Understanding Purge

Hi, Purge is a great feature. However, i want to make sure i understand how it works. After i take the time to Purge all the samples i'm not using, can i save these settings as part of the Instrument/Multi? i.e. will Kontakt remember which samples to load and which not to load next time i reload the Instrument or Multi?

Ideally i'd be able to tell Kontakt which NOTES i need ( instead of which sample ) so it will load ALL velocity layers for those notes. Its errorprone to try to hit all velocity levels of a note when setting the purge markers. What if i miss a velocity layer? It would stink to get silence in the middle of a solo at a show just because i'm hitting harder than during rehearsal.

I'd appreciate any guidance, i'm new to Kontakt. I just ordered Komplete 7.
Thanks!
-md

 

On the first question, no it won't remember. Purge is intended to be used in a session. Let's say for example you're recording Project 1 in your sequencer, and you load a 1GB piano and play a piano part. After recording the piano part, you can purge any samples that weren't used in the playing of that piano part, and maybe you might save 50-80% of the RAM.

However, let's say you start a second project, Project 2, and also need to use the piano. You wouldn't want to recall the purge settings from Project 1. Maybe Project 2 is in F# while Project 1 is in C. There's a very high probability that the samples required in Project 2 are entirely different than Project 1.

As you save both Project 1 and Project 2 in your sequencer, the sequencer will save a snapshot of Kontakt's state for each project, so if you use purge in both projects, it'll remember the respective purge settings.

However, you probably wouldn't want to resave the actual Kontakt instrument (the NKI on your hard drive) in a purged state, otherwise it would potentially malfunction (because not all samples would sound) next time you needed it for Project 3.

In answer to your second question, about which notes (including velocity layers), no, there isn't a function to do this.

My gut is to say you might be overthinking purge. Purge is meant to be a quick way to optimize a project-in-progress. Load the instrument in a sequencer project, use it as freely as you want, and when you've finished sequencing, you can use purge to reclaim memory that's unnecessarily used. But don't spend too much time analyzing it more than that.

 

One thing to add, if you do save purged samples in an instrument, and then use it on a different project where you use different keys, it quick loads the extra keys used as you play, so after sequencing once, the additional samples will have been added, so you can then save that as an instrument.

 

Oh i see, kb123. So you're saying purge info does get saved to an Instrument patch?

 

yes, it does, I use it a lot on some of the heavy weight instruments