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  4. Another Kontakt 4 Glitch with build 6853

  • Another Kontakt 4 Glitch with build 6853

    P
    P

    Those of you who read my Gigabit switch post will be thinking that this is the reason for this new problem but in fact I was experiencing this before fitting the switch.

    I know that the Vienna engineers have already communicated a few Kontakt problems back to NI but this is a new one and once again I don't know if it's build 6853 or the new Kontakt 4.1.1.3832 Audio Unit plug.

    Basically the problem is that Kontakt will stop playing for a couple of seconds..............randomly. It can happen with any Kontakt instrument you have loaded and it can happen during playback and also whilst the sequencer is stopped and you are playing an instrument live.

    I keep looking for a spike in the Macs processors to see if this behaviour is related but there is no spike.

    Very hard to trouble shoot this because it is so random.

    Any other Kontakt/VEPro users experiencing this?

    All other VEPro Instruments keep playing whilst the Kontakt Instrument will stop and then restart.
  • P
    P

    Just to update this. I just caught sight of my processor activity when this happened again and indeed there is a 100% spike in one of the 8 processors on the slave.

    Oh and I just saw it happen again and the sequencer is not playing in fact both machines are idle.

    So for about half a second my processor read out looks like this:

    100%   8%   1%   3%   7%   11%   10%   6%

    Then the one at 100% returns to normal.

    When looking at the Activity monitor I can see that VEP is sitting at around 35% (even though the little read out in VEP says about 4% ......why such a difference I wonder)

    When the spike happens the Activity Monitor read out for VEP goes up to 100% and the sound from Kontakt stops.

    The next thing I will try is turning off multithreading in VEP.
  • P
    P

    I did a couple of things and the problem has stopped for now.

    I turned multithreading off in VEP and it made no difference.

    I had a printer plugged into the second ethernet port of my slave. I pulled it out.

    I restarted the computer.

    Problem has stopped.

    I turned multithreading back on to 8 in VEP.

    Problem still won't happen.

    Could the printer or even using the second ethernet port have caused the problem?  I needed this plugged in before I bought the gigabit switch because I had run out of sockets on the Airport Extreme.

    Now I can plug it into the Switch.

    I have reconnected the printer and still the problem won't happen.

    It WAS happening every 3 or 4 minutes before.

    Got me beat. I'm not sure if it was turning off and on the multithreading in VEP or restarting the computer or unplugging the printer and freeing up an ethernet port.

    It was doing this yesterday so I guess that rules out restarting the computer because it was re started this morning.

    It could also be that toggling multithreading in VEP is the solution.
  • C
    C

    Hey Philco,

    this may be related or not but in DP i get CPU spikes when i have a Kontakt instance opened. Even if they are both idle. VEPRO is not even opened.

    Try experimenting with Kontakt's multi-processor preferences. I know that NI advises against enabling multi-processor support in K4 as they say that the DAW should take charge of this. As for using K4 within VEPRO i don't know what would be recommendable?

    HTH

    Best,
  • P
    P

    Had spiking all day yesterday and as you noted it will happen with both machines idle.

    I think I may have a solution (and it wasn't the printer)

    I have now disabled multithreading in both VEP and Kontakt. Last night I worked for about 1 hour with no spikes so I'll see how the rig goes today.

    This spiking thing is quite nasty and get's worse over time. There is also a strange thing that happens when you quit VEPro. After quitting VEPro (and according to the Activity Console VEPro HAS quit) one of the processors will spike to 100% and just hang there for ever until I restart the machine. You have to restart the machine because you cannot move the mouse anymore and you are basically locked out.

    I'm worried that no one else has seen this behavior. I'm starting to think that I have a faulty Mac.

    I'll know more after today's work.
  • civilization 3C
    civilization 3C
    last edited
    last edited

    @philco said:

    I did a couple of things and the problem has stopped for now.

    I turned multithreading off in VEP and it made no difference.

    I had a printer plugged into the second ethernet port of my slave. I pulled it out.

