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Kontakt VST3 cutting off long notes randomly when bouncing to audio???

MarkKouznetsov

MarkKouznetsov

Member
Guys! I really need help with this. I already experienced this before but it seemed I somehow made it work. For a while. Now it's not working again.

Whenever I bounce a midi part to audio, Kontakt will randomly cut off parts of long midi notes, resulting in a faulty rendering. It's not a DAW problem. I'm using Studio One but the same happens to me in Cubase 12. It started happening to me at the end of Kontakt 6 update cycle on a very old laptop. It happens to me on the latest rig (128GB of RAM, i9 12th gen, latest SSDs, all that stuff).

The only workaround is to bounce to audio in real time. Playback is fine. No disk/cpu overloads. Tried various Kontakt settings, as well as DAW's own (buffer sizes and all that). Nothing works. I've heard people had a workaround with using a VST2, but c'mon. It shouldn't be happening on a new machine!

Short notes are fine. I'm not a total noob, I checked everything, including the voices count for the patch and so on. Including my hardware. Everything is FINE. SSDs are working FINE. CPUs are fine. RAM is fine.

Can't find any info, though I saw others having the same problem when using Google.

There is no way my fresh PC can't handle what my laptop used to handle.

Example: loading Rhodope --> Legato Aah --> holding a key for like 5 bars (doesn't matter) --> bouncing to audio

I used to have that problem with CSS. My workaround was to override instrument's load buffer in Kontakt (set it to max).

For the love of god, I don't understand why a fresh, powerful machine can't handle something that used to work just fine with standard buffer sizes on a 6 years old laptop using a 5400rpm drive. I have to point out that my laptop has the exact same problem now. It used to bounce midi just fine and running CSS from the old HDD. It's just one day, it stopped doing that. And then installing it on a fresh PC only to get the same result? 🤷‍♂️

Konatkt 6/7 - makes no difference.

Screenshot 2022-10-22 162653.png
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I’ve had the same issue. It drives me absolutely nuts. To me it sounds like Kontakt does not know it is in non real-time so it doesn’t wait for samples to load from disk like it should, causing dropouts. The only thing that has worked consistently to solve the problem for me has been to set prebuffer size to maximum and click “offline render mode.”

For every instrument.

It’s aggravating.

Edit: switching to VST did not solve the issue for me when I tried it either.
 
What a cruel joke.... It used to work JUST FINE. Out of the box. Never changed any settings in the multicore support. Or over-riding instruments' default buffer sizes... It just worked!
 
This is incredibly frustrating. Having exactly the same issue. Maxing out the buffer size override helps, but doesn't fix the problem entirely. Has anyone had any success with this??
 
The only thing that hasn't been mentioned here is setting the "offline interpolation" in the Engine tab in the regular settings window to "perfect" in addition to "bounce mode", which is in the expert tab on the left and then also "engine".

In one case it happened with a single short sample which I dragged inside Kontakt!
It also happens when stretching a simply very far up the keys.

I managed to solve it once by selecting all the groups inside Kontakt and changing the sampler mode from DFD to Sampler.
If anyone wants to know about that I can elaborate. It can probably break some things in some libraries so I don't think it would be recommended and only a last measure.
 
Thanks for this - just trying now. Some combo of no multiprocessing, 'perfect' offline interpolation and "bounce mode" seems to have solved things! Is it possible to set "bounce mode" for more than 1 instrument at once? Or do I need to enable it for every single track?
 
Update - I thought I'd found a solution but having exactly the same problem again, so back to square one. Anyone have any other ideas, or should I resign myself to having to online render everything?

Edit: if it's any help, the dropouts are all Cinematic Studios libraries, on long notes.
 
Do any of those notes that drop out have loop crossfades defined in Wave Editor, perchance (if you can even enter the instrument edit mode)? I have a hunch that they do.
 
EvilDragon said:
Do any of those notes that drop out have loop crossfades defined in Wave Editor, perchance (if you can even enter the instrument edit mode)? I have a hunch that they do.
Click to expand...
I wish I could see - as far as I can tell by clicking around I don't think you can enter the edit mode on Cinematic Studio stuff (might be wrong?)
 
I had a dropout with a single 5 seconds file that kept happening till I changed the mode to sampler. Of course maybe it was a different issue. But I've definitely seen a bunch of loops cutting off too, always at the same point after a few seconds in. 2 times I managed to resolve it by simply slightly changing the start and end points or even just the sample start itself... not sure. Since I didn't change anything else at all it seems like a Kontakt bug.
 
Yes, sampler mode will work fine. The issue is very specifically happening with DFD mode only and ONLY if the zone has loop crossfade defined, and then ONLY in certain cases (I'm assuming if crossfade is longer than the actual loop area, or something like that, but doesn't necessarily have to be the case). And yes changing the loop points can often alleviate the issue too (but that's not really a solution).

It IS a Kontakt bug and a very old one at it, and Kontakt team is aware of it. It is also not a riskless thing to fix, since who knows what else the fix could affect negatively... DFD code was not touched in over 15 years now.
 
EvilDragon said:
Yes, sampler mode will work fine. The issue is very specifically happening with DFD mode only and ONLY if the zone has loop crossfade defined, and then ONLY in certain cases (I'm assuming if crossfade is longer than the actual loop area, or something like that, but doesn't necessarily have to be the case). And yes changing the loop points can often alleviate the issue too (but that's not really a solution).

It IS a Kontakt bug and a very old one at it, and Kontakt team is aware of it. It is also not a riskless thing to fix, since who knows what else the fix could affect negatively... DFD code was not touched in over 15 years now.
Click to expand...
That's great to know, thanks for the insight. Fingers crossed this can be solved soon - it makes certain libraries really tough to use in a professional environment as offline bouncing is so important for speed.
 
EvilDragon said:
Yes, sampler mode will work fine. The issue is very specifically happening with DFD mode only and ONLY if the zone has loop crossfade defined, and then ONLY in certain cases (I'm assuming if crossfade is longer than the actual loop area, or something like that, but doesn't necessarily have to be the case). And yes changing the loop points can often alleviate the issue too (but that's not really a solution).

It IS a Kontakt bug and a very old one at it, and Kontakt team is aware of it. It is also not a riskless thing to fix, since who knows what else the fix could affect negatively... DFD code was not touched in over 15 years now.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't it be possible to create a new "loop" safe mode from scratch based on DFD?
I just can't believe that with serious efforts it's not fixable for so many years... also bad for the paying developers in particular.
 
Lionel Schmitt said:
Wouldn't it be possible to create a new "loop" safe mode from scratch based on DFD?
I just can't believe that with serious efforts it's not fixable for so many years... also bad for the paying developers in particular.
Click to expand...
It's not about making a new mode at all. It's about locating where the problem lies and fixing it so that it works without breaking any other stuff. THAT is the tricky part. It is not unfixable, but it needs to be prioritized by product managers etc etc.
 
I contacted Alex Wallbank from Cinematic Studio via email, and he's experienced a DFD bug occasionally on certain notes, with the loop sometimes glitching on the 3rd (or 4th, etc.) loop - strangely 1 or 2 loops mostly seem to be fine. He says it's possible to address the issue on a note-by-note basis by changing the sample modulation amount, but to do this he needs to know which specific notes (including the specific articulation and dynamic) are affected.

Sounds like it might be worth some testing to see which notes specifically are causing problems. I've got a problem project which I might be able to identify some in. If any of you have certain problems with specific notes it would be well worth isolating them and contacting Cinematic Studio.
 
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