KVR Audio

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 4:46 pm

I got a problem that Kontakt, Reaktor, FM8 et al, takes long to load up for use.

In FL Studio, it can't take almost a minute from I select the instrument, until it has loaded up for use in the channel.

I do not have the most powerful system (4GB, i3, Win7), but other heavy duty plugs like Air Vaccum or Bazille loads up in a matter of seconds.

Are there some ways to get NI plugs to load up faster. I use FL Studio 32bit, and also the NI plugs as 32bit, so it is not because I bridge them.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 4:55 pm

Kontakt and Reaktor are much bigger plugins than Bazille or Vacuum Pro, so naturally they load more stuff by default. However, one minute is extreme. Check the status of your HD, defragment etc. Your RAM usage might also come into play if the system needs to swap things out to the page file.

Of course, SSD would definitely speed things up. Other than that, I don't think there's much else you can do.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:00 pm

EvilDragon wrote:Check the status of your HD, defragment etc. Your RAM usage might also come into play if the system needs to swap things out to the page file.

I defragmented the HDD about a month ago, but it might be a problem that I have got it filled to the very brim, think I got 1GB left of storage now

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:12 pm

You are trolling, right?

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:16 pm

EnGee wrote:You are trolling, right?

How do you reckon?

I love NI plugs, I use Kontakt every day, that is a reason why I want tips about, if it is possible to get them to load faster

Kumi_27 · Post by **Kumi_27** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:19 pm

Numanoid wrote:I defragmented the HDD about a month ago, but it might be a problem that I have got it filled to the very brim, think I got 1GB left of storage now

It's not healthy for the OS. There's no space for temporary files nor the OS swap. No wonder it takes time.

For SSD there should be even more free space for it to run properly, like 20%.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:24 pm

Kumi_27 wrote:For SSD there should be even more free space for it to run properly, like 20%.

UNLESS you use it solely for storage or, say, sample streaming. Then you can fill it to the brim.

But yes, if you have a full HD, then expect things to slow down.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:28 pm

EvilDragon wrote:But yes, if you have a full HD, then expect things to slow down.

OK, so lets say I put the big sample libs that takes up most space on my HDD on an external drive (like a WD Passport for example) and stream from that instead, and free up space on my C drive, that would be a way to go about it.

In the 90's having HDDs of 500MB was a lot, so I think it has got stuck in me that not using all the space on my HDD is like a wastage, 1GB is a lot thinking in 90's terms

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:32 pm

If you have a decent number of sample libraries already, by all means they should be on their own hard drive! ALL of them!

However the number of libraries you have installed doesn't really impact loading time of empty instance of Kontakt...

4damind · Post by **4damind** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:46 pm

SSD and more RAM

But the SSD should bring the biggest improvement, I remember after switching from a HDD to an SSD.. loading of projects with Kontakt was a lot quicker. RAM is always important but this is something you can easy see in the taskmanager or with some of this system tools if this is an bottleneck.

Btw. you don't need the biggest SSD because they are still expensive. For typical Kontakt libraries and plugins I think for most users 256GB should be a sufficient capacity for Afaik about 85€.

dave dove · Post by **dave dove** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:42 pm

@OP
did they used to load faster?

dave

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:49 pm

dave dove wrote:@OP
did they used to load faster?

It feels like it

It is especially Kontakt. When browsing for files, it seems that it scans through the folder it is assigned to, my sample folder got about 170GB of content, and 180,000+ files (in 6000+ sub-folders). This has been steadily accumulating over the past three years or so.

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 8:41 pm

Numanoid wrote:
EnGee wrote:You are trolling, right?
How do you reckon?

I love NI plugs, I use Kontakt every day, that is a reason why I want tips about, if it is possible to get them to load faster

Sorry, didn't mean to be harsh.

You need at least 25% free space (for me I always try to have about 40%). Samples and games can go to an external drive or to another sata internal HD.
Virtual memory needs at least the double of your RAM (that is 8 GB).

I suggest for badget 2x1TB WD blue (or one external in the case of a laptop). If you already have a desktop. They are cheap and really with good life.

I don't have SSD and can log in with seconds in windows 10 but in the laptop it's not so fast because of the slow 5200 5400 rpm speed.

jdnz · Post by **jdnz** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:21 pm

EvilDragon wrote:If you have a decent number of sample libraries already, by all means they should be on their own hard drive! ALL of them!

if you're using a lot of sample libs (and mutiple instances of kontakt) the way kontakt pre-caches samples can really impact loading off a mechanical HDD - causes classic disk thrashing (as the multiple instances all try to load samples from different bits of disk at the same time).

In those cases a 2nd ssd for the sample libs (even if it's a USB external SSD like the samsung t1) will be orders of magnitude faster at opening a project than having the samples on HDD (worst case is samples on the same HDD as all your other s/w, but even on a dedicated sample HDD it'll still thrash mercilessly). Testing I did showed that even a decently fast USB3 pendrive (one that's rated for >100megabytes/sec) will markedly improve project load times (thruput is no better than a sata or usb3 hdd, but zero seek time overhead)

bigcat1969 · Post by **bigcat1969** » Wed Nov 25, 2015 1:27 am

I didn't notice if anyone said this, but I notice that my microsoft malware scanning thingy can slow everything down. I like to exclude my presonus and native instruments folders and this seems to speed things up. Of course presumably if presonus or native instruments gives you a virus or you download one to those folders it won't be pretty.

How to get NI plugs to load faster?