Kontakt Mac performance poor?

Hi,

I'm evaluating Kontakt on Mac with a view to buying it if it delivers the goods. So far I've downloaded the demo and it sounds ace, I like the semi-modular approach and the GUI makes sense. But, I'm not impressed with its performance on Mac.

Importing a fairly small sample (7 secs @ 44.1) and putting Kontakt into Time Machine or Tone Machine mode, the thing takes about 12 seconds to analyse the sample - too long surely? This would turn using using longer samples into a real waiting game...

Also, once this has completed, the CPU consumption when playing back a simple 3-note chord is really hefty - approx 1 third of one CPU!

Out of interest I tried the demo on a friend’s 1.8ghz Athlon PC. There was no comparison. It ran so much better it was unreal. Samples were analysed in the blink of an eye and it barely registered any activity on Logic’s CPU meter…

So, anyone using Kontakt on Mac? Are there performance issues in the full version, or is there something about the Mac demo that limits its efficiency? Or, is the thing just not altivec optimised?

Any experiences, I’d love to hear them…

Best,

Ben

 

I have no experience with Kontakt on Mac but there are serious rumors of Mac OSX on AMD x86 hardware and apps like Final Cut are reported to perform better on the x86 hardware. It is probably due to floating point capabilities.
It is challenging to compare straightly the CPU use because other factors are involved there as the sound card drivers for instance. On WinXP, some drivers are known to require more CPU than others.

For the sample analysis, the analysis quality matters to me much more than the time it takes. I think that should be a specific application which does that in real time.

 

Thanks Rik. At the moment OSX is pie-in-the-sky as an OS for audio unfortunately. As a Logic guy I need all my plugs and vsti's to be converted to AU format. So, until this happens it's OS9... I can't imagine making the jump to OSX for at LEAST 6 months, maybe 1 year. It's totally dependent on the availability of audio units.

I know the Win/Mac comparison is not strictly fair due to issues you mention (and others!) but so far Kontakt on Win is great, eminently usable. On Mac it's not. I'd have to keep bouncing down the audio from Kontakt to HD, which starts to eat into the 'convenience' benefits of having a software sampler in the first place.

 

I can tell you that I have a G4 Powerbook 666 mhz and use Kontakt with DP3 and when I try running a sample in Kontakt's Tone or Time machine mode I can hardly play more than a couple of notes without locking up. I am going to try playing with buffer settings etc., but this doesn't look very promising (and that is leaving analyze times aside!).

Other than that, Kontakt is a stunning product with a mac. I'll keep you posted as to improvements on CPU performance.

cheers

gspin

 

i had it on a powerbook w/ several synth patches, piano and a full battery kit going, and i thought it was great. now, there are some patches so loaded up with filters and such that yeah, about 3 notes of that sound and it's toast for the 667mhz. i think it's called electro 120bpm or something like that - very heavy-CPU sound.

but, for the most part i've been able to do a good bit with it. i just upgraded to a dual 1ghz, and of course you would expect to get more oomph, but i think the response is great. i have my DP3.11 buffers set at 1024 and the piano feels awesome. i also have a USB fastlane for midi, so maybe that's why i don't feel a lag.

maybe the PC is better but i love DP3 and wouldn't go anywhere else. and on my dual 1ghz, i get plenty of tracks. i know my bro-in-law played w/ the PC demo for a while, but he didn't like on that how you adjusted this delay fader in the setup until you quit hearing clicks and pops... i do like on a mac how that works with DP3.11

andy

p.s. i just wish the included samples were actually usable. there's about 4 sounds on all 6 CDs that i would actually put into a song.

 

Cheers guys.

Just realised I don't have a sig on this forum with my setup details.
So you know what I'm running Kontakt on, it's:

Mac G4 Dual 1Ghz, 1024MB
OS 9.2.2
M-Audio Delta 44 ASIO
USB Midisport 8x8
Logic Platinum 5.3.0

 

1 Minute Test!

I too am using a Dual 1Gig G4 (miror door), Logic 5.3, 1 gig of ram, MOTU 828 & Unitor8. If any PC people could do a comparison test: I took a 1 minute stereo .aif (10mb) file and selected Tone Machine. It took a full 2 minutes 35 seconds to analyze the file. Is that a MAC thing? Let us know if anyone tries this at home.

dinerdog

 

It's not good news I'm afraid.

The test machine is a 1.2Ghz Athlon running Windows 2k.

Taking one 1 minute .wav file, Kontakt took only 52 secs to analyse the file after being put into Tone Machine mode.

In terms of PC-Mac performace (ignoring Altivec and dual CPUs) a Mac G4 and an Athlon should match up Mhz against Mhz. So, a single G4 1Ghz chip should be 83% as fast as an Athlon 1.2Ghz

Now, I'm a musician, not a mathematician, but doesn't that mean that a 1Ghz Mac should be able to analyse a 10mb file in 59 secs? Not as dinerdog reports, 155 secs!! AND, that's completely ignoring the ability to optimise for Altivec and dual CPUs, which would boost Mac performance significantly.

Come on NI! Get the Mac version up to speed and you'll sell more!

 

i don't know how much of that is NI, but maybe apple!

i've always contended that mac's are much slower at file operations, like copying over a network, or from CD. i think it's related to that.

andy

 

Ah, I love a bit of unsubstantiated format bashing.

Every day, I use Macs and PCs to network and to both read from and write to CD - and there is no difference in speed.

Take a PC with a faster buss and it'll be faster at handling files internally, of course.

This is clearly not about slow file handling. It sounds more like NI are compiling code optimised for Athlon/Intel floating point units, then porting it across to Mac, where of course it does not run as fast.

If Apple made machines that were, from the results of our test, only 38% as fast as PCs at handling files no-one would buy them. Not even quirky artists and musicians...

