a try. Might be worth timing before and after the resave. I have done it with sets of patches supplied with a library. I suspect the path information for the files gets optimised in some way.

chroma · Post by **chroma** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:23 pm

when the big esoundz drum group buy was going on, kontakt went through some changes. the freezing happens as kontakt is loading (and compiling?) the ksp scripts, so the larger/more complex the scripts (i.e. tvec3/4), the more it would freeze. but one kontakt version got rid of this, and you could get older patches fixed by doing a batch resave. i don't really know what a batch resave does, or why doing an individal save doesn't fix the problem, but it did eliminate the freeze for a lot of dm2 patches.

sockofgold · Post by **sockofgold** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:45 pm

chroma wrote:when the big esoundz drum group buy was going on, kontakt went through some changes. the freezing happens as kontakt is loading (and compiling?) the ksp scripts, so the larger/more complex the scripts (i.e. tvec3/4), the more it would freeze. but one kontakt version got rid of this, and you could get older patches fixed by doing a batch resave. i don't really know what a batch resave does, or why doing an individal save doesn't fix the problem, but it did eliminate the freeze for a lot of dm2 patches.

Huh, interesting. I thought the scripting might have something to do with it. I will certainly do a batch re-save this evening and see if it helps (and report back). Thanks for the tips, guys!

sockofgold · Post by **sockofgold** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:56 pm

Well, unfortunately, it definitely did not help. I batch re-saved all of my patches, and it still freezes for about 7 minutes the first time I try to load up my Cubase session with a handful of KHS instruments in it.

As Kraznet mentioned, it does go faster once you have already loaded the instruments, and then need to reload them in another session, but that doesn't change the fact that this takes WAY too long.

I hope KHS can fix this. I really like the sound a playability of the libraries, but this is pretty ridiculous.

(For reference's sake, I started loading my session, then put away my laundry, then posted this entire post, and it is STILL loading.

)

sauli · Post by **sauli** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:05 pm

I had these same issues, but batch resave helped a lot. Used to take like 30 seconds to load one patch, now it takes like 10 seconds maximum.

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:14 pm

I have the same libraries (TVEC 3/4) and no problems loading them in Kontakt 4.x. I use 7200 rpm drives and load the full instruments but usually only in fairly small sets. If you are loading large arrangements (eg full orchestral mockups with dozens of instruments) it is normal that the song takes a long time to load - eg 15 minutes. My understanding is that pros who work with large orchestral templates often leave the machine(s) with their orchestral libraries powered up and fully loaded for efficiency.

Make sure your samples drive is defragged. I always use larger cluster sizes when I format dedicated sample partitions because it speeds file operations - eg defragging is way faster. If your drive is nearly full or you are using partitions and the sample libraries you are using are near the back end that will slow performance markedly also.

If you want really fast load times and there is no problem with your machine then fast SSDs would be the way to go. Also, look at the buffer size you are loading. That could also be a factor perhaps.

If it is about compiling scripts then I don't know what to suggest except maybe find the version of Kontakt that does this best (eg if you are using K5 and for some reason it is slower, use K4).

sauli · Post by **sauli** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:18 pm

Loading times of minutes really sound like there is something wrong. In 15 minutes you can download couple of gigabytes from internet with decent connection so shouldn't really take that much time to load them from hd.

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:28 pm

Actually I should have mentioned since I put SSD drives in my laptop loading samples is dramatically faster. It's only on my tower computers which use the 7200 drives where the loading is slow.

While I think of it was a TVEC 4 update ever released?

Regards
Kraznet

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:28 pm

It's true that Kontakt is much faster since some major improvements around K 4.1 or 4.2. That's when the batch resave was introduced and encrypted/compressed libraries too. Prior to that, loading monster pianos like The Big One took a long time - just for one library.

Kirk Hunter load times: is it just me?