Kontakt instances in VEP7 take ages to unload

[Esther Gagne]

Hello!

I have a VEP7 orchestral template with around 50 instances of Kontakt 5.8.x in a single VEP7 instance. Loading this 50Gb template takes some time but nothing unusual. I use it mainly with Dorico and it works perfectly fine on my Windows 10 PC with 64Gb of RAM and Intel i9 8-core CPU.

But alas! When comes the time to close VEP7 after a hard day of working, it takes ages for VEP to quit and for the RAM to be free again. Loading the template only takes a few minutes, but unloading it takes up to one hour, sometimes more. When I check the task manager I see the RAM curve lowering painfully slowly.

A few notes:

• It was already the case with VEP6 and my older CPU/motherboard configuration, but it's become unbearable with a full Kontakt template
• The behaviour is the same with various versions of Sibelius and Dorico
• My full VI orchestral template (~70-80 VI with the Dimension Strings) loads and unloads like a charm

Has any of you experienced the same behaviour? Do you have any workaround? I hate to "force quit" software, especially audio software with iLock as I've encountered a few issues (e.g. iLock not recognized after force quit). I understand this is probably a Kontakt issue but I was unable to find any clue when searching on that side.

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Andreas8420]

Hi Esther,

Deallocating samples is quite an intense process handled differently by different sample players inside VE Pro. But regardless - it's the plugin (= Kontakt) that unloads the RAM, not VE Pro. Force-Quitting VE Pro is one option that usually should not harm your system (unless you have not saved your project). I am afraid this "brutal" way will not be implemented into the VE Pro software - it has to be executed manually if you want to do that. 

That being said, it *can* be dangerous if the operating system fails to unlock certain system resources like shared memory, for instance.

Best regards,
Andreas