Audio Dropouts (Mac) and crackles with Kontakt and Multiprocessor support setting cannot be saved

Plugins
1

Setup: I am using a MacBook Pro, 3,1 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7; Kontakt 6.7.1 (using the Audio Unit Plugins) and the interface is Audient iD14.

Playing a few gigs per year with mostly covers. The Performance gets worse…

Audio dropouts and Multicore support

I have audio dropouts and crackles. The Dropouts occur randomly (in GP4 and GP5), but definitely too often now. This happens since a few months, the amount of dropouts seems to increase a little bit. I really have to fix this problem, because playing live is now randomly good or not. I’ve looked in various online communities and I think it’s related to the Kontakt plugin. I also found, that it could help to switch the Multiprocessor support in the engine settings of the plugin to „off“. GP gives me the following message then: „Please close and restart your host application for the changes to become effective.“

And here is my first question: what is the host application here? Gigperformer? I closed GP an restarted it, but the setting was again on „8 cores“. I tried again to switch it off, saved the gigfile, closed GP, started GP , loaded the last file, and the setting was again “8 cores“. How can I make Kontakt save the setting „off“, so that the change becomes effective?

I don’t think, the dropouts happen because of too much CPU usage. Because thy happen even if I use a file with only a few plugins an just playing the Grandeur. They don’t appear by using the standalone Kontakt player. So I think it happens because of the Kontakt Plugin in GP.

Crackles

The Crackers appear all their time. I started to record my playing to test, if the dropouts and the crackles get recorded too. Because if not, I would think, the interface causes the problems. The Crackles weren’t recorded, but the dropouts were. So I think:

The dropouts are a Plugin/GP-Problem, the crackles are an interface problem.
2nd question: am I thinking right?

Has anybody a few suggestions for me to solve this problem? I really would like to return to a Playing without worrying, if the next dropout kills a quiet part of any song. Thank you very much for reading!

(I could write much more but tried to keep the text short, so that everyone can see if they are familiar with the problem.)

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First of all, I’d use VSTs not AUs. My experience is that they work better.

But if it only started happening in the last few months then you really need to think about what changed in your environment - did you upgrade the OS? Did you change audio interface? You don’t indicate how much RAM you have. Are you running out of physical RAM so that your OS is now swapping – that would certainly have an impact on cracking/dropouts.

That is coming from Kontakt, not from GP.

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Thank you for answering so fast.Your suggestion leads me to my next question: changing to the VSTs means rebuilding the whole gigfile? Or are there shortcuts in Gigperformer like “saving all settings of all plugins and use them for the VSTs?

I also was thinking a lot, what changed. But I didn’t upgrade OS and didn’t change the interface.

I have 16 GB RAM. The CPU usage is below 30% all the Time. That’s why I think, that is not the Problem.

Kontakt-Message: so, there is no possibility, to “save” the multiprocessor support in GP? I#m going to ask native then.

4
  1. What is your macOS version?
  2. When did the problem start? Was that always with cracks and pops?
  3. What happens when you try with another interface or the integrated sound chip?
  4. Are you sure that you are not running Gig Performer under Rosetta?
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Yes, just a suggestion - but in fact if the CPU only shows 30%, then that’s probably not the issue.

No - plugin state is managed by individual plugins - no way to guarantee that the state in one format is identical to the state in a different format so we don’t try to do that.

If everything used to work and now it makes noise, something has to have changed. It may very well just be an issue with the Kontakt plugin - try using the VST version of Kontakt. That said, if the Kontakt library you’re using requires a huge amount of samples and your RAM usage is “close to the edge”, that could be an issue as well. Note that you should change ALL Kontakt plugins to that format, don’t mix/match.

A plugin host (GP or a DAW, etc.) can only save/restore whatever information a plugin explicitly makes available to the host. If Kontakt doesn’t expose the “multiprocessor” option as part of the state, then the host has no control over it. However, Kontakt itself should be remembering that state.

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He’s using an Intel machine - Rosetta is not a factor.

1 Like
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Does the problem only happen with sample based plugins? (If you just use physically modeled plugins, do you get crackling?)

Can you tell if there is a lot of file swapping?

How much ram is used in the gig file?

I know Apple is more ram efficient than PC’S, but 16GB seems a bit low in the ram department.

Maybe try Predictive Loading set to one and see if you have the problem with the Grandeur rackspace (one where you usually have the problem.)

8

Three suggestions not mentioned yet:
On my office Intel Mac (mini) the screen resolution has a huge impact on how good the audio performance is. Seems that the scaling puts a lot of load on that old machine. My office i7 is completely unusable for VSTs even with large buffer sizes when connected to a large monitor.
Please try to use the standard resolution, if you don’t already.

Please also test with a stripped-down gig file to exclude a RAM issue.

Have you made sure the audio buffer settings haven’t changed?

1 Like
[blog] Optimize your Mac for a gig
9

Thank you for your help!

  1. Ventura 13.7.1
    2./3. few months ago. I never changed the interface. But I will try, after trying some other things.
  2. yes, not under rosetta (just like dhj wrote).
10

Maybe using VSTs from Kontakt will be a solution. I am waiting for a answer from native instruments before working thins out.