Curious about occasional Kontakt versions wrongly causing 'low memory' issues compared to most other Kontakt versions...

[dark water]

Hi everyone,

As per the thread title, I'm curious to find out (hopefully from someone 'in the know' like Evil Dragon etc) why a small number of Kontakt versions erroneously create 'low memory warnings' when loading patches, even though most other Kontakt versions do not.


For example, I discovered yesterday that the current Kontakt version 6.7 (which I downloaded / updated via Native Access) would occasionally create these 'low memory' warnings when loading a few of my Kontakt instrument patches (from several different Kontakt sample libraries, such as ones made Wave Alchemy, Soniccouture and Spitfire Audio).


I should stress that I know about 'purging all samples' etc (I have been using Kontakt versions for about 15 years), and the issue is not related to that because I was encountering the patch 'low memory' loading issues even when the patches were the first ones that I had tried to load in Kontakt when re-opening my DAW for that session, etc.


Notably, the current Kontakt 6.7 version was also wrongly calculating (as shown in Kontakt vsti's menu bar top right-hand section) approximately 4 times (!!) the amount of memory needed to load a few of these patches compared to Kontakt version 6.4.1, which I have now re-installed and rolled back to (because it loads all of the Kontakt patches that I want, rather than just some of them unlike version 6.7).
As such, the current 6.7 version would stop loading the patches (which were about halfway through loading) at just prior to 2GB (when it produced its 'low memory' warning), yet the 6.4.1 version was able to load the exact same patches very happily within a total of 400-600MB !


Internet forums, such as VI-Control, have discussed and documented other examples (thankfully pretty rare) of Kontakt versions throwing out these 'low memory issues'.
Happily, most Kontakt versions work well and so it is a case of rolling back to a previous working version (for example, version 6.4.1 in my case).


And in passing, I have enjoyed using Kontakt since Kontakt 2 - and I have also always experienced helpful and quick communication and help from Native Instruments (which I realize is not the case for everyone) - so I really don't have any axe to grind against Kontakt.
The majority of Kontakt versions work fine for me when loading patches.


But truthfully, these 'low memory warnings' are caused purely by particular Kontakt versions failing to understand how to load some patches correctly compared to other Kontakt versions.
There is no user error or computer / DAW software error: the faulty Kontakt versions alone are erroneously failing to load some patches due to curiously using approx at least 4x the amount of memory compared to most (correctly created) Kontakt versions.


As such, for anyone technical who can shine a light on these odd and infrequent faulty Kontakt-created 'low memory' issues, my question is:
why do a few versions of Kontakt (continue to) fail to understand how to load a patch correctly, compared to many other Kontakt versions?

Out of curiosity, I would be eager to find out!

Many thanks,
DW

[bob bobwood]

Are you using VST2 or VST3 and which DAWs and platforms are you on ?

And was the issue on 6.7.0 or 6.7.1 (R0) ?

[dark water]

Are you using VST2 or VST3 and which DAWs and platforms are you on ?

And was the issue on 6.7.0 or 6.7.1 (R0) ?

Windows 7 and 10 (PC).

Ableton Live 10 and Reaper 6.
Also, standalone Kontakt.

VST2.
(Would VST3 make any difference with this issue of low memory warnings?
And even if VST3 worked and VST2 does not, my curiosity remains:
technically what is the reason why the VST2 format versions and standalone versions, that I have tried during recent years, occasionally have low memory problems and appear to take up approx 4x the amount of resources to load a patch compared to versions such as 6.4.1?)

The version was the newest Kontakt version updated (via Native Access) during May, so 6.7.1.
However, I've now rolled it back to 6.4.1 purely because I had previously saved that 6.4.1 installation file on my external HDD
6.4.1 was a version which worked well for me when it first came out (it is a version that I trust with all my sample libraries).