Komplete Kontrol plugin VERY slow to load

Has NI Support given you any sort of update regarding what can be happening here, I with another colleague too, have noticed that weird slow start up times, in my case, if I have too many 3rd party user / commercial NKS files ( not exactly Maschine expansions ) , that I notice this issue,along with another NI user.
Please let us know what they find out. Thanks for updating us so far.

 

SOLVED MY ISSUE : We both did some further testing with our cpu's last night, and in my case, it's exclusive to thousands of NKS files.In particular, thousands of 3rd Party User Alchemy / Omnisphere presets. which are located on an M.2 drive. so hardware's not the issue, yet it's how Komplete Kontrol / Maschine seeks the information.

I found in order to load with proper startup speed, the only option is to disable scan user sounds upon startup.. This will not work in your case, if it's plugin related, but if it's anything like my library, perhaps it will help. good luck

 

My uneducated guess is that it all has to do with how KK database tracks, catalogs, and organizes files. The Mac code is either slower or not optimized. It seems that any changes (adding new libraries, updating version of plugins) cause KK to "re-scan" and slows things down. The Windows version is much snappier in general (with similar specs). Third party plugins, add-ons, and Massive-X seem to be less optimized than regular NI stuff (which makes sense). I see similar behavior on "first scan" of plugins after major updates or changes in Live, Logic, Reason, etc. regardless of O.S. (Mac or Windows). I do a manual "rescan" of the Library and also Plugins in the KK preferences to try to "clean up" the database. It seems to help a little. Hopefully NI gets with the program and optimizes for M1 and new Mac hardware sooner than later.

 

Mine still takes about 30 seconds to load up, even with the scan pref turned off.

 

Mine about 45 seconds to launch with 2015 MBPro, 16GB ram, with internal 2tb NVMe drive (SSD is 2200 MBP/s speed test, so not a slow hard drive issue, LOL). Laptop is quad i7 and 5 years old, so not the fastest chip or internal system bus but I doubt those are major factors here. I own a ton of plugins (Komplete, Arturia, u-He, Waves, Spectrasonics, all the usual suspects) and tons of NKS add-ins (freelancesoundlabs). Overall the performance is not too bad, considering this is basically a big, fat VST wrapper with pretty sohisticated auto midi mapping, a database and pretty graphics.

 

I'll give a test on my windows machine, since it has some similar or superior specs (kiddos new xmas gift gaming rig, a sick Alienware with Ryzen 7, 2TB NVMe, 16GB ram, Nvidia 2070). Sure beats the pants off my "studio" 2012 MacMini (did I mention I'm eager to take this to M1x/M2 chip later this year, LOL)?

I don't have as many plugins loaded on the PC, but I have all the major synth stuff since it allows multiple installs (or at least demo for NKS testing purposes). Interested to see how fast it loads up (after the first long deep scan). The one (potentially HUGE) variable is the CPU. The Alienware has a AMD Ryzen 7 3600X 8-Core 3.8, which is 7X faster and generations ahead of my Macbook Pro Quad core Intel Core i7-5650U @ 2.2GHz. Raw benchmark scores are around 22,825 for AMD and 3,110 for the i7-5650U.

I will also test the MacMini since it's got a faster chip (Intel Core i7-3720QM @ 2.60GHz with Passmark benchmark raw score of 5,647), but overall performance is typically poor on the Mini due to old, slow system bus, slower 16GB RAM, slower internal Sata 2.5" SSD bus. The Mini has been a champ over the years, but it's really impossible for an 8 year old machine to not show it's age at times.

 

Just one thing to check if it is not the auto scanning of the user content being enabled, if it appears to always be stuck on the plugin scanning side for some time (longer than 10 seconds) check through your plugin locations that you do not have a duplicate of the same plugin somewhere as I have heard recently this can cause slow loads. Easy to happen if you keep a bit of an untidy plugin collection and have all your plugins scattered around. Also, remove ALL 32 bit locations such as (windows) program files (x86) and also remove the VST3 path and try keep all your plugins located in one or just ac ouple of folders. Library and content data can go wherever but all the .dll plugins ideally should be in a single directory

It shouldn't be a case of too many NkS files since as you could imagine I have rather a few, over 500,000 files now and still startup time for standalone is under 10 seconds.

 

Interesting. The Mac is pretty strait forward - basically there is very little option to switch from Mac HD/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins. There is also the user//Library/Audio/Plug-Ins directories, but these are seldom used and not recommended (and in my case all AU/VST/AAX folders are empty anyway). While you could manually switch these, Macs are more user friendly (dummy proof) and deviating from default location is typically painful.

