Hi I wanted to chime in on this. I have a PC based system with 2 slaves running all my VSTi with VSL. After I installed 7043 I was having dropouts then after a while, my Host computer's cpu would start to overload after working in a session. Something would trigger it and it would crack very horribly until I released the VSTs and then reloaded them. When something made it go up past 60%, there would be some snowball effect where the CPU could not die down to a lower percentage and would then start to crack the audio. Unfortunately, at the time, I did not realize it was the upgrade that was causing this. I had made some changes to my system at that time and thought it had something to do with that. I actually switched DAWs because of it, and was on the verge of purchasing a new computer today, when at the last second I realized it may have something to do with the 7043 upgrade a while back. So I reinstalled the 6853 version and guess what.. system works fine now, like it did before. Now when it goes up to 50% or 60% for any reason, it dies down again and does not hover then spike out of control. Also the dropouts stopped. ***UPDATE!!!!!*** - I spoke too soon. The problem is back. When I opened up the key editor in Cubase, the cpu spiking and audio cracks came back with a vengeance. Well - back to the drawing board! :( ***UPDATE PART 2*** - I installed ViennaEnsemblePro-WIN-4.0.5436 and now its stable again. Does anyone have similar issues or is it just me? :)

Thank you, I just sent it in

I sent the email to support@vsl.co.at But did not get a number. Is there another method?

Problem is back - it must be something unrelated to VSL since I used VSL on 10 scores and haven't had this problem before. It may be related to some sample rate change.... but I can't pin point it. Sometimes (not always) the cracking happens and I get this messae on my slave (please close and restart Kontakt after a sample rate change) However as far as I know everything is 48k

I've been having a similar issue with Pro Tools as the DAW, for me it seems that the latest release of VE pro is the cause, as that has changd and my Kontakt has not. I'm wondering if there is anything I would have to manually delete to go back to a previous version on VE Pro that the uninstaller would not get rid of. I was running quite well for a couple of months before upgrading and encountering this problem

All I can say is I've used VSL with no problems at all for most of this year. Then last month I started getting audio spikes and cpu audio overloads. I can work for 20-40min just fine and then it shows up. The only think I did was update Kontakt, VSL & put PLAY on my laptop. And the last two movies I scored had that setup with no problems. But then the overloads started about 4 weeks ago during that time I may have done an update on something. Since it's still doing it with earlier versions of VSL, then it must be something in regards to Kontakt. Kontakt is the only program that gives me errors about the 'wrong sample rate'.. and the sound does sound like clashing sample rates. However the Kontakt error doesn't always show up when this problem occurs, so hard to narrow it down.

I wanted to add a couple screenshots.. This is whats happening to my CPU when things start cracking -> http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/3179/cputf.jpg It hovers there and wont go back down unless I turn off the VSTs and then turn them back on again. Here is the same part playing back fine -> http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1127/afterrest.jpg Then after a while - cpu goes back up and stays there. I want to say again - I've scored several films with my system and never had a problem with this. So it must be something with an update somewhere with Kontakt, VSL, PLAY..etc... Specs.. Windows 7 Pro(64bit) / Cubase 5.5.2 (32bit) Altiverb 6 Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9300 2.49 GHZ EMU 1616m 8 GB Of RAM ATI RADEON HD 4650 w/ dual monitors

I didn't think to look but I will next time it comes up. Also - are there recommend Kontakt settings for VSL? Things like whether or not to use multiprocessor support in Kontakt, etc... I saw something about memory management in Kontakt, but aside from the Instrument preload buffer size, it gives me no other options. thanks

@Karel said:

What does the CPU meter in the VE Pro instances say?

CPU meter in VE PRO freezes when the dropouts and Mac CPU overload happens.

It's as if the whole application just freezes. Again, the rest of the tracks that don't feed audio from VE PRO continue to play during the dropouts/freezes.

On my end - the cpu never exceeds 30%. However - I just got an overload and Kontakt (in VSL) said 'Please close and restart Kontakt after a sample change'. I have been switching around different programs in my host, so perhaps a sample rate change occurred. Hard to know for sure though - this may not be directly related to VSL.. maybe its Kontakt. I'll post on the NI forums and see whats up

In case anyone is following this thread - I wanted to mention I reverted back to the previous version of Kontakt 4 and the problem seems to have gone away (so far).. And I noticed this problem starting once I installed the latest Kontakt 4 - (the 4.1.3 update which was release end of last month). So if my theory is correct, the problem has something to do with the latest Kontakt 4 and how it's interacting with VSL. It may have something to do with sample rate issues since when the problem occurred sometimes Kontakt would give me a 'wrong sample rate issue'. But after reverting the the previous Kontakt 4 install, my system has been stable. I'll update in case something new comes up.

I'm also getting dropout issues but with no CPU overload showing either on host or server running in 32bit mode. Host is a quad core Mac 12Gb RAM OS10.6.5 running ProTools 8.1 & VEP plugin. Server is same OS, 8 Core mac 16Gb RAM using VEP + VIP (haven't tried Kontakt). The dropouts seem random - no sign that they're related to CPU spikes or other processes. I've watched the Activity Monitor whilst running the VEP/VIP combination and nothing untoward appears to be happening. VEP CPU load about 25%. Currently running Pro Tools with 256 samples delay but higher values seem to make no diference. I also have another issue where, the first time I go into record, the VEP/VIP sound distorts. The only way I can resolve this is by saving the session, quitting Pro Tools and then restarting. PT will then go into record without the accompanying distortion from VEP.