Multiple instances of Kontakt in Logic Pro

Huh. After reading recommendations and advisories against using multiple instances of Kontakt in Logic Pro X projects (which, for better or for worse, I've been doing FOR YEARS) I finally decided to test this and maybe see a bump in performance. I set up a track with just one instance using multiple output routing from Kontakt.

The track I tested had been giving me 100% CPU issues and "System overload" messages (in fact more and more of my tracks are doing this lately) so it seemed like a good candidate. But what did I find? No change! CPU is still pegged at 100%. And worse, I now have serious audio/midi sync issues going on that totally prevents playback. Somehow this has created a worse problem than I had before.

I don't think I set it up incorrectly because it looks and works like the example I followed. It seemed weird adding plugins/FX to aux tracks assigned to Kontakt outputs but presumably that's how this setup is supposed to work. Except now it has created a playback issue that didn't exist before.

I tried various things to stop the glitchy playback from happening--turning off tracks, turning off plugins, changing the project sample rate, increasing the audio buffer size--but nothing has helped so far. I have no external device syncing to the computer; just Logic.

Needless to say, I'm mighty suspicious of this recommendation! Any advice?

As a last resort I'm going to restart the system...

Hopefully by now your system has rebooted. Did it help?

Check how much memory is available, make sure there's no Swap being used. USE THE ACTIVITY MONITOR. Study your battlefield. If there's any swap being used, you're out of RAM.

Clean up your system, and/or create a special bare bones user account, no toys, no gizmos, minimal, to run Logic in. Get it off the Internet. Reboot before you log into that account. Keep an eye on the Activity Monitor. Don't be afraid of rebooting. Get rid of crap that gnaws at your CPU. As you might suspect, by now, a 2.5 i5 is not a racehorse. It's also only allowing 4 concurrent threads. So be good to her. Light jockey, no junk food.

If she's still too weak, and the input track is peaking, dig out some old computer from the closet, even a G4/G5, and set it up as a slave over a $5 gigabit ethernet cable. Best $5 you'll ever spend. Long story short: it doesn't have to be fancy. Feed the slave Network MIDI and run the audio back over a $2 cable into your monitoring setup. In reality it only has to handle one VI at a time to relieve the input track peaking problem. You can take it from there.

Thanks Fern/Raynaud. Sadly no change.

You make very good points but I'm still mystified: WHAT HAPPENED? I went from multiple instances of Kontakt--where the CPU sometimes struggled but playback worked--to the recommended "one instance" of Kontakt and suddenly I get a MIDI/audio sample rate showstopper that makes playback impossible (and CPU still pegged!).

I don't have any available Macs to act as slaves right now, so the best I can do is keep my system lean when I work on those tracks; and I'll probably start freezing tracks.

I'll start monitoring my Activity Monitor and do some sleuthing. Thanks for the tip.

I use nothing but single instances of Kontakt or Play per Instrument articulation without any problems.

So do you have one instance of Kontakt (16xStereo) set up on one track, with multiple instruments routed out to aux tracks?

Or do you have multiple tracks each with one instance of Kontakt? That's what I've been doing up till now.

I don't know specifically what happened with your session, but you should backtrack, and try different alternatives. Can you play back OK with an empty track selected?

Look deeper in your POS collection. You can use an older PC. I've been using Reaper more lately. It runs on "everything" the same way. It can be "themed" to look a lot like Logic. It can host VIs for Logic locally as a Rewire Slave. Or over the LAN. You only need to know it at a minimal level to set it up that way, you can download a 32 or 64 bit mac or Windows version, and eval as long as you want. If it's useful you can get deeper into it as you go. It's very lean and efficient, so it can run OK on older hardware.

Logic has some issues with overloads on the track you're recording/monitoring. I'm steering you to a slave setup because it seems you're hitting that wall, and sooner or later knowing how to use a slave in tandem is a smart investment of time. VEPro is another approach, but it uses a dongle, and it changes how you handle VIs. So I suspect it might be overkill as a first approach, while most people can easily dig up an older machine and an Ethernet cable.

I'm having trouble putting up images here, but let's try again, showing Reaper with the iLogic 2.5 theme. The mixer, like everything in Reaper, can be positioned as you like. The audio tracks can show as waveform and/or spectrum. The MIDI editing and Notation are not as slick as Logic's yet, but they work, and to use it as a slave it's more than adequate.

@fernandraynaud.

The embedded photobucket pictures are not working. All we see is this:

Please use the boards attachments function instead.

Thanks!

/Eric

It's clear that the CEO of Photobucket has made a lot of unfriends, dropping this draconian policy change unannounced on people.

Attach? AAAAH Thank you, Eric, that's wonderful!

I just found how to do it. Now I'm gonna pester y'all with images.

I like purdy pitures. Meet my i7-4790K Hack. There's a remote to change colors. Serious productivity enhancement

That's great!

Looking forward to finally see your examples.

PS Love the Reaper theme there…

I don't know specifically what happened with your session, but you should backtrack, and try different alternatives. Can you play back OK with an empty track selected?

It didn't seem to matter which tracks were played; by the start of the second measure all holy hell of glitchy artifacts would start up, followed by the error dialog. To my mind something is going on with how Kontakt is handling the 4 instruments I had routed out. This was a test version of the "real" track, so I'll just revert to the multi-instance version.

As for older POS PCs lying around, I do have an older gaming PC but I expected that it would have to be OS X, not Windows? I know nothing of Reaper--or setting up slave machines--but this would something I'd consider if it didn't obstruct my workflow and wasn't a pain to maintain. I'll read up some more on this--a slave PC would host mostly the VIs used in a track?

The most likely next step for me is freezing tracks; it really makes a lot of sense for the kind of work I do and I can see that rendering out plugin-heavy tracks would alleviate many of my CPU issues immediately. I guess a new computer is on the horizon for 2018/19...

Thanks for your excellent help BTW; hopefully I can return the favor someday.

I like purdy pitures. Meet my i7-4790K Hack. There's a remote to change colors. Serious productivity enhancement

beautiful

@cbmtrx Reality whispers that there's no shame in freezing and/or rendering/bouncing to stems.

But sometimes it's specifically the VI on the input track that you're trying to record that's overloading, and you can't freeze or bounce that. That's when hosting that VI, and just that VI, outside the Logic app can help.

As to the PC, no, it does not have to run OsX. Reaper runs the same on Windows, either as a 32 bit or a 64 bit version.

FWIW, to make a long story short, on windows you install the free rtpMIDI. That provides the functionality that the network MIDI dialog provides in OsX. That lets you define bidirectional MIDI channels over Ethernet and send MIDI from Logic to Reaper (that's running in Windows). You can host the VI there, and treat the whole slave much as an external synth.

Most of my VIs are either Kontakt instruments or they're AU components. Reaper on Windows runs all those? (I also don't know if Kontakt permits more than one installation)

It's funny, I've known of Reaper for years and years but it's only now that I'm seeing what it can do.

Well, well, well. After some sleuthing, I found at least one culprit responsible for CPU spikes.

Under El Capitan and Logic Pro X, I was noticing inexplicable CPU load and found the culprit. If you use TAL Noisemaker (which is excellent) be warned that when its envelope editor is active (splines controlling filter, OSC1, etc) it produces 100% CPU spikes during playback. When deactivated, the spikes cease.

I don't think it affects bounced material, just playback.