K2 + PMI Bosendorfer + Scarbee WEP = Shangri-La?

Apologies up front if this has been covered before in specific. I've been searching and searching but haven't found a thread with the same problem I've been experiencing.

I am using Kontakt 2.0.1 on a Powerbook G4 / 1.5GHz / 2GB RAM / MOTU828 / MIDISPORT 4x4 and a LACIE d2 FW800 drive running OSX 10.3.9

My main wish was to use the Kurzweil K2600, which I'm currently using for the piano sounds, as a controller for some far superior piano tones.

I purchased the PMI Consolidated Libraries and the Scarbee WEP Library.

My hope was that I would be able to use Kontakt as a replacement for all the terrible sounds in the Kurzweil. I really love the sounds of the Bosendorfer and the Steinway, and the Scarbee WEP is nearly impossible to beat for an accurate, faithful reproduction of a 200A. Hats off to those guys.

However, it has become increasingly obvious that there is no way in hell that I will be able to have a reasonably responsive grand piano set and the WEP set, playback without any coughing from the computer.

I've bought the NI updates.
I've downloaded the updated patches from PMI and Scarbee.
I've created a seperate user in OSX that has as few processes running in the background as I can figure out how to turn off.
I've wiggled the latency slider.
I've switched from DFD to Sampler to DFD ad nauseum...

No matter what I do, nothing seems to really work reliably. It'll be fine for the first 10-15 seconds, but inevitably, either the CPU chokes, or the Disk chokes.

I am not a super-technical player by any means, however I do use the sustain pedal quite a bit, and from time-to-time, really bash on the keys. A real piano can handle this, as can the Kurzweil.

So why oh why can't I get Kontakt to behave? It is incredibly frustrating and I am beginning to think that Kontakt can never do what I was hoping it would do.

If anyone has some insight into this, a response would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

MJ

 

Hi

I'm sorry to say, my experience of Kontakt/Kontakt2 is that
a) you need *lots* of CPU - far more than on your laptop.
b) you need *really* fast disk - particularly for Michiel Posts superb piano sounds.

I have a dual 2.5Ghz Mac G5 with a 10k rpm internal SATA disk and *most* of the time I get away without coughs and hiccups except when I play a huge amount of polyphony and sustain (I have a song that repeats chords every 16th beat with the sustain pedal down and after about 30 seconds it starts to cough really bad).

It is important to have your big samples only on the first partition of a SATA disk.

I know this probably isn't what you want to hear and I'm sorry - just sharing my bitter experience . But, I am planning to use Kontakt2 live - I'll be using a rackmounted G5. I would love to use a laptop but I don't think it will work for the forseeable future. Perhaps when intel powerbooks stabilize and get interface cards to external SATA disks - but that will be a while...

thx

T.

 

While of course this won't actually improve the performance of your computer, one thing that will probably give you greater "headroom" as far as polyphony goes, is to activate, for each preset, the standard Kontakt 2 Script, "Self Mask". This will at least prevent wasting voices on notes that are already sounding (repeated notes, sustain pedal held, etc.).

 

Good point about the self-mask, I will try it. Most scripts I have tried have made performance worse but a script that intends to limit the system is worth a try.

 

Thanks for the replies. I'll give the self-mask script a try and get back with the results.