Kontakt 5.6

frokka

In the Kontakt 5.6 update (which came after Komplete 11) changes were made as to how the keyboard displays groups and keyswitches. It is meant to synchronize with the hardware controllers that Native makes, which of course not everyone uses.



Some people on various forums have been complaining about it.



Has anyone tried it with SM, and do you like the update?



https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/petition-for-return-to-the-old-key-switch-colouring.309216/

dickbarbour

I updated to 5.6.1, hoping there were some bugs fixed that might solve the random crashes I'm having with the SM Kontakt instruments under Reaper. No such luck, as I'm still getting them. I have a current show band gig where I need the Trumpet, French Horn, and Trombone, along with other instruments. I've been forced to use a project configured with all of the SM Kontakt instruments covered by their counterparts from the Garritan Personal Orchestra under the Aria Player. I never have crashes as long as I stick to SWAM or Aria Player.



I used to be able to play any SM instruments under Reaper with no problem, but somewhere along the way something has changed. Whether that is my going to Win10, or the various updates in SM, REAPER, or Kontakt, I don't know. I've researched it in the Native Instruments and Reaper forums and there are other people with similar problems, but none of the proposed solutions work for me. I would very much like to use the SM instruments under Kontakt, but no way until I can get this resolved. I see there are some people complaining about the keyboard colors in the new version; I wish that was the worst problem I had!

Dick

dickbarbour

I think I've got this resolved. Maybe everyone else already knew this, but one of the tips I found looking for solutions to Kontakt VSTs crashing in Reaper was the following: Run each VST in its own dedicated process, rather than included in Reaper's process. There is a setting for each VST, for example "Kontakt 5 8out" whereby you can set it to run either in native mode (in the Reaper process), a dedicated process (each instance in its own process), or a separate process (all instances of the VST in the same process). Since I'm only using 4 different SM Kontakt instruments, I chose to put each one in a dedicated process. This costs some extra memory (according to the task manager each one consumes 56MB, but this isolates each instrument from the others and from Reaper). Now if one of the VSTs dies it doesn't take the others or Reaper down with it. If you need to load a lot of instruments you would probably use the "separate process" method for all the Kontakt VST instances together, so you don't incur the memory usage for all those processes.



I also set the Kontakt VST to "Run in buggy mode" which apparently takes various precautions to keep it from crashing. In any case, I haven't had any more crashes since making these changes and if it happens again it should at least be isolated. Anyway, it's good to be playing the SM Kontakt instruments again.



Maybe you don't need to do this, but neither did I for a long time, so you never know. :?



Dick

MSchnell

What kind of crashes did you have with Kontakt ?



I also run multiple Kontakt instances in Reaper (but no SampleModeling instruments in Kontakt).



I never had any "crashes" but I do have "GUI freezing" when I do certain mouse action on Kontakt.



In fact I found that just the mouse freezes for Kontakt and all Reaper, but the sound engine and the computer keyboard goes on working. SO I can hit ESC to tell reaper to close the Kontakt GUI and after that everything is back to normal.



Do you have a different kind of crash ?



-Michael

dickbarbour

MSchnell wrote: What kind of crashes did you have with Kontakt ?



I also run multiple Kontakt instances in Reaper (but no SampleModeling instruments in Kontakt).



I never had any "crashes" but I do have "GUI freezing" when I do certain mouse action on Kontakt.



In fact I found that just the mouse freezes for Kontakt and all Reaper, but the sound engine and the computer keyboard goes on working. SO I can hit ESC to tell reaper to close the Kontakt GUI and after that everything is back to normal.



Do you have a different kind of crash ?



-Michael

Michael,

My crashes were of the kind "Unfortunately, Reaper has stopped working and will now close" or similar words. They all happened when I was trying to load an instrument or set up something in the Kontakt GUI. It was difficult to get to the point where an instrument was ready to play so I didn't actually play anything to see how stable that might be. I'm not even sure if it would have happened using other than SM instruments because I don't use Kontakt for anything else. Now all the SM instruments seem to be stable. I'm going to have to play them for awhile before trusting them while playing with other people, though. Maybe you ought to try this method to see if it fixes your freezes.

Dick

MSchnell

So you see completely other errors than I do. I never had this kind of crash.



Here, loading never was a problem, but deleting an Instrument or instruments set from a Kontakt instance was.



In the Reaper forum this has been discussed, and there were some others that also had the "hanging".



In fact I don't suppose that the SampleModeling (or any other) instrument can be blamed, as (AFAIK) the instruments do not feature any binary code and hence can't crash the VST host.



-Michael

dickbarbour

Well, the saga continues. Now that Reaper doesn't crash I'm getting the Kontakt GUI freezes that Michael gets. At least now Reaper stays up because it's in a different process and I can get out of the Kontakt instruments, but it's very hard to get them tweaked like I want them. Just playing the instruments seems to be stable though. I agree that the fault is probably not with SM but with Kontakt itself, or the way that Reaper handles it. I guess I should submit support cases, but right now I'm tired of worrying about it and need to get back to playing music.

Dick



Edit: I just checked back on my history and found that I had posted about microtuning the Kontakt SM instruments on Sept. 1, and at that time I wasn't having these problems. Between that post and now I have mostly been off arranging music for a new show and not playing much. Nothing has changed in the physical environment, so some software is to blame, but who knows which?