 

...and other creative types.

I think it's a porting over thing too. It took how many month's after they said the MAC version would be available? I do like Kontakt, but it really makes me appreciate how simple and bulletproof the EXS is. Ergonomically it leaves a lot to be desired for me at the moment. A lot of great ideas, but a lot of f$@king around for basic operations (IMHO). Time will tell.

ps: I would NEVER switch from a MAC

 

i wouldn't say i'm completely "unsubstantiated" in my opinions...

i'm a part-time musician, but a full-time IT tech, supporting both Mac and PC networks, 40 hours a week - and have been for four years.

my experience (as well as others i work with) is that PCs and Macs handle file stuff differently, especially over networks. that's all i'm saying. i think OSX is better, but OS9 is a slower dog.

maybe your opinion is different, chomps, and that's fine, but i'm anything but ignorant about computers

andy

 

PC test

Just wanted to add my results;

AMD Athlon KT7 800mhz
512 RAM
Windows XP

It took Kontakt about 62 sec to load a 1.5 minute (11.1 Meg) wave file into the Tone/Time Machine engine, and the CPU was at 12% with 3 voices, 22% at 6 Voices, 32% at 12. Seems consistent with my experience; the documentation even warns that you'll have to wait while the conversion is done, especially for long files.

Seems like NI can only truly program for PC/VST - this is the only incarnation of Kontakt that REALLY WORKS. The DXi is missing many, many features; Pro Tools users sound like they're having a rough time of it; Logic too - but the Mac users seem to be having the worst time!
It would be nice if they could get the programming on other platforms to match the quality of the VST stuff; there seems to be a serious disparagy there.

Good luck to all!

 

You cannot compare the performance that easy. As I presumed that the analyze performance depends on the samples, you are using, I generated a sinus and a noise file of the same length and let Kontakt analyze them. The noise file was analyzed in almost half the time of the sinus file and the generated nac file is only half the size!

So if you really want to compare the performance between different systems you need at least to use identical sample material.

I would think that the performance for playing the samples in tone and time machine mode also depends on the material and on how far away from the root key it is played, as the calculations should be most simple for the root key and octave intervals.

Alexander

 

Andy, you’re bristling unnecessarily. I didn’t intend for my post to be antagonistic, it was just pointing out that your opinion was, and still is, unsubstantiated. I’m saying nothing about your experience with computers, I’m sure you’re not ignorant and I never stated or implied as much.

In terms of Mac/PC file handling (not that this has anything to do with Kontakt performance) the Windows file copy progress bar lies while the Mac one tells the truth. Easy example – take a USB Zip drive and plug it into a Win machine (98 or NT – not tried with XP). Copy a bunch of files across to the Zip. Watch how the Windows file progress bar will race through the task and complete. Despite the progress bar’s completion, the files are still being written to disc, the Zip drive’s ‘busy’ light is still on, the disc is still spinning and can’t be ejected. Plug the drive into a Mac and copy the same bunch of files to the Zip drive. The Mac progress bar will complete when the task is actually complete, when the files are all written, the light is off and the disc has stopped and can be ejected…

Bduffy – bang on the money.

Alexander – ok so the tests aren’t done under ‘lab conditions’, but if we took 20 random Mac users analysing 20 random 1 minute files and 20 Win users doing the same, I think we’d find that the real-world results would speak for themselves. Also, distance from the ‘original’ note doesn’t seem to have any impact on performance, but, in Tone Machine, turning the ‘formant’ control away from 0 seems to have a huuuuuuge impact, in a bad way…

 

Mac users..go EXS24 Mk2

Stable..fast and fat filters...
Emagic EXS24Mk2

 

Hi Robx,

you are competely right, the EXS24 doesn't have any performance problems with the tone or time machine mode. In fact it doesn't offer them at all!

 

hmm, you could say my opinion is unsubstantiated because i haven't had the spare time to break out the stopwatch and actually sit around measuring file transfers. that's true. but after working on both systems for years, my opinion is formed from a lot experience, and it is what it is, and i'm sure we can both poll plenty of co-workers to this discussion who would support our differing opinions. some things macs do better - some things windows does better. i just know i'll never go back to recording on PCs. DP3 and my MOTU rig has been unbelievably stable and i'm diggin it..

one comment about what bduffy said: "but the Mac users seem to be having the worst time!" -- for me nothing could be further from the truth. i'm running a dual 1ghz system, and i leave kontakt, battery and the B4 and DP3.11 running for (literally) several weeks at a time on end w/o so much as a reboot and it has yet to crash on me, i am running multiple stereo and mono outputs into DP and have not yet maxed out the CPU (though i haven't intentionally tried, only through regular use). so i'm not sure what other mac users are seeing but i'm in heaven with it. it's been stable, sounds good and interacts w/ DP3 awesome.

andy

 

Hey Man,

I hope you didn't take what I said to refer to Macs having trouble GLOBALLY - I was referring specifically to the onslaught of posts we got here on the forum, once Kontakt went Mac! just seemed like Mac users were having a lot of trouble, that's all - just concerned.

I'm well aware of the greater stability of the Mac system; Most audio professionals will say that Mac is the best system for audio, and I believe them. As a PC user, I am plagued by crashes, ineffecient drivers, OS-hogging resources (etc, ad infinitum). Although I do believe you can make professional-level music on a PC, you'll probably always have a rougher time of it. Mac users enjoy that uniform quality, whereas we could find out tomorrow that our motherboards are ***** and are preventing us from utilizing the full potential of our music software; the stability must be nice.

Enjoy your Mac; I'll be joining you someday, but for now, they're too expensive (especially after investing so much in my PC) and I worry about a lot of my favourite audio apps not being available for Mac. But oneday...G4, Pro Tools...

All the Best.