    I restarted the computer.

    Problem has stopped.

    I turned multithreading back on to 8 in VEP.

    Problem still won't happen.

    Could the printer or even using the second ethernet port have caused the problem?

    Yes. The printer is very likely the problem. Don't share any hardware input/output (or network connections) with other devices when you do audio work. Period. You're asking for trouble.
  • P
    P

    Well today was fairly "spike" free. The only thing happening now is a small dropout every 20 mins or so. I can't see the CPU spiking like it was before but all channels of VEP stop playing for about .5 sec.

    Annoying but I will keep trying to solve this. At the moment I'm thinking it has to be related to the multithread preferences in both VEP and Kontakt.

    Although if I wasn't using Kontakt I think I could have the multithreading selected in VEP and have no problems.

    Yes the printer is now on the Gigabit switch and only one port of the slave is being used.
  • C
    C

    Hi Philco,

    i can confirm i'm having these random .5 secs drop-outs in VEPRO. This using Localhost. Haven't noticed this from the G5 slave.

    Claude

    MacPro 12 Core@2.66

    10.6.4

    DP7.21

    Kontakt 4.1.1

    Spectrasonics OST
  • P
    P

    Sorry to hear that you are experiencing the same thing but glad I'm not alone.

    So for me this started when I had simultaneous updates. VEPro 6853 and Komplete 7 (which had a new version of Kontakt)

    So if this keeps happening I will go back a version of VEP and see how that goes.

    But I'm betting it's Kontakt.............if history means anything.
  • J
    J

    Phil,

    A random data point to toss into the mix:

    I stopped using Kontakt4 (latest build) on my mac VE Pro server (OS 10.6.4) about a week or so ago - and have only been using it on my WinXP VE Pro server, and I have not experienced these issues on the winxp machine. This may be related to mac (au) version of Kontakt4 ???

    I continue to use Kontakt player 3.5 on the mac server, and have not had any issues there.

    Just thought I'd share this little data point in case it helps the engineers sort this out.

    My copy of the full Komplete 7 is expected to arrive on Tuesday -- I may refrain from installing on the mac just yet...

    J
  • J
    J

    Same problem here. Activity Monitor does not show any issues related to the CPU spikes. In fact, I am streaming audio in a VEPRO instance from a WinXP system using Kontakt 4, which continues to play the audio from VEPRO while the Mac instances of VEPRO drop out for anywhere from 1-4 seconds.

    In addition, and this is important, any instances of Omnisphere running in the same VEPRO instance on the Mac will also drop out, so I don't think that this is necessarily related to Kontakt only.

    Jurgen

    MacPro 8-Core, 2.8 GHz
    10.5.8  
    Logic 9.1
    Kontakt 4.1.1.3832
    Omnisphere 1.3.2c
  • J
    J

    Interesting re: WinXP not exhibiting the issue, whereas mac is.

    I use the WinXP as my primary Omnisphere host (only load it into the mac slave under unusually circumstances) - so i can't comment.

    I have not had issues with dropouts on the mac -- but I am only hosting VI Pro and some Kontakt3 only on the mac.

    I hope VSL engineering can reproduce some these issues.
  • civilization 3C
    civilization 3C

    you should turn off multiprocessing in kontakt to use it as plugin. that's probably in the manual. I don't know what 'printer is on the gigabit swtich' means, but if it's on the same LAN as VE Pro, it shouldn't be.

    I haven't had these issue with k4.1 at all (VE Pro 6853, slave = octocore macpro 2.93ghz, OSX.6.4).
  • P
    P

    Ok we are not alone and it looks like it's not Kontakt.

    refer this thread.

    http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/26637/175223.aspx#175223
  • J
    J

    Done that too. Dropouts still occur. I have turned off multi-processing in Kontakt, but the issue still continues. 

    At the moment all indications are that the latest build of VEPRO is having some issues.
  • P
    P

    I went back to build 6844 and all drop outs have stopped................after a week of constant drop outs.