Kontakt string section

I'm just putting together a string section multi to save as a template. I'm using one instance of Kontakt 4 and feeding the outputs to separate midi tracks.
There are ten tracks in all but I'm getting a high reading on the vst performance meter and a lot of distortion.
Is that an excessive number of tracks for one instance or should I be using several
instances?
Any advice appreciated. Thank you.

Dell Vostro 400
Intel* Core™ 2 Quad-Core Q6600 processor (2.40GHz, 1024MHz, 8MB cache)
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
M-Audio Audiophile 192 soundcard
Windows XP Pro.
Cubase 4.5.2

 

You can do it either way. As far as the distortion, that just means you have to turn them all down.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply. I don't quite get that. If I turn them down, the VST performance meter still reads the same, and it makes no difference to the distortion. Well - more like crackling & popping

 

Anyone?

 

Ah, I took your "distortion" at face value, meaning audio distortion from overdriving the master output. It sounds like you mean distortion as in crackling and popping due to CPU overloads, which is a different problem.

I'm honestly not sure what to suggest on the CPU overloads issue. It doesn't sound like you're doing anything abnormal or driving it very hard. Check your buffer size -- is it extremely low? Perhaps other PC users can chime in.

 

If it cubase and vst performance meter, it is likely the audio buffer size that needs to be increased

 

Thanks again for the replies. I've always left the buffer at 256 and never had any problems, but I've just increased it to 384 and it seems ok for now.

 

It must be CPU performance. Since VIs are 32bit floating point, there is no such thing as a digital over, in the same way as a distorted bounce down. Even if you see red lines in the Kontakt window, it simply means you will peak the instrument channel in your DAW when set to 0dB. In that case, turning down the gain in the instrument channel will suffice (not that you really should, one should try to achieve constant signal levels across the signal chain).

This is all anecdotal, of course, since your problem deals specifically with CPU performance. Unfortunately, I have no answers to that.

 

Other things to check would be your disk defragmentation. Are the samples spread all over your disk. Also, what is your pre-load buffer setting in Kontakt. Maybe try increasing that slightly if you have plenty memory to spare