Hi,

I'm having some strange issues with Kontakt 6 and VEP 6. I run two Mac Pro's with Cubase Pro 9 as the host DAW. VEP 6 is on the Mac Pro 2.1 (2 x 3GHz 8 core 32GB RAM) and is set to 7 threads per instance. I usually only have one instance of VEP running which then hosts a couple of instances of Kontakt 6 and posibly some soft synths (usually Sylenth1). Cubase Pro audio buffer is normally at 384 with theFireFace 800.

However after having an issue with Kontakt maxing out it's CPU meter whilst playing one string voice streamed from either a SSD or 7200 HDD (pre load buffer size set to 240 kb due to 32gb of available RAM), i found that by having the multi processing active in Kontakt. The CPU usage went down by 75%? Ordinarily, i thought the rule is, if your DAW/Host has multi processing active, then everything else which has that option should be off. ASIO gaurd is also off for VEP in Cubase as per p37 of the VEP manual. Also the Kontakt disk meter stays at 0%.

I should add that when i run Kontakt as a stand alone on the slave MP 2.1, the CPU issue doesn't occur when playing the same voice, only when hosted in VEP 6 and Kontakt multi processing is set to off.

I'd be grateful if someone with experince of using a simialr setup as above could offer guidelines/rule of thumb on the following

VEP 6 thread per instance

Kontakt multi processing option when hosted in VEP or Cubase 

Multiple VEP instances versus a singular instance with multiple Kontakts & soft synths

Thank you for taking the time to read the post.

Cheers,

MD

Morning,

Thanks for your reply.

Can you tell us what MacOs versions you are running on each of your MacPro's?

Master Mac Pro 5.1 OS X 10.12.5

Slave Mac Pro OS X 10.11.5

Does this issue happen when using Kontakt 6 as a VST or an AU? 

Ooops haven't tried the VST version but will do so today

Just to clarify, you've tried disabling the multithreading option in the Kontakt 6 and letting VEP 6 manage all mulithreading and the problem still occurs? 

Yes

Is your Kontakt Memory Server Disabled or Enabled? 

Disabled but have also tried with it enabled but same result

Lastly and least relevant, is this a custom patch or from a comercially available library? If the latter, which Library/Patch. Just curious.

It's an ensemble string patch from Berlin Strings (Ensemble Staccato). If i play 3 notes at the same time, the CPU meter in Kontakt hovers between 80-100% and the sound destorts and breaks up. If i play the same patch in the standalone version of Kontakt, it goes to around 31% max. The only way to replicate the same CPU usage when Kontakt is being hosted by VEP 6, is to enable MultiProcessing (7 cores) within the Kontakt settings. 

Thanks again for taking the time,

Cheers,

MD