Good call on the PC side, since I know for sure I have things all over the place. Programs/Steinberg, Programs/VSTplugins, Programs/VST Plugins, and Programs (x86) VST Plugins (and maybe more). I also have a hodgepodge of .dll and .vst plugins. Since I don't typically use PC for music, not sure I want to take too much time organizing/optimizing and fighting with windows. I totally need to purge any 32-bit stuff at this point and manually force windows to look in one place for everything. I don't think I have anything 32-bit, if I do I need to either upgrade it or stop using it.

 

Hi there!

I'm currently working with support on a very long "waiting for product scan" delay (around 1-2 minutes) that affects all NI products but Guitar Rig 5 on my Mac. When the processes are starting it seems they are scanning the whole hard drive (checked with the performance monitor).

I'll update when I get feedback from support.

Best,

Pierre

 

I just upgraded from KK Ultimate 10 to KK Ultimate Collectors 13. Obviously, it has a lot more sounds. Prior, KK opened quickly. Now, it takes almost 2 minutes to load. Running Window 10, Intel Core i7 3770K, 32 gb ram, 4 SSD drives ( OS, Cubase, and KK apps on C drive, all NI libraries on E drive ). It's usable but irritating. Clearly something's not right. I see a lot of vids on Youtube about batch resaving on Kontakt to speed it up. Would that address this?

 

Yes. Also, one solution i did was move or uninstall whole bunch of stuff i never use, like massive, or fx plugins i use via UAD, etc. also check option to only load newer version if more than one version installed.

 

Same situation here. My Komplete Kontrol standalone and plug-in takes ~30 seconds to load. ~25 seconds of this time is taken up by "waiting for product scan".

I have been going back and forth with NI support on this for 2 months now and still no fix. After sinking $20,000+ into the NKS ecosystem I am regretting every penny of it.

 

taking a tip from earlier in this thread, uninstalling all Waves plug-ins (Mercury v12) from my system seems to have reduced the Komplete Kontrol load time from 30-35 seconds to about 20 seconds total. "Waiting for product scan" takes up about 15 seconds of this time now.

JesterMgee I know you said you've got many terabytes of Kontakt libraries on your external SSDs and your KK plugin still loads within a few seconds. How many VST/VST3/AAX/AU plug-ins do you have on your system? Wondering if we can isolate the issue here between libraries and instrument/effect plug-ins.

 

Hey guys I don’t know what happened with the latest update of KK (10th of July install from NI service Centre) but it seems my load times magically went from 24seconds to 1.5 seconds. I’m on Mojave in a MacBook Pro 2017.

It said nothing in the release notes about this fix but honestly it fixed the problem for me. I’m really hoping others will report this too so that I don’t fear I’ve fluked some sort of temporary fix. I hope this is finally done and dusted now and I can finally use my expensive hardware and software because frankly it’s been collecting dust.

 

anthony-1979 yep — same here. the 2.6.1 Komplete Kontrol update appears to have fixed the "Waiting for product scan" delay issue. My Komplete Kontrol plug-in + standalone now opens in ~5 seconds or less compared to 30+ seconds previously.

would love if anyone from NI could chime in here to explain what behind-the-scenes changes pushed in that update fixed the issue since it doesn't appear to be in the release notes.

also, the "Fixed: Clunky scrolling when using a MacBook trackpad" change is MUCH appreciated. Thank you NI for this update. I feel like I can use Komplete Kontrol in my sessions again after avoiding it for almost 2 years.

 

Yes, this is amazing!!! I have never seen Komplete load so quickly...ever!! Maschine is also now extremely fast.

 

This is just too good to be true! It was probably the simplest fix too considering that no one on PC had any issues and it was proven long ago
that it really has nothing to do with how many products are installed. It's a little sneaky that NI didn't mention it in their release notes like as if it "never happened" or something. My guess is it was the simplest fix on the planet and not some revolutionary reprogramming. Glad to hear Maschine is extremely fast also I was scared to install it and now will do so!

 

I’m also seeing improved loading time since 2.6.1. I wonder why the release notes didn’t say anything about it.

 

now if they would only let Kinplete Kontrol use both Au and VST‘s at the same time …I could ditch using machine (overkill) for accessing all my plugins instead it would have a lot smaller payload per track!

 

That would be good. VST3 support would solve the problem for me too (I know VST3 support is in progress, but so far only a handful of NI plugins are supported). I use Roland Cloud plugins, which are only available as AU and VST3.